Synopsis
The kandar are the children of the trees. Powerful. Immutable. Nine hundred eternal beings who need no sleep nor sustenance, created at the beginning of time to guard the nine human Earths.
That was never meant to change.
The youngest of five sisters, Tchardin is about to be acknowledged as queen of the kandar. She must lead them in their Creator-given Purpose—to guide and inspire the humans—but her people have been exiled to their homeworld for generations. None of them have seen the Earths. Not one of them has met a human.
Tchardin can think of no way to end their exile until a strange longing calls her from beyond the shore of their island. Most of her sisters tell her to ignore it, to take her place as queen and focus on the kandar. One suggests she answer it, as it might be the key to finally returning her people to their Purpose.
Review
This hefty novel has long intrigued me, and this year I was finally able to devote some time to reading it. Daughters of Tith follows a fantasy race in lavishly-imagined settings. A series of mysteries are gradually introduced, developing what begins as a simple story into something much more complex. There is a sense of impending change that extends beyond the structure of Daughters of Tith to the characters and their society.
Our main characters are kandar, people born of trees in the realm of Derkra. They are meant to guide human societies across nine different Earths. However, the kandar have been barred from travelling to the Earths for generations and have lost knowledge of their past, their purpose, and even of the bounds of their own realm. It is in this context that we meet Tchardin, a kandar whose golden aura marks her as their future queen. She and her sisters, all born of the great tree Tith, are the focus of the story.
The Derkra we first encounter is stagnant but strangely soothing in its predictability. We spend about 100 pages exploring an unchanging Calendrai, the island on water side, and I honestly could have read a whole book about this Eden. While this section of the book plays out slowly, we are invited to pay attention to details of the kandar’s existence that become important later on.
Kandarian society is referred to as “the collective”. Every living kandar is represented by a bright leaf in the collective that others can see (with the exception of Sandin), and they can communicate with each other telepathically. As the reader, you have access to the characters’ minds and they have access to each others’. This can make the reading experience feel like omniscient narration, although it becomes more like third person limited as we zone in on some of the titular daughters’ stories. Kandar have long lives, but when their pandinzori (magical matter or energy that gives them power over their environments) begins to thin and their tree fathers call them home, they go to rest so that they can be reborn as new kandar. Kandar come in male (devoshai) and female (tevadra) forms, but they are noticeably different from humans and can blend into their surrounds. Some have dodenzinn, soulmates who are destined to be bound to each other across lifetimes. The loss of one partner leaves a hollowness in the other that can be felt by even his / her future selves. There are also kandar who do not feel the pull of a dodenzinn at all. I found all these aspects of the kandar fascinating, and, in an abstract way, akin to the way humans experience relationships and loss.
I won’t reveal whether the current generation of kandar do in fact make it to the Earths, but we get to learn something about their roles as guardians to the different worlds. The human-kandar dynamic is multifaceted. The gap between them widens and narrows. Their interactions are marked at different points by delight, deep sadness and terror.
I have thoughts about each of Tith’s daughters. They enthralled me, enraged me, and broke my heart. Tchardin’s single-minded faith in the kandar’s purpose and her unwavering confidence in her destiny serve her well. She is empathetic and gloriously stubborn, unmoved by doubt.
Sandin is observant, noticing her environment in a way that most kandar don’t. She is also the silent sister as she has no leaf in the collective and does not hear the trees. Even the most well-meaning around her define her by what she is missing. Her life is a quiet struggle for belonging and identity, and I longed to see her find a place where she could soar.
Jaydin is isolated in a different way to Sandin. The only kandar burdened with incomplete knowledge of their history, she fears her efforts to educate everyone around her are futile. She dreams of seeing her knowledge put to use.
Damarin is one of the few to have paid attention to Jaydin’s words. As I recall, she is the only sister who doesn’t give us an immersive POV. We mostly experience her through others’ eyes. This was an excellent choice on the author’s part because Damarin is skilled in hiding her thoughts from even her fellow kandar. She is not easy to understand and isn’t quite as likeable as the other main characters, but I found her captivating.
For much of the book, Kadailin is hard to define, blending in with the other kandar on Calendrai. She looks like Damarin, but lacks her older sister’s ambition. She was born with neither a golden aura nor preternatural knowledge. What I will say is that every sister has her moment to shine.
The plot did not lean on any established patterns in modern fantasy books. It has a more ancient feeling, like a myth. It presents us with metaphysical questions, but no easy answers. This could make it sound like a cerebral, emotionally-distant story, but I quickly became attached to these characters. All of the sisters and those who become important to them are well-rendered and distinct. This book is the first in the Children of the Trees series, but it makes for a satisfying standalone that you will think about for days.
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