The Strands Series
"Who comes?" said the voice. A ring of a sword sliding from its sheath.
"Speak or die."
Natil answered, her voice clear. "Natil of Malvern Forest and her friends,"
she said, bowing. "Be at peace, and blessings upon you this day."
A torch suddenly appeared, its light revealing a number of armored men who wore
the gryphon and silver star of the delMari family. Their faces were gaunt and grim both,
and their eyes were wary. "Messire Paul ha' upon occasion mentioned sa'one by
the name o' Natil," said a man who seemed to be their captain. "An' he gave us
also a test. Who wa' your father?"
Natil stood, unarmored, slender, her harp slung from her shoulder. Christopher
did not dare put his hands anywhere near his sword, but he decided that if
one of the guards even touched her, he would draw it regardless of the consequences.
Her answer, though, startled him. "I have no father," she said. "My Mother brought
me forth, and I am She."
--Maze of Moonlight
Contents
A Brief Summary
These books recount the struggles and sorrows of the Firstborn, the Elves
who were made by the Goddess when the world was made, and whose existence is devoted to
helping and healing the life with which they share the planet. In Strands
of Starlight, a young healer on the run from the Inquisition and in search of vengeance encounters the Elves,
and finds herself caught up in the fate of a nation. Maze of Moonlight weaves the stories of a
despairing young baron returned from the Crusade, a peasant girl who is a little more than human,
and the Firstborn, who are rapidly fading from the world of men. Shroud
of Shadow follows Natil, last of the Elves, as she battles her despair and fights to help an
apostate nun survive her own. Strands of Sunlight finds Natil in modern-day
Denver, guiding the newly awakened, once-human Elves as they grapple with the enormity of their task
and the spiritual consequences of their immortality. The most recent book, Spires of Spirit, contains
six novellas which Baudino wrote between '81 and '84, which helped lay the groundwork for some of the characters
in this series (an early version of one of these, "In the Shadow of the Starlight", was published in The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1985).
Some Personal Notes
These books always make me cry. Baudino has a gift both for making the reader
feel the despair and suffering of her characters, and for lifting them through that
into joy, hope, and even faith. I first read this series when I was a sophomore in
college, back around the time when Strands of Sunlight was released. It was
Baudino's vision of the Elves, ever helping and healing a world that desperately needs
it but often violently resists, that first suggested that the paganism that I'd discovered
during the transition from high school to college could be more than just a masturbatory
feel-good exercise. For the first time, I felt that there was something more that I could
be doing, something that could maybe make a difference - not, as TK says, to achieve fame or
notoriety, but to simply touch another life, to ease someone's pain.
One of the really fascinating things about these books is Baudino's treatment of her settings.
Some authors write medieval settings as though the whole period were one giant RenFair. The
Strands books, in contrast, are full of gritty realism - rushes on the floors even of baronial
castles, open sewers, prejudice, hatred, fear. The settings really work to bring the healing work
of the Elves into even sharper relief. Her portrayal of the Denver projects is similarly styled:
crack houses, chain link screens, gangs, African-Americans pushed into a marginal existence by white
society. Very few fantasy authors are as scrupulous about their settings, especially when the author
is a white woman, writing about the black slums of a major American city. It's an important part of her
style, and contributes amazingly to the effectiveness of her plotlines.
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