Kate Elliott's King's Dragon
I've enjoyed what I've read of Elliott's more recent work, so here I am checking out her older mammoth fantasy series. There is a LOT going on here and I was into it!! It has a lot of classic fantasy stuff going on--an alternate version of Europe, lots of politics, lots of magic, etc--but it also has a VERY interesting religion/society (both feature women in very prominent roles) and it goes to a lot of unexpected places. The two main characters are a girl who's lived life on the run with her dad for secret magical reasons, except then he dies and a local powerful dude manipulates things so that she becomes his slave, because he wants her knowledge, and also to sleep with her (this is all pretty unpleasant, check content warnings). The other main character is a young man with mysterious origins AND a gift with animals, who has a vision of a war goddess and ends up embroiled in some high level politics/war stuff. There are also other POV characters who pop up occasionally to flesh things out, which I appreciated, primarily the girl’s best friend, the king's illegitimate son, and a woman historian/adviser to the king. This book was long but it never dragged, I’m looking forward to the next one! A-.
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