Always occasionally reads less like a novel and more like a thesis statement of Griffith’s enduring themes: the need for community, the difficulty of building that community in a world populated by dangerous men, and the necessity of extending kinship beyond blood. These are themes Griffith would return to in more expansive fashion in her Hild books, and it’s deeply satisfying to see the ideas show up in this earlier series. If The Blue Place introduced us to a solitary, hard-edged Aud, then Always presents her as a person cracked open by grief, but stronger for having slowly decided to build a community around herself.