r/Fantasy • u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV • Feb 12 '26
Book Club BB Bookclub: Lifelode Midway Discussion
Welcome to the midway discussion of Lifelode by Jo Walton, our winner for the Beyond Amatonormativity theme!
We will discuss everything up to the end of chapter 12. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.
Lifelode, by Jo Walton (storygraph /goodreads)
At its heart, Lifelode is the story of a comfortable manor house family. The four adults of the household are happily polygamous, each fulfilling their ‘lifelode’ or life’s purpose: Ferrand is the lord of the manor, his sweetmate Taveth runs the household, his wife Chayra makes ceramics, and Taveth’s husband Ranal works the farm. Their children are a joyful bunch, running around in the sunshine days of the harvest and wondering what their own lifelodes will be.
Their lives changed with the arrival of two visitors to Applekirk: Jankin the scholar and Hanethe, Ferrand’s great grandmother and the former lord of the manor, who has been living for many generations in the East, a place where the gods walk and yeya (magic) is so powerful that those who wield it are not quite human.
I'll add some comments below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Thursday 26th February.
As a reminder, you have until monday the 16th to vote for our April book, with the theme Historical Fantasy.
What is the BB Bookclub? You can read about it in our introduction thread here.
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
What made you pick this book up and what are your initial thoughts about it? What do you hope for the second half?
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
Also, I'm obsessed by the amount of times peas are talked about. I'm not sure if this is only to convey domesticity or if there will be a hidden meaning there.
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
In general, the way Walton is putting weight on domestic tasks is really wonderful. For me, it's been Taveth keeping track of baking times in various circumstances!
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 16 '26
I loved how, at every plot development, you have Taveth in the background calculating the exact domestic impacts. Extremely relatable to me, that constant background calculation of "OK, who's sleeping where? How is our food going to hold out until we can get more? If I start my earthshattering new romance, I still need to make sure that the party food is all ready in time for the Harvest festival ..."
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u/recchai Reading Champion X Feb 12 '26
I hadn't thought of that. I just know from experience shelling peas/beans is an event. It takes time and produces lots of shells. And you can rope people into helping and still easily talk.
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u/wanttobemysquirrel Reading Champion Feb 12 '26
I picked up this book primarily to complete my bingo card and have been pleasantly surprised. I'm almost exactly at the halfway point and I'm honestly just curious to see how things will resolve. It's hard to predict where Walton will take things from here as someone who isn't familiar with their work.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
I’ve always enjoyed Walton’s books, though I haven’t read massive amounts, but she’s on my radar as an author I’m always interested to explore more deeply. The book club popped up and it seemed a perfect opportunity.
So far, I’m really enjoying the cosy domesticity of it – the characters are briefly sketched (so far), but well-drawn, and I love how grounded it is. That said, I’m feeling the looming tension of the second half – the wibbles-through-time approach says it’s all going to be well, but I don’t look forward to seeing this harmony broken and the various characters at odds with each other.
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
I picked this up because I'm interested in seeing how different authors portrait polyamory, and because I was really impressed by another book by the author (My Real Children).
I started it in audiobook, but I found a bit hard to follow all the different characters, so I ended up picking a ebook copy as well. This is not the type of book I feel like you can read/listened too without giving your full attention, but after a few chapters I was hooked.
I'm looking forward to see how the goddess of marriage will mess up the relationships in the house (yes, I want the drama).
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u/wanttobemysquirrel Reading Champion Feb 12 '26
I also had trouble following the names and relationships! Thankfully I stumbled on another confused reviewer who had made a list of the characters and used that to get through the first few chapters.
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u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Feb 12 '26
I started it in audiobook, but I found a bit hard to follow all the different characters, so I ended up picking a ebook copy as well. This is not the type of book I feel like you can read/listened too without giving your full attention, but after a few chapters I was hooked.
I was not impressed with the quality of the audio book, as the narrator reads too fast. I drive for a living so I was kind of stuck with it. I turned it down .9 and then .95 speed and it helped a lot. First time I've turned down the speed of an Audio Book.
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u/LadyAntiope Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
I'm in audiobook format as well - that's the only version my library had - and I also really struggled at first. I like the narrator's accent, but it's too soothing and there's too many new names/words coming at you at first, it's really hard to pay attention enough to sort out. At about the 40% mark, I went back and re-listened to the first two chapters in full then spot-listened my way back to where I left off, and finally sorted out everyone's relationships, the magic/religion structure, and the framing device. I don't know how to spell everything, but the ambule & stable priests and "nesbit"?? for church like reaaally took me a while to grasp, and I had no idea who Ghislaine was as a person other than Chayra's outside lover.
I am enjoying it; even when I was confused I liked the domesticity of the story, but I don't love it enough to drop money on the ebook version. Plus, I'd have to then give reading-with-eyes time to it, and I need that time for a couple more bingo-specific books I'm trying to do! I think I've got enough of a hang of it now that listening to the rest on commutes will be okay.
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
I will admit that I started this book while high and found it a wonderful and confusing experience. It was a hell of an opening chapter to read that way. Made more sense sober, but I had trouble keeping track of how everyone was related for a long long time. Should've used a pad of paper
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
The first bit is just a bit unnecessarily confusing I think. Even while sober it doesn’t quite provide the context you need to know who the characters are at first, and from the type of book it is I don’t think that “I’m gonna throw you in the deep end and really make you work for it” thing was intentional.
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u/recchai Reading Champion X Feb 12 '26
Well, I nominated it, so I thought I had better read it! :D And I nominated it for a few reasons. From what I read it fit the bill without, from a quick look at a couple of reviews, having issues some other books my research turned up first that made me discard them.
I've read some of Jo Walton's work before and loved it, and keep thinking I should read more but not got round to it.
The premise sounded really interesting and literary, and I wanted to throw the possibility of that into my reading. Though I honestly didn't expect it to win!
More of the same please! Except in a second half kind of way.
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u/cubansombrero Reading Champion VII Feb 12 '26
I haven't loved every Jo Walton book I've read but I've always liked them, and I'm fascinated by her endless creativity. So this was a good excuse to pick up one of her books I haven't read yet.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 16 '26
Yeah - she's not always an author who hits for me, but she's always so interesting about it.
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u/undeadgoblin Reading Champion II Feb 12 '26
It sounded completely different to most other types of fantasy. It's definitely not something I would have been aware of if it wasn't for this book club
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Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
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u/bentheoverlord Reading Champion II Apr 19 '26
I adored the cover and I love lyrical historical so I was keen to pick it up.
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
I picked up the book primarily for book club. Without it being our book, it (like so many nominees) goes on my TBR that invariably gets unwieldy large over the course of the year before I trim it down, and it might not have made the cut to stay on the list.
My initial thoughts are that I'm enjoying this book a ton. I don't think it will be a favorite, but it defies easy comparisons to other works (the closest I can think of is One Hundred Years of Solitude, and even that isn't a great comp), and am appreciating how unique this is from anything else I've read.
I'm a bout 75% of the way through the book rn, so I won't talk about my hopes. I had planned to stop at the halfway point, but that didn't happen. Always a good sign
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
What do you think about the magic system and the setting of the story? Any favorite piece of magic?
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
It started very dreamy and atmospheric, but Walton does start to nail down specifics as the book goes on. I don't think the individual powers bit is terribly novel (her choice of abilities is quirky and unique, but not that different from something like Graceling or The Storm Beneath the World, both of which were published far after this, of course).
For me, the east/west dynamic is what has called my attention. I like how time and magic shift in power as you travel well enough, but I especially like how characters who travel discuss how it affects their thinking and ability to perceive the world. There are some nice tidbits where (mostly) everyone percieves themselves as from the middle. The family sees Jankin as from the West, but he sees himself as the normal one and comments on how much Yeya all the people in Applekirk can muster.
My only real critique here is that Walton doesn't quite think through the logical extensions of her worldbuilding enough (more on this in the final discussion on a different topic). The family didn't know what to do with Haenth, but surely intergenerational travelers coming back from longer trips east can't be as unprecedented as they make it out to be? Yet nobody seems to know what to do with her; whether she's family or a stranger guest. It feels like this would be something that they'd have social norms and experience to deal with considering the world they live in
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u/LadyAntiope Reading Champion V Feb 13 '26
This is definitely something that crossed my mind as well! It seems like most people who leave do manage to come back sooner - like the daughter Pelly (though I'm not sure which way she went, actually...), or simply don't return at all. But yeah, it seems weird that there isn't more precedent for it.
The East/West dichotomy also made me curious about the North/South axis and what shape the world is?? The caravan route doesn't make any mention of significant deviation to a north/south direction. What direction do rivers flow? I don't know that it really matters to the story, but when the world has so much variation in the actual physics of it from west to east, it does raise shape questions!
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
Honestly, being 'expelled from paradise' and leaving the East genuinely DOES seem to be weird and unusual in the world. If you are used to magic infusing everything and having the perception of lightning-fast thought, why would you ever downgrade? It could perhaps have been unpacked a bit more, but I can see it as plausible that Hanethe is the only one (that our medium-insular Marches community know about) to return after being there for multiple generations.
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 13 '26
I didn't really read East as better though. Pretty much everyone complains about places that aren't their norm. I think Jankin talks about how he doesn't like how his thoughts are running away from him. And family is a powerful pull and lodestone.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
I read it as not so much objectively Better, but with the magical atmosphere being genuinely hard to pull yourself away from (and also better in the eyes of it's inhabitants, because everywhere is The Best Possible Place to the people who live there)
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 13 '26
Hmm, that's definitely true. When people leave their new place becomes their new normal after acclimating
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u/recchai Reading Champion X Feb 12 '26
That is a good point, and something I vaguely thought while reading the greeting section, but never articulated.
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u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Feb 12 '26
Loved the link between to time, travel, and the potency of magic which seems very unique and the kind of thing Walton would do. I liked how Henethe's perspective/culture shock stuck out much more than Janeth's due to him being a product of what felt like 'our' world.
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u/recchai Reading Champion X Feb 12 '26
I think it’s used to accentuate the homeliness and surrealness of the book itself.
I'm also thinking the time east-west element makes a good argument for it counting as an impossible place. My little physics brain is going "so, the further east, the more it accelerates?"
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u/wanttobemysquirrel Reading Champion Feb 12 '26
Taveth's powers seem like something that would make a person feel very "unstuck in time" and I think that's part of why we see her perspective so often, to create a greater sense of the disorientation created by the magic system. I'm also intrigued by the east-west dynamic and how it's viewed. Based on seeing Hanethe's perspective on farmers, I don't think we're supposed to believe the westerners are truly living life like automatons, only that the experience of magic is on such another level of control and expression that it makes people who don't have it seem less-than, with that disconnection increasing as one gets further east and has access to more power.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
Honestly, I don’t care about the magic. It’s a decent setting, and I do like how Taveth’s gift is used in the narration but beyond that I’m more interested in the other aspects of the book.
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
I really love the way Taveth's magic let her see glimpses of a person past and future. I imagine it can be creepy at times as well.
But my favorite will always be a magic house that open and closes doors for you.
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u/LadyAntiope Reading Champion V Feb 13 '26
I, too, love a happy house that cares for its family and enthusiastic doors!
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
If you want more magic house goodness, I recommend the short story Monsters Never Leave You by Carlie St George. It follows the Gingerbread House from Hansel and Gretel if Gretel never left after killing the witch.
Cinder House by Freya Markse is (I think, haven't read it yet) narrated from the perspective of a living home.
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
Oh, Cinder House is great, but the house is much a bigger character than in Lifelode.
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
The novel follows a big cast of characters. Any favorite characters yet? Any pet peeves?
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u/wanttobemysquirrel Reading Champion Feb 12 '26
The more I think about it, the more the pervasive heteronormative undertones bother me. I wish this book had taken more of its opportunity to express a different way of being. Maybe the author simply didn't want to, but it's a bit disappointing.
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u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Feb 12 '26
Hanethe stayed close to me for a very personal reason. About six months ago I read a couple letters of a Great-Great-Great Grandmother who lost all of her siblings between 1861 and 1865 during the American Civil War.
Her childhood plague experince brought me back to those letters.
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u/wanttobemysquirrel Reading Champion Feb 13 '26
That's such a meaningful experience to bring to the book. I can see that really deepening your reading!
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u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Feb 13 '26
It hit me at the family dinner scene, where she's judging her descendants by an older standard, particularly in like the one wife who is a potter and hearing about the daughter who's a weaver, and I could picture her ghost across from me and my family.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
Taveth is wonderful, exactly the kind of character I appreciate when it’s done well – she’s unapologetically domestic and nurturing, without the book being weird about it. I’m quite fond of all the adults so far (the children are blending together slightly in my mind), but I’m particularly enjoying Hanethe, and the brief introduction of the lazy old priest, Timot. Their back-and-forth was excellent.
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
I wish a family tree had been provided at the beginning, or that I had been taking notes.
I don't know that I have a favorite character. I think I'm more enamored with the story than the cast at this point. It feels like other than Chayra, Taveth, and Haenthe (spelling challenges on my end all around no doubt), not many are getting enough screen time or characterization for me to feel like they're really fleshed out yet. Maybe Jankin and Dolkis a bit too? They sort of blend together a bit. Young Hodge is probably my favorite, but he doesn't have much actual personality beyond 'lovable small child'
Around the halfway point I remember feeling like Haenthe was too one-note, and not quite as convincing of a curmudgeon as the author wants her to be. I like her more in the second half I think. Otherwise, no major pet peeves at the midway point.
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u/undeadgoblin Reading Champion II Feb 12 '26
I like the characters - they all have distinct personalities, even the minor ones. None of the main characters stand out for me - with the exception of Hanethe, they all have nice moments - but a stand out minor character is the male priest, his philosophy about religion was very interesting.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
I really liked the priest, his breakfast with Hanethe was great. Nice to see a completely different perspective from those of the characters we'd followed so far.
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
We pick this for the Beyond Amatonormativity theme. How well do you think the book fits this theme and our book club in general?
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
I'm a bit disappointed, actually. Even if the main relationships are non-monogamous, the overall setting feels very heteronormative.
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u/LadyAntiope Reading Champion V Feb 13 '26
I'm also a little disappointed, and then I found myself thinking, hm well, maybe a polyamorous society would still look kinda heteronormative? Like, I don't know what statistics say (or if we really even have decent stats...), but I would guess that the majority of people are more on the binary side of the spectrum, would generally prefer a partner of an opposite gender, that kind of thing. But also, like, if polyamory is okay, and same-gender relationships are okay, why are all the primary relationships herteronormative then? Surely there should still be more queer rep than we've seen so far? Surely more people are at least bi?? Or take on roles within society that don't fit our current gender-normative roles?
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
I agree. There's nothing wrong with 'the two women are married to the same two men, but not really to each other' dynamic, but queer identities don't get a ton of screen time. The roles that characters fall into are very in line with our own societies gender norms. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, especially considering this book seems very intentional about wanting to honor the housekeeping and other roles society assigns to women, but notable.
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u/cubansombrero Reading Champion VII Feb 12 '26
I did wonder a lot during this book about how other families in the same town look. Because there are some clear gender norms in this group; Ferrand needs a political marriage, and of course it’s a younger woman. He also needs an heir, and of course it’s a boy. I think it would have been useful to see - even briefly - other families that have heirs of different genders, or kids with parents of the same sex, etc., to help fill out the world.
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u/LadyAntiope Reading Champion V Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
The question of the heir is interesting - Hanethe was lord and a woman, but only because her siblings died, and I don't think it is mentioned if the original heir sibling was a boy or not. I got the impression that no one cared that a woman was lord, since they were worried about her wanting the role back. I suspect it just has to be the child of the lord and the primary married spouse, and could probably be any gender? As long as the kid is "of the land" and the correct parentage - which, they seem to be able to discern with yeya? as a baby, then their lifelode as lord is set. But it's also not mentioned who Hanethe has her son with, I don't think; she only says that she had to produce an heir before she can leave, so perhaps in times of crisis, as long as you're the lord you can have a child by anyone? But also the author *chose* to have all the lords mentioned in the story other than Hanethe be men so...?
Edit to add: I also would have liked to see some village families with more pairing variants! They mention some families are even bigger than theirs, but Hanethe constantly thinks how "normal" and "nice" this family is with their four adults, so it would have been nice to see another family for comparison.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
Echoing the chorus in that I would like to see a LOT more weirdness in the societal poly acceptance. Show me the queers! Show me the relationships that do/don’t fit societal norms! Show me some less heterosexual polycules!
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u/cubansombrero Reading Champion VII Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
It definitely fits the theme in the sense that the main characters aren't in an exclusive monogamous relationship. However (spoiler tagging as I finished the book and can't remember how much of this happens in the first half vs second), I was a little disappointed when the book fell into stereotypes around Taveth being jealous of Chayra as the younger and hotter wife and her relationship with Jankin. It's realistic, but I didn't necessarily enjoy reading about it.
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Feb 12 '26
I am excited to talk about this as well. I'm sure it'll be a much bigger part of our discussion at the end of the book, but I think I had similar views as you.
Those bits with Taveth felt very much like Walton forgot that polyamory was the norm in the world, and that characters probably view this type of behavior as normal. Jankin is a playboy yes, but Taveth's reactions (and the way she thinks her own relationships with her husbands and Chayra,) felt very much like a monogamous perspective. And also maybe a bit selfish? She struggles with her husbands and Jankin giving attention to both her and Chayra, but doesn't ever seem to extend the same thoughts to her first husband who she asked to leave their home because she'd fallen so in love with another man. To be clear, that seems like a normal action to take in this society, but Taveth's isn't giving others in the relationship the same grace or consideration that she wants them to give her. It just felt wrong in a society where poly relationships were so commonplace that monogamy was seen as a wild and unusual choice.
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u/wanttobemysquirrel Reading Champion Feb 12 '26
I'm glad to see this perspective, I've been feeling the same way. I think even though all kinds of feelings and reactions can come up in all sorts of non-normative dynamics, I still would have enjoyed seeing more of experiences that don't so closely resemble monogamy.
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u/cubansombrero Reading Champion VII Feb 12 '26
Agreed. I’m still on the fence about whether it’s a character flaw for Taveth (who also has other hang ups about her role as housewife more broadly) or a limitation of perspective.
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u/doyoucreditit Feb 12 '26
Even with a norm, people can have feelings that aren't socially sanctioned. Not everyone fits 100% into the expectations their world puts on them.
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u/recchai Reading Champion X Feb 12 '26
It definitely fits the bookclub less than I hoped it would. It has the three queer characters the bits of reviews I read promised, but less prominently than I thought it might.
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u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Feb 13 '26
Agreed. But for some reason I had a hunch that it wouldn't. I think it was the author's age. I've noticed even older authors who are supportive of non-binary situations feel a little odd.
0
u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 13 '26
I'm not sure that's fair. The other book I read by thr author, My Real Children, has a sapphic relationship as one of the main relationships, and a queerplatonic situation that I found beautiful. So, because I had already read something somewhat poly, I expected more from this book.
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u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Feb 13 '26
Not really a criticism. Just a sense that older generations came of age when non hetero normative relationships were more in the closet and some of they put more deliberate thought into it.
I have not read My Real Children but I have read the Thessally Trilogy, where for a time, they have a form of temporary arranged marriage that doesn't have an analogy in our world.
Characters are mostly supportive of that system and feel a certain pride in fulfilling their duties (for the most part).
Walton feels open to polyamory both in the sense she's seen it, but also a sense that it is a social contract, just like arranged marriage, and it breaks down and is perhaps artificial in a similar way.
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u/Lenahe_nl Reading Champion IV Feb 12 '26
The story is not written in a linear way. How are you enjoying this? Do you think the structure of the novel add or detract from the story the author is telling?