young adult

Recommended to me by: Eric Roberts

A fantasy novel based on Eastern European folk tales, but going in a direction all its own. The main character is a young woman, and there are other women with agency in the book. Unfortunately it is still a feudal social structure with a king and a male line of succession. Most of the people in power are men. There is a kickass black woman wizard, however!

There are two kinds of magic, and one of them is a follow-your-nose, do-what-feels-right, stay-in-connection kind of magic that feels as realistic to me as any magic can. I’ve never thought much of cookbook magic.

People care about each other and for each other. There is some attention to the need for rest and healing after wounds, although they do tend to be elided quickly as the action continues.

I found it entirely unbelievable that a 17 year old village girl would be completely sexually ignorant. Farm animals! Older friends! One room cottages! Listening to her own body!

The ongoing helpless suffering at the beginning of the book kicked me out, and I spent the rest of the book muttering about what the author was doing. But I did read the whole thing. There is a *lot* of violence. The narrator comments on it, is sickened by it, but the violence still continues.

I’ve been thinking a lot about evil, and where the responsibility for it lies, and where it originates. Whether there is an independent evil entity sowing evil in people. When and how we have to take responsibility for our own evil actions, and expect others to take responsibility for theirs. The book wrestles with those questions. The conclusion did not feel satisfactory to me.

I was having trouble finding words for this review, and it helped me to read this one. It’s comforting when others respond to the same issues I sensed, and can put words around them.

Recommended if story structure and plot, with some modern improvements on the social justice front, are more important to you than a lot of violence and suffering.

Available at bookshop.org.

Recommended to me by: adrian-turtle on dreamwidth.

This sequel to Gifts is much more comfortable to read. Rather than being about households polarized and divided by their powers, it is about a harshly occupied city where the people are known for “having peace in their bones.”

The city-dwellers are people of color, and the invaders are white. In the 17-year seige, many mixed-race children of rape have been born, including the protagonist, Memer. She seems to accept her mixed heritage matter-of-factly, while hating the invaders for their killing, destruction, and ongoing oppression.

It is reassuring to read about alternatives to retaliation and violence even with such apparently evil invaders. Sometimes annexation is a victory, or at least better than other available options.

A woman wants to take a risk and a man (caringly) tells her she shouldn’t. She takes the risk anyway – and nothing bad happens! I hadn’t realized how deeply I had internalized the moralistic unhappy ending that keeps women shut up in their houses, until I paused reading at the argument because I didn’t want to read about the woman being hurt for daring to be out in the world. I’m so glad that’s not how it went, this time.

Gender is relatively fluid in this book. Women and girls change their hairstyle and clothes, and easily pass as men or boys. Perhaps it is a skill learned out of necessity, or perhaps the invaders see so few women, in such limited circumstances, that they cannot recognize them in other environments.

And, it is lovely to see the main characters from Gifts again, grown into kind, powerful adults.

Available at bookshop.org.

Recommended to me by: Referenced in The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture blog post.

This is not a comfortable book to read. At first it feels irritatingly simplistic and aimed at young readers, but with not enough happening. Then it feels irritatingly complex with not enough answers to hard questions.

What if the best we can do with destructiveness inside us is do nothing, hold still, for a really long time. What if we lose what really matters to us. What if the people around us are doing the best they can with their destructiveness and lack of resources. What if, eventually, there is less destructiveness and we have more options than we thought.

In her essay, Nora Samaran uses “Gifts” as an example of needing to look at something backwards, violence vs. nurturance. “Gifts” doesn’t talk directly about nurturance, although the two young people at its center are shown to be attuned to each other, and there is some gruffly attuned parenting as well.

An uneasy, thought-provoking read, with layers.

Available at bookshop.org.

I clearly remember not wanting to turn the light out, the first time I finished reading this book, spooked by mind control. I was around 9 years old, new to having my own room, lined with bookcases of my parents’ books.

Rereading it now, it’s interesting to see which parts I could practically recite, and which parts I had forgotten, but then remember liking, like Meg being cared for by Aunt Beast. This 50th Anniversary Edition includes a biographical essay about Madeleine L’Engle, written by her granddaughter, Charlotte Jones Voiklis.

There was a discussion about how evil is defined in this book, whether it was removing people’s individuality. I think evil is more about control, erasing people’s power of choice. Pure evil is pure control, pure selfishness, pure disregard for the will of others.

Available at bookshop.org.