6/21/2023 0 Comments Redemption in indigoThe setting appears to be Africa, but the era is cheerfully uncertain, giving the tale a certain timelessness.Ĭomparisons with Neil Gaiman's work were occasionally on my mind for a number of reasons. just like old folk tales, there are elements of repetition and archetypal characters and episodes. Some bits are episodic: her gluttonous husband has three misadventures when visiting her village, the mysterious eternal lord shows her three things. The tale is told with great pace (like all oral narratives), with characters sketched in such vivid and economical ways that they manage to own the stage when they're on it, and moments and scenes that could belong in any folk tale. The chaos stick has been taken from another eternal being, as punishment for his behaviour, and he wants it back. This is the story of a young woman who's run away from her gluttonous husband, and who is given a strange gift by eternal beings - a chaos stick. The start and finish allude to this oral tradition. It does not read like an ornate, pretty, romantic-era literary fairy tale, but a traditional orally told fairy tale that just happens to be quite long. Redemption in Indigo is a fairy tale with its own mythology. What I do know is that it feels like she has (perhaps accidentally) written one. I don't know whether Karen Lord has read any books by Neil Gaiman.
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