104. (October 2021) A Stranger in Olondria, by Sofia Samatar — The Tabletop Roleplayers' Book Club

A Stranger in Olondria - Starter 2 - The Writing Style

RichardAbbott — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 13:45:05 +0000

A Stranger in Olondria is written in a much more lyrical and descriptive style than many books we have read. Did you like this? Did the many snippets from other equally fictitious prose and poetry engage you or put you off?

A Stranger in Olondria - Starter 1 - The Plot

RichardAbbott — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 13:44:30 +0000

What did you reckon was the core of A Stranger in Olondria? A love story? A traveller's tale? A link between reading, writing and spirituality? Something else? Did this work for you?

A Stranger in Olondria - Starter 4 - The Location

RichardAbbott — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 13:46:38 +0000

What did you make of the several locations? What earthly places were you reminded of? The author, Sofia Samatar, has lived in the Sudan and Egypt, and currently teaches at university level on African and Arabic literature. Did this show?

A Stranger in Olondria - Starter 3 - The Characters

RichardAbbott — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 13:45:43 +0000

How did you get on with Jevick? Did it bother you that his initial identity as pepper trader was discarded so early? What about the several other people we follow for much or all of the book - Jissavet, Auram, Milos, Lunre, Tialon?

A Stranger in Olondria - Starter 6 - Books as Objects of Power

RichardAbbott — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 13:48:58 +0000

'“I know what the vallon is,” she said. “It’s jut.”'.
'A simple jut presided over my master’s books in squat, enigmatic silence: one external soul watching the others.'.
'But preserve your mistrust of the page, for a book is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert, a river that has no bridge, a garden of spears... And I introduce [children] to books... And I tell them: This is a journey to jepnatow-het, the land of shadows. Do not mistake it for the country of the real.'
'And written words possess order, much more so than the words we speak'.
(Jissavet, then Jevick about Lunre, then a quote from an unnamed source, then Jevick, then Tialon).
Agree or disagree? More widely, how might books be like externalised souls? Or the daemons of Philip Pullman' s writings?

A Stranger in Olondria - Starter 7 - Love and Loss

RichardAbbott — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 13:50:35 +0000

'[Jissavet] lifted away from my heart, tearing it as she vaulted into the sky. Her foot snagged in my veins, ripping away, floating free... Where she had entered at last the eternal door, leaving me inconsolable in the silence... This love existed only to give itself, an eternal fountain'
(of Jevick, then of his mother).
This seems to be a theme that Sofia Samatar visits often: a review of one of her other books says she writes there of 'the terrible love that tears lives apart... love that requires a rewriting of the rules'. Is this a good summary of the relationship between Jevick and Jissavet? Did it work as a love story?
For me, these passages also echoed Dante's 'then she turned back to the eternal fountain', when Beatrice turns away from Dante to face the divine, a passage quoted also by CS Lewis in A Grief Observed after losing his wife Joy.

A Stranger in Olondria - Starter 5 - Gaming and Maps

RichardAbbott — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 13:47:41 +0000

There's nothing like a good map... and sadly what we got was nothing like a good map! At least, I found it extremely hard to follow the journey on the map in the kindle version. Do maps and games always go together? What aspects of the book might be a good foundation for a game?

How are people getting on with this book?

RichardAbbott — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 16:02:01 +0000

Hi all,
this coming weekend is the last weekend in October (and coincidentally the last weekend of most UK autumn half term holidays). Would people like a bit more time to finish or shall I post some discussion starters this weekend?

Here's the Amazon blurb for A Stranger in Olondria...

RichardAbbott — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 18:08:32 +0000

Jevick, the pepper merchant's son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. But just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire's two most powerful cults. Yet even as the country shimmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of becoming free by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that seductive necromancy, reading.

A Stranger in Olondria is a skillful and immersive debut fantasy novel that pulls the reader in deeper and deeper with twists and turns reminiscent of George R. R. Martin and Joe Hill.