Book Review: The Bride of the Blue Wind by Victoria Goddard

Book #35 of 2024:

The Bride of the Blue Wind by Victoria Goddard (The Sisters Avramapul #1)

Much as I’ve been enjoying author Victoria Goddard’s sprawling Nine Worlds fantasy saga, I’ve found this title to be a refreshingly distinctive change of pace for it. In lieu of her typical writing style, the novella is told in an exaggeratedly poetic fashion, well-befitting its desert fairy tale atmosphere of sorcery, caravans, and djinn. It’s the first story I’ve read in this setting that really drives home how the titular Nine Worlds are in fact radically different realms — an exciting prospect both in its own right and for when characters from those separate origins periodically travel beyond their local borders, a la crossovers in the MCU or Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere.

Like something out of the One Thousand and One Nights, the writer paints a picture for us of three daughters from a particular nomadic tribe who go off to seek their fortunes one-by-one as they come of age. The eldest sister studies to become a weaver of magical thread, the middle girl trains in armed and unarmed combat, and the beautiful youngest child is swept away to marry a god. Later on, when the first two receive word of the latter’s distress, they take leave of their respective vocations to reunite and set off to aid her.

It’s a loose Bluebeard retelling as well, so as Arzu and Pali are making their way towards her, Sardeet is exploring her new husband’s divine house and learning its strange rules. When she becomes pregnant, she also starts seeing visions of silently pleading women around the halls, whom she gradually realizes are the ghastly shades of his butchered former brides. Thus even before her sisters reach her, their sibling must find a way to wrest power for herself and her unborn baby to avoid sharing her predecessors’ fate.

I’ve seen some of this family’s future already — Pali and Sardeet Avramapul will someday go on to join the legendary Red Company, with many tales of their outlaw exploits before the Fall — but the three heroines are a delight to meet here as teens, precociously courageous and fiercely dedicated to one another and each obviously quite proud of her siblings’ differing gifts and ways of approaching a common problem. The book is on the shorter side and ends a bit abruptly, so I’ll renew my critique from Goddard’s Derring-Do for Beginners (which launched its own subseries within the wider canvas) that I think such installments should have been extended and presented as more complete entries for us, rather than doled out piecemeal like this. But overall, I continue to love these stories and how they interconnect.

[Content warning for sexual assault, childbirth, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Like this review?
–Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
–Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
–Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
–Or click here to browse through all my reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog