This was just as satisfying as when I read it the first time. If you want a story of here and there; then, now, and next, this is it.
🐏
Lord's mastery over moving the lines of her story from one place to the next, from a time before to a time to come is just amazing. The characters are intriguing and entertaining with just enough trickster presence to leave you wanting more.
🦚
Lord's prose is alive with the voice of our Caribbean storytellers and that was all I needed to suck me into this story.
🐞
With the style, flare, and circuitous embellishments that I can personally attribute to the elders who are the story-keepers, story-tellers, and knowledge stores on my island, Lord cleverly opens up a tale that on the surface seems simple enough: an unhappy wife leaving her husband for a while, just to get a breather, only to become the centre of events in the unseen world that shape what is seen.
🦉
But then Lord throws in the fallibility of greed, the ingenuity of a clever mind, folktale creatures, and entities pulled from the fabric of the unseen world all coalescing around our main character, as a deposed lord of Chance sets off to reclaim what is his and in so doing, triggers events that threaten the delicate balance between seen and unseen, between order and chaos.
🐝
Nothing beats finding and reading a story that takes you back to the days of Ring Ding (story time tv program in Jamaica) and listening to stories being told in the oral traditions that have been passed on and kept alive by the older generation. Stories that hold lessons, villains, mischievous encounters, and redemption found where none was sought.
🕷
There is a character in this story for everyone: the trickster, the wounded, the lost, the loyal ones, the vain ones, the protectors, and the teacher/leader.
🕸
-for with choices come change, and with change comes opportunity-
🦋