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seriousficI love Jim Butcher. His Dresden Files series is a welcome relief from all the urban fantasy books that are about nothing more than how sexy vampires/werewolves/fairies/elves are. (Kim Harrison, you might not be blushing right now, but you probably should be.) Which is why I was so surprised that the first book in his fantasy series left me so cold.
The premise is that in a world much like ancient Rome, everyone is a magic-user. There are these elemental familiars, called Furies, who can be used to perform fire-magic, water-magic, et-al. There's some other side effects, like howWaterbenders age slowly and all the crafters can influence emotions in different ways, but we'll leave it at that. The Princeps (king) of Calderon is old and has no immediate heir, thus everyone is scheming to be the next Princeps. Amara, a Cursor (a cross between a spy and courier), is trying to stop one such plot, which takes her to the borders of Calderon and throws the fate of Calderon squarely onto the shoulders of one farm family.
So there are really three story threads. You have Amara trying to stop an invasion, you have Tavi (the Fury-less son of the farm family) in the midst of the invasion, and you have Isana (the family's matriarch) dealing with a psychotic rival farmer/rapist. As you may have guessed from the summary, the first two threads work a lot better than the third one, which never really has anything to do with the larger story of saving Calderon.
Now my second, lesser criticism of the book is that it's all basically set-up for the story Butcher really seems to want to tell, and so the second book zings much more appropriately. In any genre that was born out of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it's hard to find fault with that (but not impossible...). So with Isana, it's like Butcher decided "hey, I need to set up this heroine for the next books, what's a plot I can do with a woman? I know! Rape!"
And there's no getting around it. Isana's story is rapealicious. There's already a scene where Amara disguises herself as an escaped slave and meets a guy and oy-inducingly thinks "well, he's not raping me, even though it's PERFECTLY LEGAL to do so, I guess I'll fall in love with him." Yeah, that got me really invested in the heroes' quest to save the Kingdom of Rape-Slavery (I know, I know, it's historical and it's not like modern American society is perfect, hell I'm writing a story where the villain basically goes "Why should I save the Kingdom of Institutional Racism and Glass Ceilings?", but still. RAPE-SLAVERY. If I wanted to read that, I know where to find Gor books). But Isana's story takes that tone-deafness and turns it into this big musical number.
There's a villainess who's evil because of rape, there's an antagonist who's evil because he rapes, the heroine is threatened with rape AND mind-rape, then there's a rape victim who's lying about being raped, although apparently she's the only woman in the story who could lie about that. As you might imagine, all the boys get to do stuff like have swordfights and kill giant spiders and whatnot. There's even a scene in the middle of the big battle where the rapist shows up to do some more rapin' and Isana goes "are you for real? We're in the middle of the big battle! What does this have to do with anything?" and I'm like "THANK YOU!"
Isana's part in the second book is thank-god less problematic, but if her story here was meant to make the reader fall in love with her, there's the first half of the book where she gets to be competent and badass and not threatened with rape every two pages, so that would've sufficed. I didn't need to have my high-adventure novel snatched out of my hands every few chapters so I could read a novelization of I Spit On Your Grave. It's like, hey, I was reading that!
And good God, am I ever tired of authors who rape everyone but the heroine. Either have the courage of the conviction to let her be raped or don't bring it up, but fuck this constant "the heroine is neaaaaarly raped before being saved because she's too pure and innocent to be raped and I don't know how to actually deal with the fallout of that, so I'm just going to kinda toy with the idea to show how mean the bad guy is, then I'm going to put it away." Lookin' at you, Goodkind.
If we had to have a third story thread (or, more oy-inducingly, a "woman's" story), I would rather have spent time with Odiana and Aldrick. They're two of the villainous henchmen and they're a lot more sympathetic than the heroes to me, because first off, they're kinda Barda and Scott-y in that they fawn over each other and have awesome sex and yet still kick ass. There's one scene where Odiana is sitting on Aldrick's lap, flirting with him while the bad guys are having their big villain conference, and then things start to turn sour and Odiana shifts so that Aldrick can easily draw his sword. Why hello there, narrative kink, nice to meet you! And secondly, their reaction to Calderon society is this Bonnie and Clyde "fuck your Princeps, the system is fucked, we're in it for the loot and revenge." I'm thinking yeah, they have the right idea, fuck the Kingdom of Rape-Slavery. Unfortunately, they're barely in the second book, which I'll review sometime. Even more sadly, the story we do get doesn't let Odiana be awesome so much as it slaps her around to show how bad the rapist is.
So two-thirds of the book is perfectly serviceable and the third is wincey to the extreme. If you can live with that and if you want the next books to make sense, there are worse things you could spend your money on (a ticket to All About Steve springs to mind).
Oh, one more minor thing. It was kinda weird how at the end, everyone was cheering Tavi like he was a big damn hero. I know he helped out, but he really didn't do that much more, it seemed, than everyone else. He didn't even grab the dagger and prove the bad guy was bad. Basically, all he seemed to do was carry out someone else's instructions very well without much initiative on his own part. I know it's important to get him where the plot needs him, but with my guess as to where the story's going (to paraphrase Sundance, "Think you used enough foreshadowing there, Butch?"), I think it would make much sense for him to be kind of in the dark about why he's been propped up so much. That way the story could start a bit later along and skip over all the parts about rape.
And in the spirit of how a good book tells you about the characters, whereas a bad book tells you about the author, there's the fact that Isana is in her forties, but due to her magic she looks much younger. It made me go "ummm... did I pick MILF Hunter: The Dark Ages by mistake?" Because MILF Hunter: The Dark Ages was a pretty good read. I loved the part where the hero met a crone and she said "I'm gonna curse you!" and he just pulled down his fly and said "I think you already cursed me with a spell of ENGORGEMENT."
The premise is that in a world much like ancient Rome, everyone is a magic-user. There are these elemental familiars, called Furies, who can be used to perform fire-magic, water-magic, et-al. There's some other side effects, like how
So there are really three story threads. You have Amara trying to stop an invasion, you have Tavi (the Fury-less son of the farm family) in the midst of the invasion, and you have Isana (the family's matriarch) dealing with a psychotic rival farmer/rapist. As you may have guessed from the summary, the first two threads work a lot better than the third one, which never really has anything to do with the larger story of saving Calderon.
Now my second, lesser criticism of the book is that it's all basically set-up for the story Butcher really seems to want to tell, and so the second book zings much more appropriately. In any genre that was born out of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it's hard to find fault with that (but not impossible...). So with Isana, it's like Butcher decided "hey, I need to set up this heroine for the next books, what's a plot I can do with a woman? I know! Rape!"
And there's no getting around it. Isana's story is rapealicious. There's already a scene where Amara disguises herself as an escaped slave and meets a guy and oy-inducingly thinks "well, he's not raping me, even though it's PERFECTLY LEGAL to do so, I guess I'll fall in love with him." Yeah, that got me really invested in the heroes' quest to save the Kingdom of Rape-Slavery (I know, I know, it's historical and it's not like modern American society is perfect, hell I'm writing a story where the villain basically goes "Why should I save the Kingdom of Institutional Racism and Glass Ceilings?", but still. RAPE-SLAVERY. If I wanted to read that, I know where to find Gor books). But Isana's story takes that tone-deafness and turns it into this big musical number.
There's a villainess who's evil because of rape, there's an antagonist who's evil because he rapes, the heroine is threatened with rape AND mind-rape, then there's a rape victim who's lying about being raped, although apparently she's the only woman in the story who could lie about that. As you might imagine, all the boys get to do stuff like have swordfights and kill giant spiders and whatnot. There's even a scene in the middle of the big battle where the rapist shows up to do some more rapin' and Isana goes "are you for real? We're in the middle of the big battle! What does this have to do with anything?" and I'm like "THANK YOU!"
Isana's part in the second book is thank-god less problematic, but if her story here was meant to make the reader fall in love with her, there's the first half of the book where she gets to be competent and badass and not threatened with rape every two pages, so that would've sufficed. I didn't need to have my high-adventure novel snatched out of my hands every few chapters so I could read a novelization of I Spit On Your Grave. It's like, hey, I was reading that!
And good God, am I ever tired of authors who rape everyone but the heroine. Either have the courage of the conviction to let her be raped or don't bring it up, but fuck this constant "the heroine is neaaaaarly raped before being saved because she's too pure and innocent to be raped and I don't know how to actually deal with the fallout of that, so I'm just going to kinda toy with the idea to show how mean the bad guy is, then I'm going to put it away." Lookin' at you, Goodkind.
If we had to have a third story thread (or, more oy-inducingly, a "woman's" story), I would rather have spent time with Odiana and Aldrick. They're two of the villainous henchmen and they're a lot more sympathetic than the heroes to me, because first off, they're kinda Barda and Scott-y in that they fawn over each other and have awesome sex and yet still kick ass. There's one scene where Odiana is sitting on Aldrick's lap, flirting with him while the bad guys are having their big villain conference, and then things start to turn sour and Odiana shifts so that Aldrick can easily draw his sword. Why hello there, narrative kink, nice to meet you! And secondly, their reaction to Calderon society is this Bonnie and Clyde "fuck your Princeps, the system is fucked, we're in it for the loot and revenge." I'm thinking yeah, they have the right idea, fuck the Kingdom of Rape-Slavery. Unfortunately, they're barely in the second book, which I'll review sometime. Even more sadly, the story we do get doesn't let Odiana be awesome so much as it slaps her around to show how bad the rapist is.
So two-thirds of the book is perfectly serviceable and the third is wincey to the extreme. If you can live with that and if you want the next books to make sense, there are worse things you could spend your money on (a ticket to All About Steve springs to mind).
Oh, one more minor thing. It was kinda weird how at the end, everyone was cheering Tavi like he was a big damn hero. I know he helped out, but he really didn't do that much more, it seemed, than everyone else. He didn't even grab the dagger and prove the bad guy was bad. Basically, all he seemed to do was carry out someone else's instructions very well without much initiative on his own part. I know it's important to get him where the plot needs him, but with my guess as to where the story's going (to paraphrase Sundance, "Think you used enough foreshadowing there, Butch?"), I think it would make much sense for him to be kind of in the dark about why he's been propped up so much. That way the story could start a bit later along and skip over all the parts about rape.
And in the spirit of how a good book tells you about the characters, whereas a bad book tells you about the author, there's the fact that Isana is in her forties, but due to her magic she looks much younger. It made me go "ummm... did I pick MILF Hunter: The Dark Ages by mistake?" Because MILF Hunter: The Dark Ages was a pretty good read. I loved the part where the hero met a crone and she said "I'm gonna curse you!" and he just pulled down his fly and said "I think you already cursed me with a spell of ENGORGEMENT."
