Huntress by Malinda Lo

Title: Huntress
Author: Malinda Lo
Publisher: Little Brown
Rating: worthy

Huntress promises, at first blush, to be a better than Ash. It begins with a vision experienced by Taisin (which my spellchecker wants to change to raisin, lol!), of another girl in her year at the sage's school, a girl called Kaede, getting into a boat on an icy shore and rowing towards an ice castle across the water. In these times, there is a blight on the land. It's cold; there's very little sunshine, and crops are dying. People are starving.

There comes an invitation from the fairy kingdom for a representative from the human world to meet their queen. Despite a longstanding treaty between the two peoples, there has never been any contact between them since the treaty. The king himself cannot undertake this journey because of the perilous condition of his kingdom, so his son is chosen to go. Because of her vision, which has been confirmed by other means, Taisin must also go, and because her vision involved Kaede, she, too, must go. Three royal guards, one of whom is a woman, make up the party of six who undertake this journey. It's a complete mystery why they do not send more guards. The prince, a rather lackluster and feeble royal pain reminiscent of the royal dishrag Prince Kai in Cinder asked that they limit the party, the ostensible reason being that they want to undertake the journey in secret, but undertake is what they do as their number is cut in half when they travel in the forest.

Lo skirts dangerously with instadore (my term for "instalove", a word which I dislike because it's never actually about love) between the two main protagonists. It stays just this side of absurdity, but flirts dangerously with it. There is no real attraction between the two main protagonists in any meaningful sense, only an inexplicable compulsion, as though they aren't in control of their feelings, which is a huge turn-off if you ask me. It's like getting drunk and having sex and then someone crying rape. Well duhh! These two girls have spent absolutely no time together in any capacity prior to this journey, and they barely know who each other is, so it's really hard to accept this acutely focused attraction they suddenly develop, and Lo's prose describing it is rather too Harlequin for my taste. It comes off very badly when compared with her awesome romance in Ash for my money.

Having bitched about that, the story itself is pretty good, and made me want to find out what's happening on the next page. Lo relates the tale in the third person, but alternating subtly between the PoV of Taisin, and that of Kaede. A note here about pronunciation. I've already addressed this bit of silliness in my review of Ash. In that novel there was no guide to names, whereas Huntress does feature one at the front of the book, but it makes as little sense as the names in Ash did! For example, in Ash, the name Kaisa is pronounced Ky-sa, but in this novel, Taisin is pronounced Tay-sin - pretty much as in Mike Tyson! Who knows, maybe the pronunciations have changed in the couple of hundred years between the two novels - or maybe Lo is just annoyingly whimsical. Kaede is pronounced Kay-dee FYI, which does make a bit more sense.

As they approach a certain village, tales of a demon child begin to grow, until at last, Taisin can stand it no longer. She insists that her party do not avoid this village, and when they arrive there, she purposefully seeks out the child, only to find it's possessed by an ugly demon. Kaede saves Taisin's life by stabbing it with her iron knife, but then it vanishes and Kaede's knife is stuck into a dead baby.

The push on with the journey until the reach Shae's home town, where they find a thoroughly weird "monster" the like of which they've never seen before. It's dead, and the villagers are about to bury it as the travelers arrive there. it's blindfolded and has a stone in its mouth so that if it rises from the grave it cannot find anyone, and cannot lure them away with whisperings! Yeah - and it can't spit out the stone and tear off the blindfold, either...!

After a day or so of rest and (relative) relaxation, enjoying some good food, the team of six push on, heading for the part of the map which is blank! In fact, it's so blank that it doesn't even say "here there be monsters" even though there are actually monsters there! They find as they press deeper into the forest that there are whisperings on the night (why not in the day is a mystery), and one of their party, Tali, is lured from the camp and is found dead, with no identifiable means of execution visible anywhere. From that point onwards, Taisin wises up, decides to protect her fellow travelers each night by casting a spell around the camp. Unlike the wizards in Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child series, Taisin can't cast this kind of protective spell while they travel. This ritual leads to rapid heartbeats in Kaede as Taisin has to touch each of the party on their chest as she completes the circle.

As the journey in the bleeding cold and fatiguing wet continues, the party finds itself stalked by wolves, and as usual the wolves are portrayed as evil which is an awful stereotype to perpetuate. One night the wolves launch an attack and because Prince Con perhaps he has that name advisedly?) failed to bring along sufficient protection, another of their party is savaged to death by the wolves and the girl, Shae (which is actually pronounced Shay believe it or not) is mauled so badly that they cannot continue. Fortunately a "greenwitch" ex machina shows up and they're able to stay with her for a couple of days to recover. This greenwitch (no word on whether she's actually from Greenwich, but they do have a mean time!) also happens to be a skilled healer, but Shae cannot continue with them which breaks Prince Con's heart because he was falling in lurve with her - again for no apparent reason. It broke my heart, too, because she was my favorite character!

So they continue the journey and after Kaede saves Taisin's life yet again in the river crossing, they encounter the Xi (of course, pronounced she, as in sheesh!). From that point they are escorted to the fairy city, Taninli (TAN-in-LEE) on Midsummer's eve. Taisin and Kaede have a hot and heavy moment, but then they're escorted to meet the fairy queen.

The upshot of this is that the fairy queen wants them to kill her daughter Elowen who is at the root of the blight. She's capturing fairies and sucking them dry of life force to make herself stronger, and she's trying to invent an army of half-breeds to destroy the fairy queen and take over as ruler of both the fairies and the humans. Only a human can kill her because Elowen is a half-breed human-fairy, so the three of them set off on a tedious journey over the raw ice until they reach the ice castle of Elowen, whereupon Con the wimp waste of time promptly breaks his leg, and Taisin becomes a limp rag, weakened by Elowen's psychic invasions during the journey, so Kaede is the only one who can go kill her with her iron knife, which she does. It ought to have ended there, but inexplicably, it doesn't. Lo tacks on a really bad extra ending which is just nonsensical, and the actual ending sucks weiners.

How anyone can rate this is a great example of a feminist-leaning novel is a mystery to me. I saw no reason to perceive this as a great example of feminism or of how a decent lesbian story should be told. But it is a story about two lesbians, and it was okay as such.

However, I am prepared to rate this as worthy with the exception of the ending! I don't know how Lo could have slipped so badly after her outstanding ending in Ash, but the bulk of the story - with a bit of a meh! for the instadore-wannabe - is really rather good. Even the anticlimactic non-fight between Kaede and Elowen is acceptable. It's just the last 20 pages or so (part five) which is a waste of time. Dud only knows why she wrote that tacky tack-on. Just don't read that, imagine the romantic and happy ending of your choice, and you'll like this as much as I did before I read the last 20 pages!

Ash by Malinda Lo

Title: Ash
Author: Malinda Lo
Publisher: Little Brown
Rating: WORTHY!

I picked up the two Malinda Lo novels, this one and the prequel, Huntress because I'd read somewhere (I forget where, now) that Lo is a strong voice for feminism. She's also a lesbian, which might make for another interesting perspective on her writing, and as long as we don't confuse lesbian with "feminist" (the two are not the same set after all) I think we have we should have a cool read here - at least I hope we do!

I have to confess, though, that I don't see any overt feminist influence on this story at this point; that is to say that I don't so far see how the story is any different from how it would have been had it been written by any other author, lesbian or straight, male or female. Maybe there won't be any, or maybe it will be too subtle for me to see it, but if that's the case, then I fail to see how she garnered for herself the reputation for being a feminist author. Or maybe that rep came out of pure invention like so much in the popular press does these days! We'll see. it really makes no difference as long as we get a good story out of it, after all. That's what we're looking for when we read, are we not?

To her credit, at least Lo has no problem calling fairies fairies, which is nice. I hate it when authors try to hide the fairy-esque-ness of their writing by calling them "fae" - like they're so mortified to be writing about fairies that they're willing to do anything, no matter how obvious, to cover their embarrassment!

So Aisling (pronounced Ashling or Ash for short) begins with Ash losing her mother, and her father disappearing on business and coming back with a wife and two children; then her father dies. Lady Isobel blames Ash for her financial position: if her father had been better with his money, she claims (not that I necessarily believe her!), she would not have to be scrimping, and firing the maid and having Ash take her place! Way to justify slavery!

But Ash has an out, of a kind: she's entranced by fairy stories and by the real possibility of meeting fairies in the forest, which she does, and one in particular, named Sidhean (but pronounced Sheen!). I have to say a word about these pronunciations! There's no guide to the pronunciation in the novel (at least not when the name is first given). These names, for reasons unknown, are evidently Irish, in the cliched tradition of fairy-folk being Celtic, no doubt, but the Irish name has a version which starts with 'Ash' so why go the pretentious route instead of calling her Ashlinn?

This business of translation from a foreign tongue is a pet peeve of mine. The Chinese "alphabet", for example, bears no relationship whatsoever to the English one, so why not spell Chinese names phonetically instead of the bizarre translation we do get, whereby for example, 'Xiao' is supposed to be pronounced '(H)see-ow' (or something similar)?

It's the same with the Celtic language. That's a lot closer to English than is Chinese, but it's still notably foreign. Unless the fairy wrote his name down for Ash to read it before he pronounced it, there's no way she would know that the spelling of it wasn't phonetic! All too many writers make this mistake with pronunciations of obscure names. But I admit it's a fine line between trying to make something sound exotic or different, and going overboard, so let's move on before I have a hoard of irate Irish and Chinese on my tail. (Now I'm thinking of a scene from the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles but let's not go there!)

So Ash gets into the relaxing habit of walking on the forest and eventually Sidhean begins walking with her, except for one period where he goes off in a huff and she doesn't see him for two weeks. Inexplicably, she starts falling for him! I say that because he's described as looking like a thinly-skinned skeleton! Perhaps his fairy power is overwhelming her; however, despite repeated warnings of the fairy people's evil intentions, no one harms her and Sidhean seems commendably interested in seeing that she gets home safely - even to the point of taking her on his horse on one occasion. But like Neo in The Matrix, the fairies are apparently waiting for something.

Ash herself has to leave the area next, because she's to accompany Isobel and her eldest daughter (as her maid!) to the capital to go to the Royal Ball (those royal balls are huge!). Once the family is dressed and off to the event, Ash's friend, a fellow maid called Gwen (no exotic names for anyone other than Ash and Sidhean, sorry!) chivvies Ash to hurry up so she can attend the peasant "ball" which is held in the village square. Everyone is supposed to costume up, and Ash dresses as a boy. I don't doubt that's going to play a part in some misunderstanding or other down the road (or more likely, in the town square). Is the Royal prince going to play hooky and attend the peasant ball instead of the palatial one? We'll see how predictable that is!

The answer was no, no, no, and no! The story was even better than my abysmal predictions. Ash sees Kaisa (kay-sa) the leader of the royal hunt, and encounters her on other occasions until the two of them become acquainted and begin spending significant time together. Kaisa invites her on the hunt and Ash has to make an expensive bargain with Sidhean so that he can wangle her into a position to attend the hunt and the ball. She has a wonderful time. I was a bit disappointed in Ash when she made the deal, Sidhean said the price was that Ash would be his, and she failed to ask him exactly what that meant! But aside from that, her conduct was exemplary.

So She also attends the big masquerade, and is asked to dance by the Prince, without her realizing who he was to begin with, but when she does, she sneaks away to visit with Kaisa and they spend time together, as indeed they do at the next dance (which is actually rather reminiscent of the one in Cinder, except that Lo wrote it first, and wrote it better). In this occasion, they pretty much confess their love for one another, but Ash reveals that she has a debt she must pay, and while she will do her best to return to Kaisa, she cannot promise anything. Ash returns to Sidhean and flatly tells him that she will offer him only one night and then their deal is over, and Sidhean amazingly agrees. The next morning, Ash returns to the palace and to Kaisa's arms.

Yeah, I kinda blew off the details at the end there, didn't I?! But this was because this was one of the easiest books I've ever read and I rather lost it and became completely immersed in the novel for the last half of it (Essentially, 'Part 2 - The Huntress'). The story drew me right in and pulled me almost helplessly along, and it had an immensely satisfying ending. So yes, I highly recommend this, and I'm so grateful to Malinda Lo for providing me with such a great novel after having had so many dissatisfying ones of late. Now I'm anxious to get started on Huntress in the desperate and nervous hope that it will be equally satisfying!