Daughter of the Forest

 You will find the way, daughter of the forest. Through grief and pain, through many trials, through betrayal and loss, your feet will walk a straight path. 

I have read and enjoyed several other books by Juliet Marillier, but I've been putting this one off for ages because friends warned me there's rape as a major part of the character arc here. It's a triggering subject for me. I don't automatically discard books that deal with the matter, especially if they deal with it respectfully, but I do need to be prepared to read them. Which is why I've waited awhile to read this novel.

This was a pretty heavy read, and not just because of the subject mentioned above. While this is a fairy tale retelling that carries a lot of hope in it, the story goes into a lot of dark places and culminates in a highly bittersweet ending. I greatly admired the protagonist: her willpower, her determination, her quiet strength. I don't think I liked many of the other characters who surround her, so, probably with the exception of Red, Ben, and Lady Anne. The story itself is beautifully told, the historical fantasy setting vividly painted (no one does fairies like Juliet Marillier, I'm convinced), other stories woven into the fabric of the narrative as the characters tell legends to each other, or retell pieces of their own lives as stories and compare the events they go through to patterns from tales.

The tight bonds the heroine has with her brothers are well-explored, not only in the sense of there obviously being a strong familiar love connecting the group of them, but also in the sense that no matter how much they all love and treasure each other and to what great lengths they're willing to go for each other, there's still subtle conflict. Sorcha sacrifices everything to save her brothers, and she has their obvious gratitude, but, without going into too much spoilery detail, there are still two moments in the book where she acknowledges that, with all their love for her, they treat her as a part of their narrative, and more moments where she doesn't acknowledge it but it still happens. That's interesting and realistic and makes everyone more alive, but it's also sometimes hard to read about. But this is the case  where "hard to read" actually equals "very well-written," with the way the author draws you in and makes you feel for these characters.

The one small flaw the story had for me was a certain side character who appeared late in the plot and largely turned the tide of events in the heroine's favor. Maybe it's just me, but his timely appearance in the story felt a bit coincidental, and if the character's presence in the storyspace was at least hinted at somewhere around midpoint-ish and he didn't just spring into being when he was needed for the plot to keep going where it's been headed all along, it would have felt more natural.

Overall, this was an engrossing and beautiful read that makes me want to immediately reach for something light and fluffy as a palate cleanser.

 Read for the following September 2020 readathons:
- Mythothon3: Animal on the Cover (there's a swan on the cover of the edition I have, and biologically speaking, birds are animals!:))
- I Read Sins Not Tragedies: Retelling
- Demonathon: Intense Love or Friendship

This is one of those books that make the "like/not like" rating here very hard to take seriously. When reading it I felt very torn. I certainly didn't "like" most of the parts, but some were quite amazing.

On the one hand it is a beautifully detailed version of an old fairy-tale set in a magical version of Ireland (with some annoying historical mistakes), on the other hand it is a story about a girl experiencing pain - a lot of pain over and over and over again. Sorcha being 13 years old when she is raped doesn't help, but at least that episode is mercifully short and appropriately non-voyeuristic. But from page 50 or so onwards to page 300, there is an ever-increasing amount of pain, both physical and emotional heaped on the poor protagonist. What's worse, the only positive characters to rely on are her brothers - and they are taken away relatively early, of course.

Indeed, with one exception there is no female character that helps her along unambiguously. Except for that one short episode Sorcha is only helped and supported by men - despite fearing them after her rape. The main villain of the piece is the stereotypical evil step-mother, a sorceress. Her brother's betrothed is so negligible she's almost invisible and used as a commodity. The nuns are impersonal, the maidservant not on her level, the lady of the house in England cold and distant. While the book feels realistic in some regards - e.g. recovering from trauma - it is kind of creepy in the way that Sorcha does not find any non-supernatural female allies who stay with her. Also the love interest, while not without charm has a creepy edge to it.

Add to that mistakes like druids famed for writing, turkeys in Europe and an overpowering sense of racism that was certainly unknown in the time period and you have a book that leaves a bit of a bitter taste behind, even though it takes you very much into its world.