Soul Swallowers by D. Wallace Peach
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Literary Fiction Meets High Fantasy
Soul Swallowers is the best fantasy novel I’ve read in a long time. It’s set in an area known as the Shattered Sea, and I call it literary fiction because it revolves around the lives of the inhabitants, noble and commoner alike. The people of the area practice a unique custom; when someone dies, their soul can be captured by a magical stone which can be swallowed by another person, so the swallowed soul lives on in the new host and is spared the tragedy of eternal wandering. I’m always leery of fantasy stories that rely on a gimmick, but the author integrates soul swallowing beautifully into the storyline; it doesn’t dominate the plot but augments it in a unique and interesting way. I call this story literary fiction because it deals with people’s lives, their joys and struggles, without relying on hackneyed fantasy tropes. Peach’s characters are well developed and multi-dimensional; the reader comes to know them intimately, perhaps illustrating the point that we are all of us one people, regardless of the environment in which we find ourselves. Slavery and bondage are also an important issues in Peach’s world, and the author relentlessly points out how such evil practices demean everyone, slave and owner alike. If I have one gripe, it’s that the story is unfinished, but Soul Swallowers is clearly labelled as Book 1, and I will certainly have no problem reading Book 2, or however many the author chooses to write in this fascinating setting.
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