My people, lay down your stones.
Before you stone this Annakey Rainsayer, you know it is the law and her right to have her story told. It is my duty as Dollmage to tell it. Each villager has the right to one stone, and no one will forbid you to throw it. But listen to me, and when I am done each of you will decide for yourselves if this Annakey is worthy of execution.
That is right. Lay the stones at your feet, keep them close by if it comforts you. So few of you? The stones will get heavy before the story is done.
Martine Leavitt! You are totally my new best friend! I’m so glad I decided it was worth it to stop at the library on the way to class and picked up the other two books of yours they have! Only I mustn’t get too excited because this is the way I felt about Salman Rushdie and then he went and let me down with Fury and Shame (that sentence is funny because – whatever, you know why that sentence is funny). Here is another bit of The Dollmage, which made me smile when I read it. I heart Martine Leavitt.
It comforted my heart to know that Annakey was afraid of something, and I said thank you to God. He seemed cold to me, as if I had not gotten the point.
The Dollmage was maybe even better than Keturah and Lord Death. I’m in the middle of Heck Superhero, which I think I am liking slightly less but I haven’t finished it so maybe I will turn out to be wrong. The Dollmage was so good that the thirty minutes of exercising I did while I was reading it flew by in a snap, which is not normal for me because exercising makes me tired and normally when things make me tired I quit doing them, except I know I can’t quit exercising because of Health Reasons, so I carry on even though I really, really, really want to stop, and every minute goes amazingly slowly.
The Dollmage is a bit like Keturah and Lord Death in that it has that same dreamy, haunting, fairy-tale sort of quality, but this one’s a little less light-hearted. (Hi, irony, I’m Jenny.) It’s about a small village that is protected and looked after by a person called the Dollmage, who makes dolls to sort everything out, but when she goes to choose her successor, there are two girls born at the right time with the appropriate powers – Renoa and Annakey. She chooses Renoa, but the book’s about Annakey. Annakey is a surprisingly sympathetic character given that she’s kinda flawless, and I really think it works so well because of the fairy-tale feel of the story. And this device, telling the story before the stoning, works absolutely beautifully. I loved this book ever so much. I just – mm, it was one of those books that reminds me why I write. (And read, also.)
And now a word about Martine Leavitt. I saw that she had seven kids, and I was like, And she wrote seven books? so I went to her website to check it out, and apparently there was a five-year period in which she was a single mother with six of those seven kids, going to university, and still publishing two books and working on a third one.
Wow, Martine Leavitt. Respect. You’re a better woman than I.