Black Wine
{4.5/5} “I cannot keep thinking in the language of cruelty in which I was born… But here in the mountains they have names for the things I want to become: happy, secure, gentle, kind, good. I will will learn the subtle words, the nuances of meaning, and I will be able to think thoughts I never thought before, dream dreams I never dreamed before.”
Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey, published in 1997
A young slave girl befriends a woman in a cage just before she is sold to someone called the regent. When she gets there her new mute friend calls her Fierce-frightened.
A young woman and her friend Annalise go off to escape their past. They find mountains, people looking for new experiences, and people looking for them. Eventually they find their way to a place of friendly people that they might call home. She is the heir in a far off land, and her husband is the regent.
This novel is about people who are free, and people who are not. People who have love, and those who don’t. It’s about places where people are friendly, and places where people will kill you if they don’t like you.
Like Karin Lowachee, Dorsey doesn’t give you a particularly conventional story — in order to get you to see things in a new way.
This is the 2nd book I’ve read by Dorsey. I previously read and enjoyed her novel A Paradigm of Earth.