The Bleeding of the Stone

I enjoyed this book for how different it seemed to be from anything else we've read so far; but after finishing it and thinking for a minute about what to write about, I realized it's not as different at what I thought.

The first thing that stood out to me after reading this book was how alone Asouf seemed to be in comparison to the extended families that have been the central characters of other books. Asouf is a "desert man," but he has plenty of memories of his family and comes in contact with the outside world a significant amount. So he is alone, yes; but any of the characters in other books were alone, even if not quite so literally- people like Lomba were alone in their beliefs or their practices.

Another thing about Asouf that stood out to me was his direct contrast to Cain - Asouf does not eat any meat, but Cain literally lives for meat (and how disgusting was his character? Ew.)

And of course, I went off to Wikipedia to find out just what was so special about the waddan, or the moufflon. Apparantly "the mouflon is thought to be one of the two ancestors for all modern domestic sheep breeds," and it's subspecies are all vulnerable or extinct (I suppose we have people like Cain to thank for that). I couldn't find anything about the religious significance of these sheep, but the connection between these animals and Asouf is an interesting literary device.