"So you dont know whether you were a man or a woman in life.”
“No, and I don’t see why it matters. Humans are so tedious. Oh, you have dangly bits. Congratulations, you're going to put on armour and swing a sword about. Oh, you've ended up with the other kind. Too bad -- time to either have babies or become a nun." [p. 131]
Described by the author as 'Venom meets Joan of Arc', Vespertine was both funnier and more profound than I'd expected. Artemisia was possessed by an ashgrim as a child, and bears the physical and mental scars of her attempts to stop it trying to kill her family. Now she's a nun, determined to spend the rest of her life tending to corpses and avoiding social interaction. Artemisia lies to the priest who's come to evaluate the nuns for admittance into the Clerisy, pretending she can't sense the spirits trapped in the reliquaries, but Confessor Leander sees through her pretence.
Then the convent is attacked by possessed soldiers, and Artemisia, defending her home, inadvertently awakens the most powerful of the bound spirits, a revenant. Only a vespertine, a priestess trained to deal with relics and spirits, can defeat the forces of evil -- and the knowledge of how to become a vespertine is all but lost, except to the nameless revenant which has taken up residence in Artemisia's mind.
Vespertine's setting is reminiscent of medieval France, and Artemisia's progress as popular heroine reflects that of Joan of Arc: there are some entertaining insights into the relic industry, the splinters of wood dipped into pig's blood and sold as holy arrows, the mindless faith which Artemisia inspires in the peasantry. But the greatest pleasure comes from the interactions between Artemisia and her unwanted guest, who is immensely powerful, thoroughly cynical and capable (after some time in Artemisia's company) of surprising altriusm.
The world-building is solid and interesting, especially the religious aspects, and there is a predominance of female characters. Found families, acceptance of neurodivergence, a raven named Trouble and an epic battle between good and evil: what's not to like? I enjoyed this more than Rogerson's earlier An Enchantment of Ravens, perhaps because of the lack of a romantic element -- Artemisia neither wants nor needs that particular form of belonging -- or perhaps because of the sarcastic, secretive revenant and the evolution of its relationship with its host.
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