In later centuries, it went through something like Renaissance and Enlightenment as the old armed power became more of a cultural influence in distant backwaters like Eren, the little southern kingdom that kept its ties to empire while northern Caeris vegetated – according to the snooty upper crust in Laon, chief city and seat of the royal court.Įlanna has spent 14 years getting an education and adapting to the south while her parents became vague memories from an unlikely childhood. The setting is a divided country, conquered by an empire that banned and eliminated magic (except for in the wilds of the far north), introduced its own tame gods, then retreated like the contracting Roman Empire. She was forced from her parents’ side as a five-year-old, when a newly crowned king held a gun to her head and took her into his court as hostage for father’s good behavior, events recalled with both clarity and confusion, in a prologue whose past tense can’t hide the shocking pain. The Waking Land is a fast-paced, mostly present-tense account that expertly immerses us in the early trauma, active mind, and mixed emotions (passion initially suppressed) of Elanna Valtai during the last year of her teens.
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