How does it feel to be raised by people who look nothing like you, and to know that the secrets of your past are too terrible to be spoken of?
Sixteen years after Kei’s Gift, young Karik is taking his first steps into the wider world. But the question of his parentage, and the role Arman played in his history, are mysteries Karik needs to solve. But in doing that, he gets a lot more than he bargained for – and to face the new challenges, he’ll need to grow up. In a hurry.
Landing softly is a side story to Falling from the tree, and follows one of the minor characters on their own journey to find their destiny. FULLY REVISED AND REFORMATTED EDITION
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By ajousch
Nov 6, 2009
The two books of the Darshian Tales I've read so far, are excellent fantasy (with only a slight touch of the m/m that Ann Somerville is best known for). They explore racism, actions that have consequences even years later, family and community, different forms of government, learning and ignorance, mistakes and how to deal with them, love and growing up - all within a family&friend circle of characters whose focus are two men from very different cultures eventually falling in love and really having to work at making a life for both together. In this second book the two truly evil characters show up again (Mykis and Senator Medus) - but all the other bad things that happen naturally evolve out of what has come before and it's an emotionally very satisfying story seeing how Arman, Karik and their friends deal with life and rebuild again and again when circumstances yank security out from under them. The nominal hero of this second book (set 16 years later than the first one) is... More > Karik, saved (or was he?) from growing up in Prij by Arman in the last book and given to raise to Jena and Reji - best friends of Kei and Arman. He's 16 when he makes a couple of completely understandable mistakes, but the consequences don't end with him, due to Arman's position being what it is, and the book really rounds off the maturing of Arman even more than Karik himself, following both through the problems arising. The baddies have reasons for being bad (except for Jembis father), the emotions of all the players involved feel true and the emotional pay-off after having found some balance at the end is deeply satisfying. The world is logical in itself, with a renaissance fantasy feel and only small but lovely psychic powers included. The focus is on the characters and dialogue, which I very much appreciate. The book is huge (the print version is US letter size after all) but you never get bored (at medium size font on my Sony PRS505 I have 1800 pages). I'm just here now to buy the next two books (already sorry there are no more so far) available here. Don't buy this for sexxoring, the love is shown, but you get as much in romance books - which I basically see this as - long epic fantasy romance. Think McMaster Bujold Sharing Knife, I think that is even closer than Sherwood Smith's Inda series.< Less
