Status Updates From The Blue Sword (Damar, #1)

But Angharad is an awesome name! Or maybe I've seen Fury Road too many times.

A guy named Bob (Bob Peterson!) in a secondary world fantasy novel???

Tonally, this feels like a cross between the Lioness books by Tamora Pierce, and the Vorkosigan saga (particularly the ones following Cordelia).

This audiobook is rough. It's from 1982 and was barely edited (mouth sounds and pauses left in). Also fairly certain it's not songwriter Diane Warren, although there is zero info on who this narrator actually is. I DID learn that songwriter Diane Warren is autistic and aromantic!

Switching over to audio bc I can't make myself pick up the physical book. Found it on Libby, narrated by Diane Warren? like, *the* Diane Warren, of "Because You Loved Me" and "If I Could Turn Back Time" fame? I will report back if it is her. It's probably not.

This is a quietly powerful book that’s withholding, patient, and deeply uninterested in spectacle. McKinley trusts the reader to sit with uncertainty. The prose is clear and unshowy, but never thin. Authority, culture, and power are conveyed through implication and repetition, not exposition.