A Stranger in Olondria

A Stranger in Olondria – Sophia Samatar

2 Stars

A Stranger in Olondria is a coming of age story. Jevick of Tyom becomes the head of his family's pepper plantation upon the death of his father. This responsibility comes with traveling to Olondria to sell the harvest. Jevick behaves like a young man who goes off to college and realizes for the first time he has no parent overseeing him. He runs off to party and ignores his familial responsibility. He ends up being haunted by a ghost and becomes obsessed with putting her to rest. The story of how he does this is punctuated with the mythology of the world, which for the most part, has nothing to do with the story. This pace of this book starts slow and stays slow. When the story seems to be finally picking up, two-thirds of the way through the book, it digresses again with the life the ghost Jizavet, who at least is more interesting than Jevick.

The prose is beautiful. It is fluid and almost poetic. The world is interesting and the descriptions of the cities, people and culture are rich. But beautiful prose and fantastic description are wasted with a flat main character and a slow plot.