Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life's few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby, as she did for many of the village's children.
Ina's gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift often brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers, however religious they might be. For some people, Ina's home in the woods outside the village is a place to fear and to avoid, a godless place.
Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches. The people's desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest, especially in this year of record drought and famine.
But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord's family, new and occult forces upset the old order. By year's end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, the natural world and the spirit world will prove to be very thin indeed.
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The bandits came again on Easter SPRING
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(@JonathanCape, 23 June 2022, ebook, 320 pages, #ARC from the publisher via # NetGalley)
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I thought Lapvona was a great book. The book took a while to get into as it's not broken into chapters but long sections each with a specific season as a heading (i.e. Winter). There are pauses though, paragraph breaks where you can set the book aside to think about the crazy, dark and fascinating characters and village you've just read about. I couldn't stop reading Lapvona every time I picked it up. I loved this book.
