Stone Speaks to Stone: A Tale of the Nine Worlds

Greenwing & Dart #1.5

by Victoria Goddard

The stars are brighter over the Border.The nights are darker.Major Jakory Greenwing, Jack to almost everyone, is a lover of poetry, an admirer of sculpture, and one of the finest soldiers of his day. He was sent on a scouting mission over the border between the Empire of Astandalas and the land of the Stone Speakers. On his return he discovers that the fortress his company was holding has been betrayed. He is just in time to see the command staff led out in chains.He follows them far into the uncharted territories where Astandalan magic is ineffective and the Stone Speakers’ far too much so. To rescue his commanders will take all the courage and skill he has. To return home afterwards requires more than he ever dreamed he possessed. Stone Speaks to Stone stands alone as a story of the Nine Worlds. It also connects with the series Greenwing & Dart, whose central character is Jack's son Jemis, and takes place some years later.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Novella, Short Stories, High Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Canada

75 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

I walked across England in 2013, fulfilling a long-held dream. I'm currently the sexton of an Anglican church in Nova Scotia, which means I am keeper of the keys and opener of doors (and shutter-off of alarms). I have a PhD in medieval studies from the University of Toronto, looking at poetry and philosophy in the works of Dante and Boethius -- both the poetry and the philosophy come into my stories a great deal (and occasionally the Dante and the Boethius).

I like writing about the ordinary lives of magical people on the other side of the looking glass ... and the extraordinary deeds of ordinary folk, too. Three of my favourite authors are Patricia McKillip (especially 'The Riddle-Master of Hed' trilogy and 'The Bell at Sealy Head'), Connie Willis ('Bellwether' and 'To Say Nothing of the Dog,' which latter would make my top-ten books on a desert island), and Lois McMaster Bujold ('The Curse of Chalion' and its sequels).

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short story/novella that fills in the controversial gap of what happened to Jemis Greenwing's father, Jack. Jemis of the Greenwing & Dart series. The Goddard filler omits how 'hero' Jack returns from "the" battle and meets his demise. Interesting sorcery at play in the story.

Goddard seems to enjoy writing these little tid bits. Nice intermission from the longer things she pens.

[Zimmerea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting novel in that it is one of the most openly colonial, from the perspective of Jack Greenwing, who is a general in one of Astandalas' armies fighting to expand its borders. A good short story, but be warned that Goddard's portrayal of this pov is kind of a mixed bag. While "looking down on the civilization of people not in the empire" would be a surprising choice based on the rest of her corpus, the self-justification and excuses for war pair poorly with the standard liberal politics of a Goddard protagonist. It leaves me feeling like this book was stuck balancing the cool edginess of a war general with the need to keep Jack as a "good" character, at the cost of what could have been a truly interesting character study.

[Jennifer Linsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only complaint is that it stops right at the point I'd like clarification on!

[Jill Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This feels so incomplete!

[AJA · Rating 2 out of 5]

A short story about greenwings father. Nicely written but these snapshots don’t give us enough background to really care about the characters. Plus…the empire is kind of the bad guy. So hard to root for them.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A roughly-standalone prequel novella to author Victoria Goddard's Greenwing & Dart series (which is itself just a smaller piece of her overarching Nine Worlds fantasy saga). I've chosen to read it after the first three G&D novels, which feels like the right choice, as a central question throughout those stories concerns the actions and fate of Jemis Greenwing's father Jack during a recent military campaign, which doesn't get fully resolved for his son until the end of book 3. Reading this title first, with its explicit depiction of one particularly important event that receives conflicting reports later on, would have punctured some of that tension, or at least replaced it with a certain dramatic irony.

But there's not much meat on the bones of this installment, and I'm personally not a fan of how it depicts the Astandalan Empire. In other books from this setting, like The Hands of the Emperor, the gradual expansion of that ruling body has been seen as a neutral or positive result of natural cultural contact, with newly-annexed lands gaining from being brought into the fold of the wider civilization and its magics and largely retaining their original character and customs. Here we see it instead as an outright strategic conquest that's being resisted brutally by the locals, and while that may be more realistic and add nice shading to our understanding of the realm, it's hard to square with the cozy vibes of Kip and his liege in Hands. (It's also not as though this story is anticolonial on the level of its surface text -- the would-be colonizers are the good guys whose poor captured soldiers are being tortured by their barbaric enemies, after all. The subtext behind the conflict is ugly and not to the invaders' favor, but it doesn't exactly feel intentional on the writer's part.)

But Goddard can still spin a yarn like the best of them, and the adventure plot here of a desperate rescue mission behind enemy lines is thrilling enough if you can ignore the above implications. It won't go down as a favorite of mine, but it's not a bad read overall.

[Content warning for gore.]

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[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, Jack…

This is a prequel novella to Greenwing and Dart books. It’s about Jack Greenwing, Jemis’ father. Is your heart breaking already, because you know what’s waiting for him?

This is a story of courage, self-sacrifice, fealty, perseverance, a desperate rescue. It gets very dark.

”He was naked and alone and bound at the wrists and ankles, in a stone cave with ice down one wall, at the mercy of folk willing to destroy themselves rather than submit to the Empire.”

The people the Empire of Astandalas is fighting against in this story do unspeakable things to the prisoners of war.

”I can stand,” the General said, something in his voice making it clear there were other things he could not, now, do.”

You root for Jack, of course you do. He is also a loyal soldier of the Empire, fighting in yet another… colonial conquest. (The Fall that is to come is a catastrophe, yet it’s an evil Empire that will fall!) The colonial aspect puts the reader in a moral tangle. This is not something I’ve encountered in a Nine Worlds book before! Interesting, and well done.

P.S. This is marked as book 0.5 in the series, but reading it after Bee Sting Cake worked really well.

[Myth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like everything I have read by Goddard, and it almost always gets me in the feels. Stone Speaks to Stone is no different, but if you sit back and consider it with a critical eye, you are rooting for conquering imperialists in a very literal fashion. It is specifically from the PoV of a soldier who believes in The Cause, which displays Goddard's skill as a writer, especially as she has written from other PoVs in the same universe that do not share these views or opinions and the empire does indeed fall. It is interesting for me to read a work that interacts with something I have discussed before regarding other books: personal heroism and belief does not automatically make someone In The Right, and it is not limited to The Good Guys, as it were. Being brave doesn't immediately make your cause just.

It's a lot to pack into (and unpack from!) a novella, whether or not it was on purpose. Given the rest of my experiences with Goddard's work, I do think it is on purpose.

Also Mad Jack Greenwing wrestles with and kills a giant aggressive magical ice boa constrictor (?!) that may or may not ALSO be venomous with the hair ornament of one of his deceased comrades. Silently. Because guards are right around the corner. SO THERE'S THAT.

[Jarmila Kašparová · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've started to read Victoria Goddard's amazing books just little over a year ago. Now I'm very near that wonderful and dredful moment, when I'll have to wait for the next book to be written. Tales of the Nine Worlds quickly became my favourite series ever.
This is one of the short ones. It is basically a short story, not a novel. For a war story it is surprisingly... nice may not be the right word for it, but I cannot think of anything else.
Pro ty, kdo sérii nečetli: Série Greenwing & Dart začíná tím, že se Jemis Greenwing snaží nějak srovnat s velkou hromadou ošklivých věcí, které se mu přihodily, z nichž asi nejhorší je fakt, že se jeho otec nevrátil z války. Tahle povídka vypráví příběh Jakoryho Greenwinga, zmíněného otce, a je to příběh o tom, proč se nevrátil z války. Je to válečná historka plná nevýslovně statečných činů a magie. Zkrátka, jako obvykle, boží.

[Alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is... interesting. Dark, a bit gruesome. I liked being able to see into the life of Jack Greenwing (the father of the protagonist in the Greenwing & Dart series) and this little novella definitely kept me on my toes wondering what would happen next. It wouldn't much stand on its own, not that I mind that - but it's definitely a cliffhanger. Not my favorite story set in this series, then? Worth reading the once, though I doubt I'll ever come back to it.

[Fernanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

realmente, não foi por nada que o jemis defendeu o pai dele a unhas e dentes, meu deus

"Not while Jack could still draw breath, not while Jack could still fight. He did not have the Sun Banner in his hand, but he held the sun in heart, the Sun-on-Earth had given him the Heart of Glory, and he would not fail."

[Robbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a decent adventure story that fleshes out what really happened to Jemis Greenwing's father. It ends in a cliffhanger, though you more or less know the final outcome, if not the details, if you read Stargazy Pie first. I wouldn't recommend reading this without having done so.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happened before the gate….

I was hoping we’d see something about what happened after he defended the gate, after reading Plum Duff, but the story, while intense, only goes to his heroic last stand at the gate. I guess the rest will come out in the story….

[Kate Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

another three stars because this book says that it's solving the mystery of jemis's father (set up in stargazy pie) and it sort of ends at the most exciting bit of that mystery, which means that it's a pleasant addition to the series but not perhaps as satisfying as i wanted it to be

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh, these stories set outside the empire are unsettling. As others have mentioned with this one, I prefer my stories without torture. At least there's nothing too graphic. This is a small slice out of the middle of a story, which made it lack somewhat for being satisfying, though it's good as a character sketch. If you're a fan of this series, you know you're going to read it anyway, go ahead.

[Sophie Constable · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable, though very short novella set in this world. You do need to have read at least the first book in the Greenwing + Dart series before this one but I wouldn't say it was required reading for the series as a whole.

[Queen Talk Talk · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novella of courage and dedication.

This gives a detailed accounting of what Jack was really doing during the Fall of Loe. Ben tells a shorter version of this later in the series.

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is both a good story and good backstory, but it's much darker than the rest of the series. Content warning for torture and violence.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written and part of the story, but I am not a fan of war and torture.

[SR · Rating 5 out of 5]

OW.

[Nicole Luiken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prequel with Jemis' dad Major Jack Greenwing on a scouting mission gone wrong. A new and interesting corner of the Nine Worlds with its own magic, plus action!

[lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

give me moooooooore

[Sharondblk · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a rather pointless addition to the story of Jack Greenwing. Most of this has been told to is in other places, and it stops before the situation is resolved.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look at what really happened with Jack Greenwing although it stops before we get the full story.

[Blind Mapmaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 Neat story that is not quite on the level of the author's longer works, but has its moments.