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A review by emilybryk
The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley
2.0
On one hand, I'm always down for a good metafiction, and I'm a hell of a feminist. On the other hand, this isn't a good metafiction, no matter what its particular brand of feminism may be.
I'm frustrated by a number of things. I'm frustrated by what I guess I'd call a weird gender essentialism. Because all the men are horrible. All of them. And Kassandra (that K!) has very little to think about except for how terrible it is that all men are awful, and occasionally visions of smoke and flame. I get it. There is, without a doubt, a historical record of women in the classical world being essentially disposable.
That said, it's 600 pages of "She longed to be back on the plain, riding with the Amazons, rather than here in Priam's court, where she could never hope to be truly valued. She saw a vision of red smoke rising up, but chose to say nothing. No one would believe her. She longed to be somewhere she would be believed, not like here, in Troy, where she was valuable only as someone's daughter." And that's a god damn lot of pages of that.
I'm frustrated by a number of things. I'm frustrated by what I guess I'd call a weird gender essentialism. Because all the men are horrible. All of them. And Kassandra (that K!) has very little to think about except for how terrible it is that all men are awful, and occasionally visions of smoke and flame. I get it. There is, without a doubt, a historical record of women in the classical world being essentially disposable.
That said, it's 600 pages of "She longed to be back on the plain, riding with the Amazons, rather than here in Priam's court, where she could never hope to be truly valued. She saw a vision of red smoke rising up, but chose to say nothing. No one would believe her. She longed to be somewhere she would be believed, not like here, in Troy, where she was valuable only as someone's daughter." And that's a god damn lot of pages of that.