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A review by siavahda
The Broken Crown by Michelle West
4.0
HIGHLIGHTS
~you don’t have to be the serpent under ’t to be badass as a flower
~the Dark Chosen One is feral
~don’t fuck with Ospreys
~the sun sword is not a metaphor
~you should be very afraid of three rings
I love the idea of Epic Fantasy – of big, sprawling stories where the fate of all-and-everything is at stake, rich with magic and adventures and people fighting in whatever way they can so others who will never know their names might be able to live in a world with at least a little less suffering in it. But for a long time, I thought I didn’t enjoy Epic Fantasy, since pretty much every title that got recced to me was strongly Do Not Want.
Then someone suggested I try Epic Fantasy that wasn’t written by cishet white guys, and you know what??? That did the trick. (If you love Epic Fantasy but haven’t yet read Kate Elliott’s Crown of Star series??? You need to go read that.)
The Sun Sword series has been on my TBR list for a very long time – years and years – but I kept bouncing off it. In fact, I bounced off it five times. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get past the first few chapters – after an incredible prologue, the first chapters were slow and heavy and very far away from the places and people I was now interested in. But I wanted to read – and like! – this book so badly that I came back for a sixth shot this year, and for whatever reason, this time something clicked. And once I was in, I was completely swept away by the truly epic (in scope and in execution) story West has written here.
In the prologue, a woman with the magical ability to heal is kidnapped and raped to bear the child of the darkest of gods – a pregnancy she doesn’t abort (which her powers would allow her to do) because of a promise that her child might tip the balance in a war that’s coming; the vibe I got was of a dark Chosen One type of thing going on, which definitely got my attention.
But we don’t get to see that child for a while: the first chapter opens in the Dominion, a hot desert land with a, I must be honest, boringly patriarchal society. Women have no legal rights here, men take multiple wives and concubines, and the worth of a man is his worth as a warrior. Etc. That’s not to say there’s nothing original about the worldbuilding here, because there is, but I am capital-t Tired of this kind of nonsense. Which is probably why I struggled with it all those other times I tried to read this book.
The Broken Crown is very much a book about feminine strength – not female strength, feminine strength. The kind of strength that lies in being meek and quiet and biddable and pleasant, and preferably beautiful. The kind that has nothing to do with swords and horses and war. The kind that is often overlooked and almost always undervalued. This isn’t at all the only kind of female strength we see – outside the Dominion, women can be House Lords, warriors, queens, priestesses, and around the halfway mark of Broken Crown we do start to spend some time in these not-so-distant lands with their very different culture. We see a good number of women who are very impressive with swords and soldiers indeed. And they’re important too.
But there’s something very subversive about writing an Epic Fantasy that, at its heart, revolves around the actions of women everyone believes have no power to act. Especially, I think, in 1997, which is when The Broken Crown was first published.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
~you don’t have to be the serpent under ’t to be badass as a flower
~the Dark Chosen One is feral
~don’t fuck with Ospreys
~the sun sword is not a metaphor
~you should be very afraid of three rings
I love the idea of Epic Fantasy – of big, sprawling stories where the fate of all-and-everything is at stake, rich with magic and adventures and people fighting in whatever way they can so others who will never know their names might be able to live in a world with at least a little less suffering in it. But for a long time, I thought I didn’t enjoy Epic Fantasy, since pretty much every title that got recced to me was strongly Do Not Want.
Then someone suggested I try Epic Fantasy that wasn’t written by cishet white guys, and you know what??? That did the trick. (If you love Epic Fantasy but haven’t yet read Kate Elliott’s Crown of Star series??? You need to go read that.)
The Sun Sword series has been on my TBR list for a very long time – years and years – but I kept bouncing off it. In fact, I bounced off it five times. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get past the first few chapters – after an incredible prologue, the first chapters were slow and heavy and very far away from the places and people I was now interested in. But I wanted to read – and like! – this book so badly that I came back for a sixth shot this year, and for whatever reason, this time something clicked. And once I was in, I was completely swept away by the truly epic (in scope and in execution) story West has written here.
In the prologue, a woman with the magical ability to heal is kidnapped and raped to bear the child of the darkest of gods – a pregnancy she doesn’t abort (which her powers would allow her to do) because of a promise that her child might tip the balance in a war that’s coming; the vibe I got was of a dark Chosen One type of thing going on, which definitely got my attention.
But we don’t get to see that child for a while: the first chapter opens in the Dominion, a hot desert land with a, I must be honest, boringly patriarchal society. Women have no legal rights here, men take multiple wives and concubines, and the worth of a man is his worth as a warrior. Etc. That’s not to say there’s nothing original about the worldbuilding here, because there is, but I am capital-t Tired of this kind of nonsense. Which is probably why I struggled with it all those other times I tried to read this book.
The Broken Crown is very much a book about feminine strength – not female strength, feminine strength. The kind of strength that lies in being meek and quiet and biddable and pleasant, and preferably beautiful. The kind that has nothing to do with swords and horses and war. The kind that is often overlooked and almost always undervalued. This isn’t at all the only kind of female strength we see – outside the Dominion, women can be House Lords, warriors, queens, priestesses, and around the halfway mark of Broken Crown we do start to spend some time in these not-so-distant lands with their very different culture. We see a good number of women who are very impressive with swords and soldiers indeed. And they’re important too.
But there’s something very subversive about writing an Epic Fantasy that, at its heart, revolves around the actions of women everyone believes have no power to act. Especially, I think, in 1997, which is when The Broken Crown was first published.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!