Now here’s a thing: a book by Andrea K Höst that doesn’t set me on fire.
It’s a perfectly fine, entertaining read, you understand, a solid YA
fantasy with a little romance, but it just doesn’t quite have that extra
something that normally lifts the author’s writing out of the ‘good’
column and into the ‘awesome’. That makes me sad.
It starts
badly. The first few chapters are a blizzard of names and titles and
nicknames and throwaway references to customs and ideas that the average
reader can’t possibly understand. And is that an orphaned heroine of
mysterious background I see before me? (Well, not quite but close
enough.) And - surely not? - that can’t be a girl masquerading as a boy?
But it is. Can we say ‘overused tropes’ here? Naturally the author is
far too creative not to put her own twist on all this, but it’s still a
slightly underwhelming start.
The magic of this world is quite
intriguing. The rulers are chosen by the gods, rather than simply
inheriting their power, and the gods give them a direct connection with
their land. Their job is to maintain the balance of the land, so that
it’s not overused or neglected, and they have powers to enable them to
do that. The gods also intervene at death, choosing whether a soul is
worthy to go to the sun god (a heaven equivalent), or goes to a
different god to be cleaned up first. A very few are rejected outright,
if they’ve been very evil, or are reborn, if they have some task to
finish.
The plot involves someone going round bumping off
herbalists. The heroine, Ash, the one pretending to be a boy, is a
friend of one of those murdered, and is taken up by outsider Thornaster
to help him investigate the murders, since she has some knowledge of
herbs. So there’s a lot of sneaking around, and improbable mingling with
the nobility, and dramatic rescues of various characters from attempted
murders and the like. And it’s all great fun and a nice, easy read, so
long as you switch off all logical thought.
The whole girl
pretending to be a boy thing is the biggest obstacle for me. Is it
really possible to do this convincingly? The author has considered some
of the difficulties, like breasts and periods and ways of walking, but I
always wonder quite how you’d get away with not being able to pee
standing up. And here Ash is mingling with an entirely masculine crowd,
yet nobody wonders why she always sneaks away to pee?
But if you
can get past that, the story rolls along very nicely, in the usual
crisis-resolution, crisis-resolution way, and I suppose the final
explanations and tidying up of loose ends made some sense. It just all
seemed a bit less surprising and a bit more ordinary than I’d
anticipated. The romance, such as it was, started too easily and
resolved itself without very many difficulties. There were some nice
moments along the way, though, and I rattled through this at a fair
pace, without ever losing interest. This is, by any standards, an
enjoyable read. It’s only by comparison with some of the author’s other
work that it falls a little short. Three stars.
Well, historically there have been plenty of women who masqueraded as men for their whole lives, and remained unnoticed until after their deaths -- including in armies and on ships, where you think it'd be difficult to fake it. I can't say as to how they did it, though. I did read a book a while back about a woman who took on a male persona to get an inside view of what men are like when women aren't around, and who succeeded for a long time even in close contact, but I can't remember the title and it's not on my Goodreads, dangit. There are some pretty convincing drag kings out there too. I think my problem with most of the girl-masquerading-as-boy stories is that usually the girls don't seem like the type who could keep the masquerade up...since the ones who best succeeded seemed to do it as a lifestyle choice, not in the 'to hide/until I meet a cute guy' way most of these protagonists tend to act.
ReplyDeleteThe book you're thinking of was 'Self-Made Man' by Norah Vincent, probably. Thanks for the historical info. I actually heard about a local case recently, a well-respected person who was only discovered after death to be a woman. So maybe it's more feasible than I thought.
DeleteYes! Thank you! Now I can add it to my list. :D
DeleteMy first book included the clichés you mention, I must admit. I was a beginner and knew no better :o)
ReplyDeleteI researched women passing as men, and blogged about it here: http://lexirevellian.blogspot.co.uk/2007/06/tor-in-rebel-cavalry.html
Yes, I've now realised that women have been successfully passing themselves off as men for centuries, and probably for ever. I don't quite know how they do it, but clearly it's perfectly possible. As you say, people see what they expect to see.
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