Tess of the Roooooad
Apr. 13th, 2018 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocoptera(Scans to "Holiday Road"! Sorry.)
Tess of the Road, sequel/sidequel to Rachel Hartman's Seraphina and Shadow Scale, or whatever it is you call it when we now have a different main character and totally separate emotional/plot arcs but there are many references to characters and events of the earlier books. Although I think you could just read Tess without the earlier ones and it would still be satisfying. I did not love Tess as much as the other two, although it is excellent - I think the difference is that Seraphina spoke more directly to my personal heart, and Tess did not so much, but I would expect that for many other hearts it would be the other way around. Which is great! Let's feed every heart! I do definitely want to read the sequel (which I think there will likely be), so it's not that I didn't like it, just that my strongest feeling here is more like "I'm so glad this book will be on the shelves for the people who most need it" rather than "*I* really needed this".
Anyways, what is it actually like. Episodic, meandering character dive into someone recovering and finding herself. Some really beautiful episodes/moments. Reminds me of Fire or Bitterblue maybe, with questions about the legacy of trauma. The echo of Tess of the d'Urbervilles in the title is not a coincidence (although basically all I remember about that book is "but where was Tess's guardian angel?" and then somebody gets executed at Stonehenge?? Ok, I went and read the summary and Tess of the Road is definitely not a retelling of it in the way that, like, Tell the Wind and Fire was of Tale of Two Cities). I will put some content notes behind a spoiler cut: alcoholism, rape, pregnancy, premature birth, child death, elder abuse, child abuse, animal harm, although a lot of that is either in flashbacks or offscreen or otherwise sort of distanced.
Tess of the Road, sequel/sidequel to Rachel Hartman's Seraphina and Shadow Scale, or whatever it is you call it when we now have a different main character and totally separate emotional/plot arcs but there are many references to characters and events of the earlier books. Although I think you could just read Tess without the earlier ones and it would still be satisfying. I did not love Tess as much as the other two, although it is excellent - I think the difference is that Seraphina spoke more directly to my personal heart, and Tess did not so much, but I would expect that for many other hearts it would be the other way around. Which is great! Let's feed every heart! I do definitely want to read the sequel (which I think there will likely be), so it's not that I didn't like it, just that my strongest feeling here is more like "I'm so glad this book will be on the shelves for the people who most need it" rather than "*I* really needed this".
Anyways, what is it actually like. Episodic, meandering character dive into someone recovering and finding herself. Some really beautiful episodes/moments. Reminds me of Fire or Bitterblue maybe, with questions about the legacy of trauma. The echo of Tess of the d'Urbervilles in the title is not a coincidence (although basically all I remember about that book is "but where was Tess's guardian angel?" and then somebody gets executed at Stonehenge?? Ok, I went and read the summary and Tess of the Road is definitely not a retelling of it in the way that, like, Tell the Wind and Fire was of Tale of Two Cities). I will put some content notes behind a spoiler cut: alcoholism, rape, pregnancy, premature birth, child death, elder abuse, child abuse, animal harm, although a lot of that is either in flashbacks or offscreen or otherwise sort of distanced.
