Review of the Gardener's Hand trilogy by Felicia Davin

[dolorosa_12]

One of my most delightful new literary discoveries has been the Gardener's Hand trilogy by Felicia Davin, which I just finished reading this week. I summed up the series on Twitter as conspiracies, a tidally locked planet, and a fabulous trio of central characters, all of whom are bisexual and all of whom get a happy ending!, and that's pretty accurate. It was an absolute joy to read.

My review is over on my Wordpress blog, and as always, you can comment over there, or here on Dreamwidth:

At its heart, this is a series about survival — surviving harsh landscapes, oppression and injustice, cruel family history, and threats both supernatural and mundane. It’s also a series about found family, with a pleasingly ‘us against the world’ dynamic that I always find really appealling.

Comments

[eglantiere]

oooh, what nice keywords. into the to-read list it goes!

[dolorosa_12]

It's great fun, and I loved the worldbuilding a lot!

[monanotlisa]

Oh! Thanks for the rec; this sounds wonderful. Purchased it.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, that's wonderful to hear! I hope you enjoy it.

[falena]

Oooh, totally adding this to my to-read list. All the books I've read after your recommendation were great.

[dolorosa_12]

Wow, that is high praise! I hope you enjoy it.

[schneefink]

Thanks for the rec, I look forward to reading it :)

[dolorosa_12]

Glad to hear you like the sound of the series, and I hope you enjoy reading it!

[dhampyresa]

Oh, nice!

Via musesfool, I learned of "The Silence of the Girls", and Illiad retelling is narrated by Briseis, thoguht you might be interested.

[dolorosa_12]

I'm so happy that this series seems to strike a chord with so many people -- I hope you enjoy reading it, if you decide to do so.

It also makes me extremely happy that I'm getting a reputation as 'that Briseis person,' to the extent that people track me down to recommend Briseis-centric Iliad retellings! Thank you for the rec -- The Silence of the Girls was actually something I'd already read. It was one of my favourite two books I read in 2018, and I wrote about it here and here. As I say, it was one of my favourite books read last year, so your recommendation was spot on!

[merit]

The covers really are *pretty* aren't they?

I agree with with you regarding the conclusion to the story. Ev, Alizhan and Thiyo fought tremendously to get to the position they are at the end of Shadebloom and it was wonderful to see them all happy.

[dolorosa_12]

They are absolutely gorgeous covers. I'm not normally one to buy books on that basis (especially given with this series I bought ebooks) -- normally I rely on either word-of-mouth, or having read and enjoyed an author's previous work for recommendations -- but these just floated up into my Goodreads feed and were eye-catching enough to spark my interest.

It was so wonderful to see all three central characters happy, because they were just such fundamentally good people, and the world threw so much suffering at them as a result. I'm glad you enjoyed the resolution of the series.

[pocketmouse]

This series looks really interesting - would you mind telling me (as a DM is fine if you don’t want to spoil it for others) if the love triangle has a poly resolution? I get the impression that the author is creative enough to not be doing the trophy love triangle stuff, but I also don’t want to read it and get my hopes up.

[dolorosa_12]

Glad to hear you like the sound of it. I'll send you a DM now.