Author: Anne Bishop
Book Name: Pillars of the World
Series: Tir Alainn
Order: #1
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: Excellent/Favorite
Blurb: Myth and magic combine in a superb dark fantasy of a world in danger of being destroyed by those who deny themselves and their heritage, and let evil loose in the world.
In Sylvalan, a witch hunt is in full force. As witches and innocents are brutally murdered, magic is disappearing from the land, and the roads between the world of humans and that of faeries are vanishing one by one. Ari’s family has tended one of the Old Places, places which hold the key to travel between human and faery lands, for generations, keeping the magic alive and the land lush and fertile. Ari unknowingly takes a Fae lover, the Lord of the Sun, and immediately becomes the target of the unwanted interest of the faery nobility.
To save their world the Fae must trust humankind, but with a few exceptions they do not believe Ari and her friends can help them. Against the Inquisitor and the arrogant Fae, Ari and those who believe in the world of magic and human unravel the secrets of the Old Places and discover that they all need each other if any are to survive.
This is a story which uses all the myriad stories of humankind, good and evil, to weave a breathtaking tale of action, romance and thought-provoking themes to enthrall readers.
With my kind of reading slump lately, I decided to pick up a book I read a long time ago and has been sitting on my favorites list forever. I was absolutely thrilled to find that it has held up to my memory of a really great book. I was shocked when I discovered that this wasn’t even in my personal book database I keep track of my books in, which I started in 2012. That means I read this long before that. Probably only a few years after it was published as I remember reading the entire series back to back.
Like so many Anne Bishop books, this has deeper themes running through it if you are willing to look past the surface story. When I read this for the first time, I was in a perfect place personally to read the themes that form the basis of this story. The concepts of using people’s fears to push them to do terrible things, often couched in the veil of good vs. evil or religion when in reality the base motive is greed; women being treated as objects or unworthy of basic respect and decency and fighting against that. Some of this is more subtle than others, but it is there. There is more within the series, but I’m attempting to stay with just this book for now. Those concepts made me really think and view my world a little differently, which is something I really needed at the time and sparked a huge personal growth for me at the time.
I no longer needed these themes as I did the first round, but they still speak to me, even if it is a little differently this time. I can see different parallels to the way the world is today and I find those kinds of stories fascinating. Especially the concept of driving fears against “other” or “different” for personal gain.
There are lots of different characters in this to follow and it is told from all those perspectives, which may be difficult for some readers. I enjoyed getting to see the story unfold from those various perspectives. I especially liked getting to see the thoughts from the Fae perspective and how they changed their views, or not, in some cases. While this is the first in a three book series, it ends cleanly without any cliffhangers.
The magic system in this seems to pull heavily from modern pagan/Wiccan practices and has a classic feel to it that I fell in love with the first time around and still held through this second reading years later. While I’m not surprised that I still loved this after all this time, it is Anne Bishop after all, I can say that it isn’t my favorite of hers. I’m not sure anything can top the Others series.
TJ Fox: Sharing the Experience 