The Curve of the World

This world is round. Loving sailors court its waves, bathe in sea currents happily sharing secrets with them, waters telling them where to go and how best to navigate their way. With persistence as gentle and stubborn as worn stones, multiple award winner Vonda N. McIntyre shows us versions of everyday Minoan activities based on common sense and historical research, then flings us outward from that safe harbor into the wildest of adventures. Monsters, volcanoes, pirates, mummy kings—all these dangers must be passed as ambassador and former bull-dancer Iakinthu travels thousands of miles on a mission to return her foster son to his Pacific coast home.

Vonda treats the whole enterprise of bringing her last novel to life with the calm assurance of a favorite aunt taking you shopping in the best sex toy store ever. Sensory delights abound, from the soothing oil massaged into bathers’ skins to the cool mountain breezes buoying up ship-burdened balloons. The most audacious realities rise and ebb beneath her steady yet unobtrusive attention. We readers of The Curve of the World are truly fortunate to have such an elegant inevitability of a story so beautifully unfolded here before us.