Hal didn’t know how to say that he wanted to see what he was, who he was, when he wasn’t the duke. [loc. 607]
A short novella set some time before the 'Greenwing and Dart' series (see here for the first in that series). This is the story of Hal, whose mother and sister have noticed that he hasn't laughed once since he returned from school. This is because Hal is the Imperial Duke of Fillering Pool, and he wants to be more than that: but he's about to go to university, and the dukes have always gone to Tara to follow the triplum of economics, political philosophy and law, and he doesn't want to. He's more interested in botany than in Tara's course of study, never mind that it has been followed by 'many of your grace's distinguished forebears'. And he wants to escape, just for a little while, the burden of those forebears and the family name.
Clary Sage is the story of how Hal breaks free of tradition and chooses Morrowlea, a small institution with a reputation for radicalism and an insistence that the students are known by first names only: no rank here. It's also a study of a young man at a vulnerable time in his life, always watching those around him, constantly turning over other people's opinions and trying to find his own. There's some fascinating backstory, too, about the Fall of Astandalas and the death of Hal's father (and how he feels about that).
I do like how Goddard brings her secondary characters to life in her novellas. And of course each one I read lures me back in to her Nine Worlds. Is it time to reread The Hands of the Emperor yet?
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