Review: Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South, Diane Duane

Summary: In an slightly alternate medieval Europe, a young woman named Mariarta goes a wandering through the Swiss Alps, with fickle powers of an ancient goddess at her command and mortal revolution not far behind her.

Review: I grabbed a Kindle edition for free from an offer on dduane's website and found that it was... okay. Aside from a painfully clunky title, the story is basically Mariarta wandering through a grab bag of Swiss mythology, driven on by a vague quest to find out who Diana, Greek Goddess of the Hunt the mysterious ancient goddess she should know about already since her dad was careful to give her a classical education. Duane does do a good job of invoking the feeling of growing up in what is basically a dirt poor village living on the margins in the high peaks, and where an epic journey involves travelling thirty miles, but it's offset by... I'm not sure what exactly. Maybe it's just provincialism on my part, but I don't find Duane's invocation of a fantasy Switzerland anywhere near as compelling as Bujold's invocation of a fantastic Spain in her Five Gods universe. Perhaps it's because Duane tries to hard to slot her myth in with her history, so that technically this could have all happened in our history, instead of jumping off the deep end completely and making the place truly her own.

Recommended, with reservations.

Um... Whut?

I'm so glad America never had a lock on frelling weird kids shows.