Chalice (review)

The land needs a wise and loving Master with a faithful circle of advisors to maintain its health, but after years of unwise government under a careless and profligate Master, fires threaten, great seams open in the earth, and crops are failing. When the Master and his Chalice, a sort of second-in-command whose job is to bind people, land, and Master into a functional whole, die in a fire, the divining rods point unexpectedly to Marisol, a humble beekeeper, to stand in the demanding and powerful role of Chalice. Her position is made more challenging when the old Master’s brother, who went away to become a priest of Fire, is called back to become the new Master. The people fear the novice Master, whose incomplete training as an Elemental priest has left him half-human, half-fire, but Marisol is convinced that he is the one who will restore their land. With the help of her bees, who are multiplying at an alarming rate and producing honey with peculiar powers, Marisol must defeat a plot by the Overseer to replace the Master and convince the people that her choice is the right one. There’s very little dialogue and, indeed, very little interaction between the introverted Marisol and others, so most of the action is conveyed through internal monologue and Marisol-focused third-person narration; fortunately, McKinley’s prose is beautiful and her storytelling wonderfully involving. Though the leisurely pace and an abundance of apicultural detail may be an issue for some readers, most will find the intricacies of actual beekeeping and the way McKinley twists them according to the needs of the plot downright fascinating. In particular, the notion of a veritable army of bees that serves and protects taps into archetypal fantasies of having animal helpers at one’s side; readers who’ve enjoyed McKinley in the past will be heartened to find she’s still at the top of her game.