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A review by weewaa13
Angel Fire East by Terry Brooks
2.0
TW: mentions substance abuse, vaguely suicide-adjacent ideology, child abuse, non-graphic sexual harassment
Again I just can’t ignore the amount of sexism and misogyny in this trilogy!!
The few female characters in the book each have issues that go beyond character flaws and I think are a direct result of the internalized misogyny that society has, and the lack of awareness Terry Brooks has for the importance of having a balance of diverse female characters.
First of all is Nest, the protagonist, who STILL is not comfortable with the magical abilities she has after years and years. She has no magical beings to look up to who aren’t men, and she has absolutely no support in dealing with her feelings of self-doubt. The way the men around her keep her in the dark or mistreat her is astounding, but even more is that in most cases it’s not specified that the behaviour is wrong by any characters in the story or in the author’s tone. Now she has a few moments, for example when she hangs up on her ex husband and one of the demons instead of listening to their bs, but it doesn’t excuse the rest of it.
We also have Penny, a demon working under one of the most powerful male demons in the world currently. She’s presented as crazy, unstable, and expendable.
I don’t know if The Lady (magical fairy woman who’s probably a metaphor for God but I don’t have the time nor energy to analyse the Christian ideology in these books) counts all that much as a female character because she’s barely in it and also like...a magical being who shouldn’t really follow human gender standards anyway but whatever. She’s the typical white, able-bodied, thin image of a beautiful fairy (I know she’s white because Brooks didn’t say otherwise - as he does with every other character of colour (seriously I think there was maybe one black man in this whole book)), and she seems like your typical “~you have to follow what I say because it’s the right thing to do and I won’t explain things to you clearly and make you feel guilty and alone when you make a human mistake btw here’s a magic net for this quest~” deity.
Josie is John’s (knight of the word, other main character) romantic interest I guess? I wouldn’t call them partners because they can never really be in a healthy or consistent relationship because of John serving The Word. Anyway, her role is to be a nice taste of a “normal” life for John, so that whenever he’s in town they can spend a night together and then he leaves her. She appears to be perfectly okay with this arrangement, however, because most of her characterization is a) how she can support John and b) she’s very attractive for a middle aged woman, I’m not buying it.
Then there’s Bennet Scott, who Nest knew as a small child. Her mother had substance abuse issues and found herself with terrible men as partners, which left Bennet neglected and abused. She comes back to Nest years after having run away from home, gotten into drugs herself, and having had a child - Harper (Harper is a little angel and I love her). Sadly the demons tempt her into using again even though she’s been clean for a bit. They end up dragging her out into the snow and convince her to jump off a cliff where she dies from the cold. I don’t think her death was necessary, or fair to the character. It didn’t contribute anything to the story except perpetuating the idea that there’s no hope for those who struggle with addiction. We already knew the demons are bad - this was not needed.
Also? [This is the literal end of the book and a huge spoiler so if you’ve already come this far and not read the book proceed with caution]
I’m not a fan of the fact that Little John (the magical being John was sent to retrieve for the Word who appears as a young boy) ends up being Nest’s child. He’s an unstable magical being who will dissipate unless they find out his secret within a certain amount of time, and Brooks just went for the whole magical Jesus baby thing and it ends with Nest like,,,absorbing him into her uterus and “giving her body” to this little magic baby. After a whole story of Nest being sexually harassed by this one cop dude and having her ex husband try to visit just to make a news story of her ‘failed running career’ and nearly every man she interacts with doing her wrong - now you’re really just making her the vessel??
Now let me clarify. I don’t expect that every female character in a series should be extremely powerful or without flaws, but I do think that when there are so few, they should be handled with more attention. Needlessly subjecting then all to implicit and explicit sexism takes away from the story and it’s simply bad representation.
Anyway. I was not a fan of this book nor the rest of this trilogy. I’m going to keep reading the other books in this universe because I’m curious and also analyzing them is kind of fun, if in a maddening way. Some people apparently didn’t like the Word and Void books so I’m hoping the other series are better than this one.
Again I just can’t ignore the amount of sexism and misogyny in this trilogy!!
The few female characters in the book each have issues that go beyond character flaws and I think are a direct result of the internalized misogyny that society has, and the lack of awareness Terry Brooks has for the importance of having a balance of diverse female characters.
First of all is Nest, the protagonist, who STILL is not comfortable with the magical abilities she has after years and years. She has no magical beings to look up to who aren’t men, and she has absolutely no support in dealing with her feelings of self-doubt. The way the men around her keep her in the dark or mistreat her is astounding, but even more is that in most cases it’s not specified that the behaviour is wrong by any characters in the story or in the author’s tone. Now she has a few moments, for example when she hangs up on her ex husband and one of the demons instead of listening to their bs, but it doesn’t excuse the rest of it.
We also have Penny, a demon working under one of the most powerful male demons in the world currently. She’s presented as crazy, unstable, and expendable.
I don’t know if The Lady (magical fairy woman who’s probably a metaphor for God but I don’t have the time nor energy to analyse the Christian ideology in these books) counts all that much as a female character because she’s barely in it and also like...a magical being who shouldn’t really follow human gender standards anyway but whatever. She’s the typical white, able-bodied, thin image of a beautiful fairy (I know she’s white because Brooks didn’t say otherwise - as he does with every other character of colour (seriously I think there was maybe one black man in this whole book)), and she seems like your typical “~you have to follow what I say because it’s the right thing to do and I won’t explain things to you clearly and make you feel guilty and alone when you make a human mistake btw here’s a magic net for this quest~” deity.
Josie is John’s (knight of the word, other main character) romantic interest I guess? I wouldn’t call them partners because they can never really be in a healthy or consistent relationship because of John serving The Word. Anyway, her role is to be a nice taste of a “normal” life for John, so that whenever he’s in town they can spend a night together and then he leaves her. She appears to be perfectly okay with this arrangement, however, because most of her characterization is a) how she can support John and b) she’s very attractive for a middle aged woman, I’m not buying it.
Then there’s Bennet Scott, who Nest knew as a small child. Her mother had substance abuse issues and found herself with terrible men as partners, which left Bennet neglected and abused. She comes back to Nest years after having run away from home, gotten into drugs herself, and having had a child - Harper (Harper is a little angel and I love her). Sadly the demons tempt her into using again even though she’s been clean for a bit. They end up dragging her out into the snow and convince her to jump off a cliff where she dies from the cold. I don’t think her death was necessary, or fair to the character. It didn’t contribute anything to the story except perpetuating the idea that there’s no hope for those who struggle with addiction. We already knew the demons are bad - this was not needed.
Also? [This is the literal end of the book and a huge spoiler so if you’ve already come this far and not read the book proceed with caution]
I’m not a fan of the fact that Little John (the magical being John was sent to retrieve for the Word who appears as a young boy) ends up being Nest’s child. He’s an unstable magical being who will dissipate unless they find out his secret within a certain amount of time, and Brooks just went for the whole magical Jesus baby thing and it ends with Nest like,,,absorbing him into her uterus and “giving her body” to this little magic baby. After a whole story of Nest being sexually harassed by this one cop dude and having her ex husband try to visit just to make a news story of her ‘failed running career’ and nearly every man she interacts with doing her wrong - now you’re really just making her the vessel??
Now let me clarify. I don’t expect that every female character in a series should be extremely powerful or without flaws, but I do think that when there are so few, they should be handled with more attention. Needlessly subjecting then all to implicit and explicit sexism takes away from the story and it’s simply bad representation.
Anyway. I was not a fan of this book nor the rest of this trilogy. I’m going to keep reading the other books in this universe because I’m curious and also analyzing them is kind of fun, if in a maddening way. Some people apparently didn’t like the Word and Void books so I’m hoping the other series are better than this one.