Friday Reads: The Winds of Khalakovo

Some people are getting a lot of reading done in quarantine; others, not so much. Public Services Librarian Kelly Clever is slowly chipping away at The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley Beaulieu.

Kelly Clever is reading The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley Beaulieu

Years ago, when I got my first Nook e-reader, I snatched up free ebooks every time I saw one that sounded sort of interesting. The Winds of Khalakovo was one of the first ones that I gleefully added to my virtual library. About ten years later, I'm finally getting around to reading it.

I remember being intrigued by the vague description of the book as the beginning of an epic-scale fantasy. That's about all I knew about it until a few weeks ago. Now I know that the names are sort-of Russian; that the protagonist seems to be a prince named Nikandr who has some mysterious "wasting disease," which he is keeping a secret from the woman he is about to marry for political reasons; and travel and commerce seems to take place via some sort of "windships," which I'm still struggling to visualize. All is not well in the land of Khalakovo-- there are racial, socio-economic, and political tensions, and an ongoing famine is threatening to get even worse. Nikandr seems to have his work cut out for him if he wants to fix this mess. In the tradition of most of the Russian literature I've read, however, so far he seems resigned to dying a grim death and hopes only to accomplish something not-totally-futile between now and then. We'll see.

Getting oriented to a new fantasy world always takes some time, and I am enjoying the overall tone and atmosphere of the book, so I intend to keep at it.