I love this story. Ms. Hyde presents a powerful description of what it feels like to be torn between love and anguish because of a criminal parent. Surely any person who has an incarcerated parent must feel some degree of this pain, especially if the relationship was intact before the parent was sentenced.
Ms. Hyde has not tried to tell the story of war criminals, the justice they rightly face, how society views their offspring; how evil keeps visiting pain and suffering on the generations that come after it, even once it faces justice. She has told the story of one woman's life with a loving, but monstrous, father, in beautiful, simple language, and because she tells Elusia's story so well, all of the themes I mentioned are thoughtfully addressed without pretension or preachiness. Because she has set this story on a fantasy world, I believe she freed herself to not be bound by the historical accounts any actual human war criminals, and yet her Verus Bloodrain could be any one of them, or a composite of any number of them.
“He believed he deserved to rule the world,” she said, “and that he could do it better than anyone else because he was more thoughtful and intelligent.”
Thank you, Ms. Hyde, for a truly enjoyable read.