I read Lord’s book The Best of All Possible Worlds and enjoyed it enough to read more by her. But unfortunately I didn’t know what I was in for with this one. The style is completely different because this is a fable. A light hearted one, too, at least at the 30% mark. I just found myself not really caring about anything because of the style of storytelling.
I tried this as audiobook, and the narrator was doing a really excellent job!
This is a tricky little story. The persona of the narrator - a village story-teller - is allowed many a knowing nod and wink. The characters are set up in traditional terms, and then collapse away from their normal scripts: nobody is quite what they seem to be, and the narrator's attempts to encapsulate her characters within folk-types are constantly evaded by the story itself - which also manages to avoid the rather banal 'moralité' which the teller tries to impose on her listeners.
Closer to Oscar Wilde or Angela Carter than to Hans Christian Anderson.
Redemption in Indigo has the feel of a folk tale. The narrator is a storyteller, and often addresses the reader directly, sometimes even to chide you. It starts off by introducing Ansige, Paama's gluttonous husband. Paama has left him and he sets out to her home village to find her. There are several occasions where Ansige's insatiable appetite gets him into trouble, and Paama comes to his rescue with tact and common sense.
Many would have ridiculed Ansige, but Paama's skill in smoothing things over attracts the attention of some djombi, who gift her a stirring stick. The young djombi forgets to tell her what it's for, and not it's not for stirring stew. It is a chaos stick, allowing the user to select the best of all possible outcomes.
The stick was taken from another djombi, one who calls himself Lord Indigo, for his skin is a deep blue …
Redemption in Indigo has the feel of a folk tale. The narrator is a storyteller, and often addresses the reader directly, sometimes even to chide you. It starts off by introducing Ansige, Paama's gluttonous husband. Paama has left him and he sets out to her home village to find her. There are several occasions where Ansige's insatiable appetite gets him into trouble, and Paama comes to his rescue with tact and common sense.
Many would have ridiculed Ansige, but Paama's skill in smoothing things over attracts the attention of some djombi, who gift her a stirring stick. The young djombi forgets to tell her what it's for, and not it's not for stirring stew. It is a chaos stick, allowing the user to select the best of all possible outcomes.
The stick was taken from another djombi, one who calls himself Lord Indigo, for his skin is a deep blue and he has a high opinion of himself. He wants his chaos back and takes Paama on a journey to show her how dangerous chaos can be in the wrong hands.
It shows how there are many possibilities from a single action and so much is up to chance, but also how humans have the power to control their destiny with their own choices. We are not all on a predetermined path. It's loosely based on a Senegalese folk tale, which I'm not familiar with.
I do find with this folky style, that it's difficult to find the characters wholly convincing. It is like a fable, with some humorous parts and some lovely observations. But in the end I felt a bit distanced from it (despite what the storyteller might have told me at the end).
I adore a good folktale. And that's what you're in for with this: a wonderful, unusual folktale with a dash of time travel and a smidgen of the superhuman. If folktales aren't your bag, you might not like this. But if they are, you're in for a sumptuously long one.
