Whitley’s review of Sorrow’s Knot by Erin Bow

In the world of Sorrow’s Knot, the dead do not rest easy. Every patch of shadow might be home to something hungry and nearly invisible, something deadly. The dead can only be repelled or destroyed with magically knotted cords and yarns. The women who tie these knots are called binders.

Otter is the daughter of Willow, a binder of great power. She’s a proud and privileged girl who takes it for granted that she will be a binder some day herself. But when Willow’s power begins to turn inward and tear her apart, Otter finds herself trapped with a responsibility she’s not ready for, and a power she no longer wants.

Beautiful.  Beautiful writing.  Beautiful characters.  Beautiful worldbuilding.  Beautiful concept.  Beautiful execution.  The whole thing was beautiful.  The only part of this book I didn’t like was the ending (really confusing, which made it anticlimactic) but I had so many feelz from the rest of it that I don’t even care.  4.5 stars for the book, + .5 stars for knocking my socks off.

I adored everything about this book.  It has a very lyrical writing style, and it comes off reading like a fairy tale or a myth.  It was certainly a switch from the immediacy of the 1^st person narrators I’m used to, so there was a distance in the narration that I had to get used to, but I got used to it fast because it’s so smooth and gorgeous.

The worldbuilding in this novel was so spot-on perfect that I want to put in a textbook.  It was unique (although it shouldn’t be; we need more Native American settings!) and had a way of feel perfectly natural, richly detailed and yet without overburdening the reader with clunky infodumping.  It just was: a perfectly real world to hold the story, it existed seamlessly along with everything else.  I wanted to wrap myself up in it and giggle forever.

I loved the story for this.  It captivated me and flowed perfectly.  It was a really steady story, not a lot of action, just people’s lives moving forward at a constant pace.  There was tension and danger, but not too much flash and bang, but it didn’t need it.  I think ‘steady’ really is the best word for this plot, steady and quiet and intense.  It grabbed hold of me and sucked me in with the power of simply being that interesting, not with action and intrigue.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with action and intrigue — I like them both — but there’s all types of good books in the world.)  I don’t even fully know how to explain how good it was, so you’ll just have to go read it, so there.

The characters…were good.  Like much of the book, they were quiet and steady and I actually didn’t get much of an impression from Otter, but the rest were good.  I’m not entirely sure what to say.  Outside of Willow, none of them were intense, and because of the story style we didn’t get up close and personal with them.  So I don’t feel like I knew them well.  On the other hand, they were subtle, and they felt like real people, and I don’t know real people after hanging out with them for a few days either.  They never felt flat to me.  They felt complete, but distant from me, and that didn’t bother me.  They were good at carrying the story, and the story was the focus of the book’s attention anyway.  For a character-driven reader, it might be lacking.  (But again, it takes all types.)

And the FEEEEEEELZ.  They took me by surprise, because of the narrative distance I had from the characters.  I thought I was just watching all these people do their thing, and then an emotional moment would come along, and bam.  The beautiful writing in this novel really made up for the lack of connection with the characters, because it was just gut-punching when it needed to be.  All it took was a masterful turn of phrase to take a moderately tense scene and make me rock back and start crying.  And be warned: there is a lot of sorrow in Sorrow’s Knot.

I did take issue with the ending.  First because I always take issue with the “female hero has to save the day with suffering and sacrifice instead of action,” and second because…dafuq even happened?  I’m still not sure.  The magic system in this book is brilliantly rendered and I was able to follow along with it with no trouble for 90% of the book, and then at the end…it fell apart a little.  The explanation they gave during the denouement helped, but as for what Otter actually did to make that happen…???  But, as I said, I had enough feelz at that point to carry me through.

Rating: 5 out of 5

This book is available from Arthur A. Levine Books.  You can purchase it here or here in e-format.