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A review by charlotekerstenauthor
Sister Light, Sister Dark by Jane Yolen
“A child is not yours to own but yours to raise. She may not be what you will have her be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.”
Spoilers follow, and I’ll be spending some time discussing pedophilia.
So What’s It About?
Jenna lives in a remote mountainside hame with the followers of Alta, an elite group of all-women warriors and scholars who live in solitude with their dark sisters, soulmate counterparts summoned awake to live with them when they come of age. Jenna, however, is restless and full of questions, and it soon becomes clear that she may be all that stands between the followers of Alta and their doom as the world of men becomes restless.
What I Thought
In my mind, this book’s principle strength is its utterly unique world-building. The idea of the dark sisters -magical soulmates that mysteriously awaken into being once the followers of Alta access their magic – is unlike anything I’ve read before, and it brings with it the potential for some fascinating explorations of sisterhood and duality:
“THE MYTH: Then Great Alta plaited the left side of her hair, the golden side, and let it fall into the sinkhole of night. And there she drew up the queen of shadows and set her upon the earth. Next she plaited the right side of her hair, the dark side, and with it she caught the queen of light. And she set her next to the black queen. “And you two shall be sisters,” quoth Great Alta. “You shall be as images in a glass, the one reflecting the other. As I have bound you in my hair, so it shall be.” Then she twined her living braids around and about them and they were as one. “
However, the unfortunate thing is that Jenna’s own sister only appears towards the very end of the book, so the most fascinating part of the book plays a much less prominent role than I would have hoped.
The second thing that I enjoyed about this book is the historical framing device. Each section of the main narrative is framed by pseudo-academic essays from a variety of perspectives, which also include pieces of song, myth and poetry. It’s really interesting to see the way that the ongoing story is forgotten, distorted, reclaimed and interpreted in different ways by fictional historians and academics.
On paper, the third big draw of this book is the empowerment of the all-female society that lives in progressive, peaceful unity. The sisters of Great Alta are self-sustaining and isolationist, and I imagine that this book would be something of a dream to a feminist separationist. I can appreciate world-building that centers around female independence and empowerment, but I don’t necessarily agree with feminist separationism and the kind of defeatist misandry that I feel underlies it. As someone who mainly subscribes to intersectional feminism more than anything else, I also think it’s a massive oversimplification to argue that the solution to complex intersections of oppression could ever be to simply to separate women from men. It belies the ways that women perpetuate other forms of oppression and creates a false essentialist dichotomy.
It also doesn’t help that there were was one particularly reprehensible scene that felt so gross to me that it soured my entire perspective on the followers of Alta and the book as a whole. Jenna meets up with a runaway prince, and they become friends and travel together. They are both late tweens to early teens at this point, but the ADULT WOMEN of the hame they visit immediately start fawning over him, making suggestive comments and if I remember correctly one of them propositions him. As one of them says:
“There are several in the Hame who like bull calves.”
:/
It’s also unfortunate that there is a certain amount of queerbaiting in the relationship between Jenna and her best friend Pynt. At a certain point it switches over from queerbaiting to plain old unrequited love as it becomes apparent that Pynt loves her and becomes very jealous and possessive at the dawning of the tepid, tepid romance between Jenna and Runaway Prince. There’s also this gem:
“There is one homeoerotic song, a rather wistful melody, about her best friend, Margaret [Pynt’s actual name], dying of love for her as the Anna strides off into battle once again.”
Spoilers follow, and I’ll be spending some time discussing pedophilia.
So What’s It About?
Jenna lives in a remote mountainside hame with the followers of Alta, an elite group of all-women warriors and scholars who live in solitude with their dark sisters, soulmate counterparts summoned awake to live with them when they come of age. Jenna, however, is restless and full of questions, and it soon becomes clear that she may be all that stands between the followers of Alta and their doom as the world of men becomes restless.
What I Thought
In my mind, this book’s principle strength is its utterly unique world-building. The idea of the dark sisters -magical soulmates that mysteriously awaken into being once the followers of Alta access their magic – is unlike anything I’ve read before, and it brings with it the potential for some fascinating explorations of sisterhood and duality:
“THE MYTH: Then Great Alta plaited the left side of her hair, the golden side, and let it fall into the sinkhole of night. And there she drew up the queen of shadows and set her upon the earth. Next she plaited the right side of her hair, the dark side, and with it she caught the queen of light. And she set her next to the black queen. “And you two shall be sisters,” quoth Great Alta. “You shall be as images in a glass, the one reflecting the other. As I have bound you in my hair, so it shall be.” Then she twined her living braids around and about them and they were as one. “
However, the unfortunate thing is that Jenna’s own sister only appears towards the very end of the book, so the most fascinating part of the book plays a much less prominent role than I would have hoped.
The second thing that I enjoyed about this book is the historical framing device. Each section of the main narrative is framed by pseudo-academic essays from a variety of perspectives, which also include pieces of song, myth and poetry. It’s really interesting to see the way that the ongoing story is forgotten, distorted, reclaimed and interpreted in different ways by fictional historians and academics.
On paper, the third big draw of this book is the empowerment of the all-female society that lives in progressive, peaceful unity. The sisters of Great Alta are self-sustaining and isolationist, and I imagine that this book would be something of a dream to a feminist separationist. I can appreciate world-building that centers around female independence and empowerment, but I don’t necessarily agree with feminist separationism and the kind of defeatist misandry that I feel underlies it. As someone who mainly subscribes to intersectional feminism more than anything else, I also think it’s a massive oversimplification to argue that the solution to complex intersections of oppression could ever be to simply to separate women from men. It belies the ways that women perpetuate other forms of oppression and creates a false essentialist dichotomy.
It also doesn’t help that there were was one particularly reprehensible scene that felt so gross to me that it soured my entire perspective on the followers of Alta and the book as a whole. Jenna meets up with a runaway prince, and they become friends and travel together. They are both late tweens to early teens at this point, but the ADULT WOMEN of the hame they visit immediately start fawning over him, making suggestive comments and if I remember correctly one of them propositions him. As one of them says:
“There are several in the Hame who like bull calves.”
:/
It’s also unfortunate that there is a certain amount of queerbaiting in the relationship between Jenna and her best friend Pynt. At a certain point it switches over from queerbaiting to plain old unrequited love as it becomes apparent that Pynt loves her and becomes very jealous and possessive at the dawning of the tepid, tepid romance between Jenna and Runaway Prince. There’s also this gem:
“There is one homeoerotic song, a rather wistful melody, about her best friend, Margaret [Pynt’s actual name], dying of love for her as the Anna strides off into battle once again.”