Lifelode Author:Jo Walton You probably live in a place not unlike Marakanda, or perhaps you could get there on horseback in a week or so. Marakanda is a university town, and it's because of the diligence of the folk history curators at the Marakanda Academie that you are holding this book in your hands. For the Academie is one of only three places in the world which ... more »keep the original account of the events related in this story.
Of course the story is not about Marakanda, it's about Applekirk, a ways to the east from Marakanda. If it were about Marakanda there'd probably be a notice that no dragons were injured during the telling of this story. Marakanda is a regular place with regular people leading regular lives, not a place where the art of yeye is practiced in everyday life. Well, to be honest, no dragons were injured in Applekirk either, for the simple fact that there are no dragons in Applekirk. But farther east than Applekirk there are some very peculiar beings and who knows, they might be a little like dragons.
But this story is not about those places farther east than Applekirk -- it is about Applekirk, the families of Applekirk Manor, a visiting Marakandan scholar seeking knowledge about the ancient Marisians who once lived in Applekirk, and one other, someone who left Applekirk years earlier after the Plague, went far east, and came back to tell about it.
So be prepared for a story quite outside the realm of Marakandan experience. You never know but that you might find yourself on a caravan one day going East for an adventure of your own.« less