Brann is just a young girl when her village is attacked and enslaved. The spirit of the mountain on which her village is built possesses Brann and gives her the power to suck the life out of those she touches. With this power, and the help of two little white spirits, Brann goes on a quest to reach the heart of the empire that destroyed her village.

The story skips around a little too much, and I was uncomfortable with Brann's relationship (her body is magically aged to that of an adult, and she considers herself to have the life experience of a teenager, but in fact she has only lived about ten years. The man she sleeps with is freaked out when she tells him her chronological age, but the matter is quickly dropped. I wish she just hadn't had a sexual or romantic relationship in this book--it wasn't necessary and it felt icky.). Otherwise, this is a well-thought-out fantasy novel, with fascinating world building and characters I'd like to see more of. ( )

As is the case with most of my reviews of series, this is going to lean more toward a review of the author and her oeuvre rather than the details of these individual books. Anyway, Jo Clayton is a science fiction and fantasy author with a very distinctive voice, and I appreciate many aspects of her work that keep me coming back over and over.

First, she doesn't rely on some sort of generic northern European cultural and geographical model for her fantasies. Instead, she draws upon many, many different cultures and landscapes for inspiration. Concomitantly, both her protagonists and especially other characters are ethnically very diverse--it's not a white universe with a few people of color thrown in as sparse leavening. No, entire swathes in every world she builds, whether SF or fantasy, feature people of all different colors and beyond the human spectrum, once the various humanoid species she creates are thrown in. We get to see her spectacular, diverse, and original world-building because her stories generally involve the characters traversing the landscape and negotiating many different cultures in the course of their quest.

Second, her characters are more than racially and ethnically diverse. She also has characters reflecting a wide range of ages, physical and mental abilities, sexualities, social classes and so on. In fact, many of her key players come squarely from marginalized populations. So her books are some of the most inclusive and representative of any I've ever read. Moreover, her plots invariably involve a resistance movement to a newly repressive regime, so she explicitly explores the kyriarchy and the nature of oppression, at scales ranging from the individual to entire societies. Rather than ignoring social inequalities in favor of some airy fantasy wish fulfillment, she uses these social tensions to motivate the plot. However, I confess that after reading 20+ of her books, this theme begins to get old, no matter how creatively she explores it.

Third, her stories abound with strong characters, particularly women. No need to consult the Bechdel test, because her protagonist is always a powerful woman working with many other women as well as men in an epic tale involving dozens of characters, and usually shifting viewpoints. Even fairly minor characters have names and personalities that make them individuals--once again, far exceeding the standard treatment in this genre. However, that is not to say that she doesn't succumb to a formula. Nowhere is this more apparent than her protagonists: always a powerful woman with exceptional abilities, usually seriously psychologically damaged by her past, fond of hot tea, long baths, and often sailing men. Brann, the Drinker of Souls, is no exception, though she's traumatized in thebeginning of the trilogy rather than her past, which is unusually wholesome and happy for this author.

Fourth, she clearly has a great love for artisans and others whose livelihoods derive from their labors. Every book I've read features important secondary characters and compelling descriptions of their labors (before the plot sends everything to hell, of course): weavers, potters, dancers, musicians, sailors, goldsmiths (jewelry), herbalists, and on and on. This narrative of daily life and tightly woven society gives her stories a reality and depth that are almost unique in action-driven novels.

Fifth, Jo Clayton is another author who invents an ecology to go along with her invented culture. We meet new animals, crops, trees, and many other organisms, and they aren't always mammals and angiosperms, which greatly please the biology geek in me, who is very unimpressed with the lackluster imaginations of most authors who at best might dream up new names for the same old things.

Sixth, her writing style can also be experimental. In the same way that Stand on Zanzibar introduced new narrative techniques to science fiction, Jo Clayton plays around with text, moving beyond linear prose in some passages, particularly opening material and especially in second and third installments of a trilogy. Often, it is very graphically oriented, reading more like staging directions in a screenplay. Mind you, this isn't necessarily easy to process, but once again, distinguishes her writing from the bulk of the genre.

So that's the general overview of Jo Clayton's works. Drinker of Souls introduces us to Brann, the young daughter of a potter in a remote, mountainous artisan community. She is out in the field one day, along the flanks of their (mostly) dormant volcano, sketching various creatures, when disaster strikes, and life as she knows it is over, and she can never go back home. Soldiers from the oh-so-distant king have appeared to enslave her people, and she is transformed by twin children (Yaril and Jaril) trapped from another reality to be a conduit of energy (souls!) to sustain their lives in this strange world. Adventure ensues as she copes with this trauma and tries to save her people. ( )

Drinker of Souls is, on balance, a fairly average fantasy book. While there's nothing particularly special about the story it tells, it is, at least, an interesting tale. The characterization is pretty good, especially Brann's. The writing varies. I found parts of the book rather difficult to get through (most notably the first section; fortunately, things got better), while others elicited eager anticipation. (Partly, this is because I have a weakness for performing art. I found the descriptions of the music and dancing of some of the characters to be quite compelling.)

I have several books by Jo Clayton. The others are from the 70s and have covers that tend to imply crappy hack-and-slash fantasy, so I decided to use this one as a litmus test for Clayton's writing. It's at least good enough that I'll give the others a go. ( )