{"id":1698,"date":"2005-08-30T22:30:27","date_gmt":"2005-08-30T22:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-1698.html"},"modified":"2006-12-30T16:27:13","modified_gmt":"2006-12-30T16:27:13","slug":"lois-mcmaster-bujold-the-hallowed-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/2005\/08\/30\/lois-mcmaster-bujold-the-hallowed-hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"Lois McMaster Bujold &#8211; <i>The Hallowed Hunt<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although <i>The Hallowed Hunt<\/i> bears all the hallmarks of Bujold&#8217;s tremendous craft, it never really came alive for me.  It&#8217;s set in the same world as her two previous books (<i>The Curse of Chalion<\/i> and <i>Paladin of Souls<\/i>), but in a different country, and there is no overlap of characters.  The story concerns the murder of a prince and the possible re-emergence of an ancient power.  It&#8217;s a tale of romance and purgatory, involving clever use of the (very real) Five Gods theology Bujold has established for this world.  <\/p>\n<p>Right from the start, this had two things working against it:  a low-tech, feudal fantasy setting, and flowery language.  I must be getting crusty as I get older, because my tolerance for lordlings and princesses is <em>really<\/em> low.  Bujold overcame my resistance in the other Chalion books, but it seems like her writing style here has taken a turn for the precious, with lots of old-fashioned turns of phrase and elaborate description.  <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t mind the romantic side of the book, but it sorely lacks Bujold&#8217;s traditional themes of gritty practicality and inner strength.  With a few exceptions, very little happens in <i>The Hallowed Hunt<\/i> that requires the characters to take a stand and turn the story around.  Most of the time they just go with the flow, and merely express great concern along the way.<\/p>\n<p>I hate to say this, but I found it dull, and I had to force myself to keep reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although The Hallowed Hunt bears all the hallmarks of Bujold&#8217;s tremendous craft, it never really came alive for me. It&#8217;s set in the same world as her two previous books (The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls), but in a different country, and there is no overlap of characters. The story concerns the murder [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[1142],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books_2_stars","tag-legendshome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}