Quiet Light by Casey Blair
Mar. 11th, 2026 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI read a book today! Eagerly anticipated this first full entry in a new series. Casey Blair is always extremely readable, but she definitely has a fairly specific prose style. I like it, so that’s great for me. A lot of Blair’s protagonists are young women who have had a lot of really specific, hyper-controlling, somewhat or extremely isolating training that they then run away from abruptly to go make a new and very different life somewhere else, but still get sucked back into the politics / drama / problems of what they ran away from. Their background, training, determination and often a really lovely love interest help them make things better not just for themselves, but quite a lot of other people as well. Bonus — mostly hits whatever “cozy” is for me.
The prequel short story showed the Quiet; in this book, the Quiet ends abruptly when Yora wakes up, concerned that something really bad is about to happen to Zan. Antics ensue. I really enjoyed getting to know the town of Crystal Hollow many generations after the events of the prequel short story. For all that both Yora and Zan feel at times that their massive efforts (hers all at once, and his sustained over hundreds of years) have changed nothing, there _have_ been a lot of changes. As usual, it’s fun watching Yora try not only to protect people who are in the crossfire of the powerful, but also those of the powerful who are themselves trapped in a system they don’t know any way out of. Lots of fun food descriptions, and craftspeople, and everyone learning about people who are very different from themselves and powerful in their own ways, and learning to work together to support and value each other and everyone else _as people_. It’s heartening.
The prequel short story showed the Quiet; in this book, the Quiet ends abruptly when Yora wakes up, concerned that something really bad is about to happen to Zan. Antics ensue. I really enjoyed getting to know the town of Crystal Hollow many generations after the events of the prequel short story. For all that both Yora and Zan feel at times that their massive efforts (hers all at once, and his sustained over hundreds of years) have changed nothing, there _have_ been a lot of changes. As usual, it’s fun watching Yora try not only to protect people who are in the crossfire of the powerful, but also those of the powerful who are themselves trapped in a system they don’t know any way out of. Lots of fun food descriptions, and craftspeople, and everyone learning about people who are very different from themselves and powerful in their own ways, and learning to work together to support and value each other and everyone else _as people_. It’s heartening.