A NOTE ON THE SPOILERS
A while ago I got a comment tantrum from a semiliterate rando because apparently some people are too stupid to understand a SPOILER WARNING, so I thought I’d elaborate on my exact definition of a spoiler. I AM GOING TO SUMMARIZE THE ENTIRE BOOK, INCLUDING THE ENDING. Think of me as a very niche Wikipedia. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to stop reading at any time. I don’t make money from this content. I don’t care how many people read it.
This is your legacy, Fedup: an extra line on an obscure book blog that probably doesn’t even have ten followers. It’s not exactly a Nobel prize, but it’s still quite a nifty little achievement. Your parents must be so proud. Please seek help.
The Hallowed Hunt
Lois McMaster Bujold
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers. Other reviews in this series can be found here.
I genuinely have no idea what my problem was the first time I read this. As of two months ago, I remembered almost nothing about the book, save for a few snippets here and there, and what few memories I had were attached to words like “dull” and “unmemorable.” Unfortunately, I have a slight problem with needing things to be complete, so I bought the book some time ago – both to complete my Chalion hardcover collection and to buddy read it with Lori, years after I had first read it and dismissed it, but anyway – and it now turns out that maybe you can have a second chance at a first impression. My faded memories notwithstanding, I did still remember who the villain was and I can’t say his reveal was exactly unpredictable, but this reread was generally a delightful surprise, and it was more than enough to reawaken my slumbering Chalion craving.
I used to think that The Hallowed Hunt preceded The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls by several centuries and that the five gods were just beginning to make themselves known, but I don’t know where I got this idea because there is actually nothing in the way of temporal landmarks and the gods are just as entrenched in the land and the people as they are in the other two books. The people could be contemporaries of Cazaril and Iselle and all the rest, or they could be ancestors, or they could be descendants. Frankly, the technology doesn’t seem markedly different, and this installment is in any case set in a land called the Weald, a Germanic country west of Darthaca (France), as opposed to the Spanish-inspired Chalion. This means everything I wrote for Chalion is now irrelevant, up to and including the country chart, which is both fascinating and faintly irritating. We have a whole new set of politics and problems: the native Wealdeans were previously arranged in kin tribes and ruled by a hallow king elected by the heads of the thirteen strongest tribes, but they were conquered several centuries ago by Audar the Great of Darthaca. Despite one final, desperate attempt to defeat their colonizers with spirit magic, which augmented human warriors with the spirits of animals sacrificed for their strength, the last hallow king and his warriors were abandoned by the gods and massacred by the Darthacan army. After their thorough defeat, every member of the hallow king’s army and camp was executed, regardless of their level of threat, and the hallow king himself was torn limb from limb and buried alive in a pit that then became a mass grave. As his spirit animal – a horse – was considered an impurity on his soul, he was blocked from the gods upon his death, as were his spirit warriors, leaving them all in a state of spiritual limbo.
Four hundred years later, with Audar’s work having been neatly undone by incompetent grandsons, the Weald is technically free but lives under orthodox Darthacan Quintarianism. The kin tribes have been reduced to eight great houses, which – together with five Temple-mandated archdivine-ordainers – are tasked with electing the hallow kings, though these lack even a shadow of the power of the original kings, and shaman magic is punishable by execution. Meanwhile, the last hallow king survived the massacre of his people, having already been invested with a power beyond the Darthacans’ knowledge or understanding, and he has spent the last several centuries body-hopping from descendant to descendant, completely overriding the minds of his sons and their sons as he fights to free the Weald from Darthacan orthodoxy. In his present incarnation, he and his horse have taken over the body of Wencel kin Horseriver, who started life a bit simple but became suspiciously sharp after his possession. His desperate mother – apparently under the instructions of the maddeningly long-sighted gods – appealed to her brother, Ingalef kin Wolfcliff, who agreed to attempt spirit magic on himself and his then-teenaged son, Ingrey. The rite was supposed to invest them both with the spirits of wolves sacrificed for the purpose; however, Ingalef was bitten by his (rabid) wolf and died shortly after, while Ingrey’s wolf was far more powerful than anticipated, making his recovery extremely difficult. The possessed Wencel went on to become the earl-ordainer (head) of kin Horseriver and later married Princess Fara kin Stagthorne, daughter of the current hallow king. While Wencel and his horse managed to evade the notice of the Temple, Ingrey tried several years’ worth of increasingly desperate measures to rid himself of his wolf, but eventually had to get a special dispensation to keep the good divines from burning him at the stake.
A couple of decades or so after Wencel’s possession and the failed rite, the adult Ingrey arrives at Boar’s Head Castle, nominal prison of Boleso kin Stagthorne, who is (1) insane and (2) deceased. Boleso was confined to his hunting lodge after murdering and skinning a servant but was by then too crazy to learn a damn thing, and actually invited his own death when he attempted to perform a forbidden Old Weald rite on Lady Ijada dy Castos, the half-Chalionese lady-in-waiting to his sister Fara. On paper this was supposed to invest Ijada with the spirit of a leopard, which Boleso then intended to control (in order to groom Ijada as the perfect concubine), but in practice Ijada smashed his head in with his own war hammer before he could rape her, though the rite did go through as planned. All of this led to the arrival of Ingrey, who was assigned the unenviable duty of investigating Boleso’s murder and bringing his body back to Easthome, the capital of the Weald. Already unhappy with the general circumstances, Ingrey is even more dismayed to realize he has an uncontrollable compulsion to kill Ijada. His long-suppressed wolf is immediately blamed for this murderous desire, but he eventually – with Ijada’s help – recognizes that he has been secretly bound with a geas by an unknown third party who wants Ijada dead.
The breaking of the geas is only the first step in a long journey that sends Ingrey and Ijada tumbling down a well of spooky dreams, psychic connections, and sexual tension, all of it brimming with very real confusion. They begin as a duo, scared and uncertain of whom to trust outside of each other, but over time their party grows to include Learned Hallana, a Temple scholar/sorcerer/saint; Learned Oswin, long-suffering husband of Hallana; Learned Lewko, a minor saint of the Bastard; Prince-Marshal Biast, brother of Boleso and expected heir to the hallow kingship; and Prince Jokol Skullsplitter of Arfastpekka, doting owner of a polar bear named Fafa, who is a Very Good BoiTM. (The nickname means nothing: “skullsplitter” merely refers to Jokol’s habit of blowing the minds of his people with his prodigious talent for composing epic verse.) To make matters more complicated, the hallow king is on the brink of death, which has set numerous political plots into motion – the possessed Wencel’s foremost among them – and the Temple keeps making threatening noises about executing Ijada. Ingrey sets himself the goal of getting through Boleso’s funeral in one piece, but even this modest hope is dashed when he and Ijada are visited mid-funeral by the Son of Autumn, who coaches Ingrey through the process of cleansing Boleso’s soul of a zooful of spirit animals. Ingrey succeeds in preparing Boleso to join the gods, but his reputation for weirdness goes through the roof.
The mystery finally culminates in the death of the hallow king, from which Wencel manages to reclaim a part of his former power that somehow got lost over the centuries. Having reclaimed it, he invests Fara with the spirit of a horse, then abducts her and Ingrey and spirits them away to Bloodfield, where he and his army were slaughtered by the Darthacans, and forces them to help him break the spell that keeps the ghosts of his warriors trapped on earth without the embrace of the gods. Ingrey initially thinks this doesn’t seem so bad until Wencel admits that he has no interest in sending his warriors to the afterlife, and he in fact wishes to ensure their permanent sundering from the gods. After an intense showdown, Wencel’s kingship transfers to Ingrey, making him the new hallow king for a few hours. Frankly, I couldn’t really follow it (or it’ll take a couple more read-throughs before I really get it), so I won’t try to explain it. In any case, his reign is bound by time and location, meaning he has exactly one night to do right by his new army. Fortunately, Ijada arrives with the rest of their party as back-up, and Ingrey and his friends spend an unnaturally long night slogging through 4,000 almost-but-not-quite-sundered spirits, sending them to their appropriate gods for their long-delayed eternal rest. A handful, including Wencel, choose oblivion over the gods. Upon carrying out his one task as Hallow King, Ingrey proposes to Ijada, who gladly accepts, and they marry in a brief ceremony before setting fire to the woods, providing Ingrey’s one-night army – and Wencel – with the funeral pyre they were denied at the end of their natural lives.
After the action-packed night, things quickly go back to normal, to the relief of all involved. Biast is elected hallow king without any further trouble, least of all from Ingrey, who has no interest in extending his kingship. Ijada is acquitted of Boleso’s murder on the grounds of self-defense, and she and Fara both receive dispensations identical to Ingrey’s, allowing them and their spirit animals to live in peace, given that they acquired said animals against their will; Fafa the bear is gifted to Biast upon his ordination, and Jokol returns to Arfastpekka, taking with him an unfortunate divine to serve the spiritual needs of his islands. When he has recovered sufficiently from the physical trauma of the Wencel adventure, Ingrey takes Ijada to Birchgrove, his childhood home, where they search for the sundered spirit of his father. They eventually find him, but learn that they came too late to do anything other than cleanse his soul and release him to oblivion. Ingrey muses upon his own eventual fate as the last shaman, seeing his end in his father’s sundering, but Ijada suggests that the magic of the Weald could eventually be integrated into the Temple, and Ingrey might not be as alone as he thinks.
I didn’t think I would enjoy this reread at all, and I am delighted to be proven so thoroughly wrong. I had a great time, not least because the dialogue – while characteristically stiff as a board – didn’t make me cringe the way it always does in Paladin of Souls. (Love that book. But I’m not one to mince words, or sugarcoat my opinions.) I think Hallana and Oswin might be my new favorite Five Gods couple for comic relief alone. Though Chalion and Paladin balance their grimmer themes with a wonderful humor, The Hallowed Hunt is more comically funny. Ingrey’s wild night aboard Jokol’s boat, followed by his drunken walk of shame, absolutely sent me; so did the inclusion of Fafa, who really is just the very best boy, and he’d better live a very good life, I will be having words with the gods if he does not. Unfortunately, the bouts of silliness are just slightly out of step with the general tone of the story, and they sort of work against the book as a whole, in that it is harder to take seriously. But on the other hand, it is nice that it doesn’t take itself quite as seriously as Paladin does. Ingrey is an exceedingly glum narrator at the best of times, but he is also entertaining company, which is good considering the length of the book. (One of my favorite moments: Ijada’s characterization of Jokol as “sweet.” I would agree with that assessment. Ingrey has the good sense to keep his mouth shut. Also, I fucking LOVE that Jokol is dedicated to the Daughter of Spring.)
The trouble is that this book is a mess. It is dense and busy, packed with more travel-related details than I actually needed, and I am not optimistic about my chances of untangling it in future rereads. These rereads will absolutely happen because, as previously established and documented, I am insane and I will not now be able to read a single Five Gods book without also reading the other two. Every future reread is going to go Hallowed Hunt –> Curse of Chalion –> Paladin of Souls, and I am resigned to that fact. Ingrey and Ijada and I will be getting to know each other quite well, but, though I found the book more memorable upon reread, I maintain that it is the least memorable of the series (excluding the Penric books, which I have not read – good god, there’s a lot more of them than I thought). The cast as a whole tends towards the comical and I liked hanging out with them, but they lack the depth that made Chalion exceptional; Jokol in particular is a walking caricature. I honestly wanted more from Ijada, who, though active and more than capable of making her own decisions, isn’t given much scope. I was really hoping that her leopard would play a role in the resolution of the Wencel problem, or at the very least that it would be more prominent than it was. I would have liked to have seen it interacting with Ingrey’s wolf in silly little playful ways, anything that might have even mildly suggested that the two were forming a bond that didn’t involve the bloody dismemberment of an extremely disturbing geas.
I am also perturbed by the gods, who claim to love every soul but definitely pick favorites. In Chalion and Paladin, they side with Chalion-Ibra against the Roknari, who also worship the holy family, though admittedly the Quadrene faith excludes the Bastard. In this book, the tribes of the Old Weald practice Quintarianism before the establishment of Darthacan rule, but their own gods turn against them in a heartbeat and show zero hesitation in guiding Audar and his troops to what can only be described as genocide. Yet even after the holy slaughter, the gods still mourn for the souls who turn from their embrace, and it galls me. You literally cannot have it both ways, even if the gods would disagree with me. If they wanted to put a stop to all the human and animal sacrifice, great, but you have to admit that there is something distinctly contradictory in ending ritual sacrifice via mass murder. I want to know exactly where the spirit animals go after they are freed from their humans. The Son of Autumn tells Ingrey that they go through a different door and asks him to release them to their rest, which would sound entirely satisfactory to somebody who just met the gods. For my part, I know enough not to take them at their exact word, which is generally layered with riddles and not especially reliable. Just ask Ista. At the very least take the animal and sunder the human, right?
Overall, this book took the world in an interesting direction, and I liked the general vision of the Weald in spite of its gods. At the same time, it tried to do too much, to the detriment of the pacing. It could easily have lost most of the journey from Easthome to Bloodfield without consequence. I personally did not need every agonizing detail of Ingrey’s abduction, from the horses to the overnight rest stops to the most pointless descriptions of the terrain. You do not need five pages to describe a trip up a mountain. However, I liked the characters enough to almost scoot past the mess of the story, though I would have liked them to have more depth, and I am one botched funeral away from trying to adopt Fafa, possibly against his will. Bastard forgive me, I am ready to dig Fafa’s personal swimming pool by hand if that’s what it takes to lure him into my house. He can sleep on the end of my bed, and I will serve him the hearts of my enemies. If nothing else, read this book for Fafa. You won’t regret it.
