A very odd book about how hard it is to forgive unless you forget. It also includes dragons.
It’s set (sort of) in an imagined Britain after the fall of the Roman empire. An elderly couple set out on a journey to see a son they have not seen in many years. The complication is that they can hardly remember him, or much else, as they and everyone they meet is affected by a strange forgetfulness. There are some other complications too, including elderly knights, pixies, fanatical monks, and so on.
It has that sense of dread that fantasy novels usually have, the idea that ‘something’ is coming for you. But the ‘something’ is not like Gollum, or a cenatur, or whatever; it is the past. Or more specifically, the memory of the past. The elderly couple are deeply in love, but there is a terrible sense that if they could remember everything they knew about each other, from a lifetime together, they would not be.
I found it bleak and depressing, despite the faeries and the dragons. The basic message seemed to be: who would love anyone if they knew it all? I mean, I am feeling it. I get it. This might perhaps be because I read most of it when I couldn’t sleep in the very early hours in a hotel room in Luxembourg. That’s really a setting to make you consider what bad choices brought you there.