Child of a Rainless Year

Child of a Rainless Year (2005) Jane Lindskold

This is an odd story–the fantastic elements are initially subtle, and initially you aren’t even sure that what you are reading is a fantasy.

It is, but not one of vampires and witches, but one of subtle powers, hidden from plain sight.

“(A)nything that is liminal, that is on the border between two edges,” I said, shaping into words ideas I’d been puzzling over, “is sort of a crossroads where various outcomes can all be seen as probable— if not equally probable.”

But primarily it’s Mira’s discovery of her mother, and of herself.

Mother was a horribly egotistical woman to whom nothing was real unless it happened directly to her.

(L)ike so many who look at themselves too often in mirrors, she thought that this reverse image, seen rigidly straight on as we are so rarely seen by others, was her truest self.

Publisher: Tor

Rating: 9/10

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