Marie Brennan: Warrior and Witch

[bibliogramma]

I'm really starting to like Marie Brennan's work. After throughly enjoying her Elizabethan Faerie fantasy Midnight Never Come, I decided to follow up with her two previously published novels, Warrior and Witch (also published as Doppelganger amd Warrior and Witch).

Loved them. Absolutely loved them.

In addition to writing some strong and realistic female characters with important quests and real emotions and human complexities and frailties such that, for the longest time, you're really torn because you like both protagonists and it seems that there's no way that both can have what they want, Brennan has done several things in these books that I really like. First, she's created a unique magical system that has enough in common with the standards that it makes sense, while being fresh in some very interesting ways and not needlessly over-complicated.

Second, she's given us the story of a quasi-religious order that is torn apart by a heart-rending discovery about the misinterpretation of a crucial element of dogma and the deep and painful inner struggle to accept what was wrong about their teaching and practice, forgive themselves and change it. This is the kind of story that I love, about belief and repentance and redemption and things that matter to the mind and soul, and how far people are willing to go for what they believe.

Third, she's positioned all of this in a multi-faceted society that works because it's not all about the mages, or all about the warriors, or all about the priests, but rather about how all of them work together to make life work.

Reading these made me very happy, and long for more.