Reviews with content warning for Miscarriage - Daughter of the Forest

Reviews tagging 'Miscarriage'

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

5 reviews

minniepauline's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Content Warnings

michelleleistadravelet's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

While the writing in the book and some of its themes are very pretty, there is a lot of beautiful imagery of nature and use of folk tales, this does not entirely save the story from it's really slow pace and passivity from the main character.

The book mostly succeeds at establishing the magical atmosphere of it’s setting, but fails to really ground the historical part of the equation. Not so much as a criticism as a remark, the dialogue reads a bit contemporary at times and besides a few historical references there is no real reconstruction of the historical moment. While reading, especially for those like myself that are not really familiar with medieval history of Great Britain, one gets the sense enough that the story is supposed to take place in “old times” but exactly when is not so much ambiguous but unimportant. Also, the distinction between the Irish and British cultures reads a little like it’s influenced by modern sensibilities, although to be fair it may very well be that this is the other way around.

The pace of the book is slow and doesn't get moving much as the book progresses. Although it does pick up some half way through. Part of the slow pace of the story is in service of developing the different personalities and identities of our protagonist’s six brothers. Not exactly an easy task considering their number, that works just enough so that we are not left feeling that their existence is limited to function as Sorcha’s motivation. It could be argued that the slow progress of the book reflects some of the themes of the story, such as Sorcha’s martyr-like task and the love interest’s patience.

The book has a lot of merits in the subtlety of the dialogue of it’s two leads that leans itself to a nice chemistry whenever they have a moment together. One who's ever read a romance book knows the explanation behind the romantic interest motivations that sometimes the protagonist lacks. This inside, or lack thereof, is a big part of the overall tension of these two and while I find it sweet it could easily be annoying. Another good thing it has going for it is the secondary female characters that walk the line of being flawed but not villainized for this.

In regards to the villains per se of the story, they all feel little nuance in the end.

At one point, Sorcha says to us “everyone loves a good villain” in reference to the retelling of her own story as a folk tale. It’s a little ironic that while the man she is talking about, Lord Richard, works as a character inside of her tale, in the overall book it falls flat and his mustache twisting level of evil is at times just comical. Not to mention a little dumb. On the other hand, Lady Oonagh's sense of menace is better constructed but once she serves her plot point in the laying of the curse she does not appear in the page again.

As for the use of folklore in the story, the enjoyment of the book lives or dies in one's enjoyment of tales as a vehicle for not only our characters to cope with trauma and pain but to communicate, not always effectively, their own feelings.

Some of the lack of resolutions of the story are addressed via the narrator's point of distinction between the reality of life and the conveniences of tales. But while she marks this explicitly, this is not always followed narratively. Such is the case of various moments when our protagonist overhears conversations or certain events happened just at the right time. Simultaneously these coincidences are explained in the story much of the time by magical intervention of otherworldly beings.

So while overall the use in the narrative of these tensions between life and fiction mostly works, it is not all the way perfectly executed.

Content Warnings