Elaina’s travels take her to a village with a dark secret, a different village with a sad not-so-secret, and then a castle with the darkest secret. At this point you might be wondering what the heck is going on, but it turns out that isn’t a secret at all.
I quite like the format of this series - Elaina shows up, inserts herself in a vignette, spends time with people, then travels again. If anything, this book encapsulates the strengths and weaknesses of the narrative structure while also acknowledging them.
The first three stories are all depressing as hell. The middle one is slightly less depressing, but only by degrees. The first really emphasizes how inexperienced Elaina still is - she should have seen the results of one party’s actions differently than she did. It’s the perfect ‘perceived thoughtful gesture goes horribly wrong’ story.
The middle one is the weakest story, so I’ll skip on to the third, which is a gruesome old-school horror story wrapped in a mystery and an age-old tale of forbidden love. This one has trigger warnings for lots of stuff that would be spoilers, but let’s just say torture and (separately to that) woman-specific violence (not the r-word, but still very bad). This one is about how tragedy warps people, basically.
By this point I was at the level of ‘this is good but I’m pretty depressed now’. To my surprise, the book addresses this in the fourth story, which is all about the nature of being a wanderer like Elaina and it deals with her getting over her own trauma from seeing so much bad stuff.
It’s actually a really clever touch to see our narrator/point of entry into such downer stories be as affected as the audience. Rod Serling she is not - ask your parents - Elaina is there and she has seen some things and then had to deal with what she leaves behind when she goes.
I love the inclusion of an old friend and the interesting little society that’s set up in the city. By the time we’re finished, Elaina has found her love of travel again and she’s off, hopefully to somewhere a bit cheerier. If anything, she’s at least coming to accept that her transient nature means she can’t do much of anything except hear the stories of those she meets.
3.5 stars, rounded down for being three quarters of a huge bummer, even if I really enjoyed most of the stories. The lack of variety really doesn’t do it any favours, even if the fourth chapter smartly addresses that very fact. Definitely one of the stronger anthologies I’ve enjoyed - the author IS very good at quick world-building and good at characterization which helps a lot. Solid.