Child of a Rainless Year

Child of a Rainless Year (2005) Jane Lindskold

I recently picked this up as an ebook, when I found it on sale. I’d read it before and thoroughly enjoyed it, so was pleased to be able to get it electronically.

This is urban fantasy, which means it does not have any supernatural creatures. It has magic, but not of the action/adventure type.

Mira, the main character, is for much of the story a middle-aged woman, who was adopted as a child by a mid-Western couple after her mother disappeared. The first three chapters are Mira’s past, and the events that lead her to learn of her full inheritance.

Mira is not an adventuress or a great beauty.

As I walked back to the House I felt thoroughly sad that I was now so old and so unattractive that I could be found alone in a man’s house early in the morning and not even raise an eyebrow.

But she is thoroughly likable, and very interesting.

I’d forgotten the little bits, scattered throughout the story. Such as Domingo explaining the importance of Mary to Catholics.

“Our Lady of the Sorrows of Las Vegas?”
“Yes. The Virgin Mary has many mysteries. They are celebrated in the rosary. It is as ‘Our Lady of Sorrows,’ though, that most Catholics love her best, because her sorrows mean she will understand our own.”

That is quite possibly the best summation of the importance of Mary to lay Catholics I’ve come across.

People are more patient with strangeness when the odd person is either very rich or very poor.

That’s another blunt truth right there.

Is this book for everyone? Probably not. As I said, there is no action, and there are no supernatural creatures, and then main character is a middle aged woman, but I found this story so thoroughly enjoyable, I really recommend that you try it.
Rating: 9/10

• Browse the archives:
  
• Low Midnight » »
• « « The Black Hawk