Title: Redemption In Indigo
Author: Karen Lord
Pages: 188
Finished: September 16, 2018
First Sentence: A rival of mine once complained that my stories begin awkwardly and end untidily.
Summary: Paama leaves her gluttonous husband to return to the quiet life of her family. However, when her husband follows her, she shows compassion even as he embarrasses himself three ways in as many days. It's not long before he leaves her in her home town to go back home. All this serves as the set up for the meat of the story. The Djombi (gods and other supernatural beings) note her compassion and decide she is the person to hold the Chaos Stick - the power currently being squandared by a Djombi who calls himself the Indigo Lord. Of course, once he realizes his power is gone, he will stop at nothing to get it back.
Thoughts: I'm just going to take a moment to wax poetical about Paama. She is amazing guys! She's kind and compassionate, but she clearly has learned her lesson and is done suffering fools. She's protective of her family. She's intelligent. And she's very principled, though willing enough to learn new things when necessary. I just love her so much!
The story itself takes a bit of time to work out. It's written as though a storyteller were orating it in a hall. The whole thing is a little jarring at first, but as I kept reading, it started working itself out. Mostly. With that in mind, sometimes the story follows another plot that has seemingly nothing to do with what we want. Things are skipped over, others drag on. Mostly, I didn't mind it. I did have a hard time picking out just when this was supposed to have taken place though. I never really managed to figure that out, but I suppose it wasn't all that important to the story.
This is a retelling of a Senegalese folktale. I had to do a bit of digging to try and find which one. There seems to be a folktale called Asigne the Glutton. I couldn't find the text online, but I was able to find a collection of West African folktales that contain this one! I look forward to reading it and seeing how they compare.
Read for my own Personal Reading Challenge.
The story itself takes a bit of time to work out. It's written as though a storyteller were orating it in a hall. The whole thing is a little jarring at first, but as I kept reading, it started working itself out. Mostly. With that in mind, sometimes the story follows another plot that has seemingly nothing to do with what we want. Things are skipped over, others drag on. Mostly, I didn't mind it. I did have a hard time picking out just when this was supposed to have taken place though. I never really managed to figure that out, but I suppose it wasn't all that important to the story.
This is a retelling of a Senegalese folktale. I had to do a bit of digging to try and find which one. There seems to be a folktale called Asigne the Glutton. I couldn't find the text online, but I was able to find a collection of West African folktales that contain this one! I look forward to reading it and seeing how they compare.
Read for my own Personal Reading Challenge.
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