Melly

Please don't read this. It's extremely graphic and disgusting just to be so nor in a way that gives insight to a sad situation. It felt like someone trying to make up a situation of abuse and glorifying it with no clue how.

Dora Rare is the first daughter to be born in generations of Rare men. Her birth brings up feeling of mysticism which only increases as she's taken under the apprenticeship of the towns Acadian midwife, Miss B. We follow her family through war, marriage, marital rape, death, historical tragedies, and renewing love as we watch her just live her life taking each day as it comes. We follow the harsh reality of being up in the isolated village from idle gossip to lack of work to horribly abusive men with no one to stop them. Yet Dora has a gift at healing, and does her best to do well by the women of the town. A Dr. comes to the town down the market, working with the men to sell them insurance for their wives births. His cruel methods show a juxtaposition against the suffragettes that some aspects of the modern world now invade the last place women actually had control of, the birth. It's truly a book of empowerment to women in all their places as we root for our heroine to decide her own fate.

The writing is fascinating piece where it feels almost flat, but in a way that truly benefits the story instead of taking away it. It's as if the fact that each women must go one step in front of the other is there the whole way through. Please don't mistake this flattness for a lack of capitvation. I spent many a night reading late.

Be warned it shines a light without fear to some very dark places of the early 1900s, but does so gracefully without spectical.

The book is a long story about Kiara and her relationship with the soft blade that surrounds her. It brings ancient and new species into contact with each other, and a spell binding situation of the consequences of human actions of fear, love, lust, and ego.

Futher more over and again this book pushes the idea of what it means to be not quite human, in hindsight almost ever main character displays this idea from a different perspective.

It is definitely a journey style novel. The plot can be meandering and the ending suprising. At many turns it's clear this is not the straight forward plot many books go for. Without understanding that it could be a very long frustrating read. So graba nice nook, take some breaths and just live with Kira, because that's truly how this book shines.

Oh and this is a bit hard core. There's a lectures in the back of the book from “Professors” to explain the sci fi elements. Personally I was satisfied without the deep dive, but knock your socks off!

Very cute illustration with nice messages of care and compassion. Not my usual read nor do I think I'll pick it up often, but it is very beautiful.

Tantalyzing... yet never quite delivers.