The Reindeer People
ISBN: 9780007425440
Description
Living on the outskirts of the tribe, Tillu was happy spending her time tending her strange, slow dreamy child Kerlew and comunning with the spirits to heal the sick and bring blessing on new births.
However Carp, the Shaman, an ugly wizened old man whose magic smelled foul to Tillu, desired both mother and child. Tillu knew Carp's magic would steal her son and her soul. Death waited in the snows of the Tundra, but Tillu knew which she would prefer.
Reviewed on 19th May 2016
The first in a short duology, and also the first full length novel I've read by the author under this pen name (i've read a lot of her sprites published as Robin Hobb), this tells the story of a healer and her slightly unusual child in a hunter-gatherer era with a touch of fantastical magic thrown into the mix.
It felt to me like a cross between the early tribal society of Jean M Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear (though this book is vastly more interesting), and the healing aspects that I loved in Trudi Canavan's The Magician's Apprentice.
The beginning of the story didn't grip me, seeming a collection of dissociated scenes and arbitrary magic that had no purpose, but one the plot got moving and the book started to tell a bit more of the daily life of the characters then I really got into it and became completely hooked.
So from a slightly rocky start where I didn't expect to make it to the end of this volume, I came to be disappointed when the book reached is conclusion and was disappointed to not have the second part immediately to hand so that I could break my usual rule of not reading the same author's stories back-to-back.
