enjoying the books, but...
Apr. 25th, 2014 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaI have managed to read my way through the Swedish translations of Maggie Furey's book Aurian and started the next book in the series ("Aurians flykt" is the Swedish title) while listening to the audio book at the same time. The first book took only 19 days, which isn't bad considering how much longer it takes to listen to a recording than to simply read the text. This exercise is doing wonders for my ability to predict the pronunciation of a Swedish word based on the spelling, and to guess the spelling based on how it sounds. For the most part I am enjoying the books. However, there is a topic in which I am quite disappointed with in the books, so I will complain about discuss it here.
Towards the end of the first book the author wrote a couple of scenes that hinted that the main character might wind up doing a threesome with her lover and her servant/friend and/or that their relationship could grow into a stable three person loving relationship, despite challenges in the differences in social class each of them belong to. However, before that tension went anywhere the author flipped the story on end, killed off the lover and sent our heroine and her servant/friend into a very dangerous flight for their lives.
To further complicate things they are accompanied, unwillingly, by the girl the servant had been in love with before he got sold into slavery. That girl had never been told the fate of her erstwhile lover; she was only told that he had disappeared without a word, and then her parents married her off to a rich man. Earlier in the book the girl found out that he had become a slave in a semi public setting, and she panicked when he called her by name and denied knowing who he was. However, once she found herself stuck in a cabin of a ship alone with her erstwhile lover and their magic-using traveling companion she choose to change her mind and acknowledge him again, and they quickly became lovers again.
Much to my surprise, the heroine of the book, who had been raised in total isolation in early childhood with only her mother and some wild animals for companions, and then had only one other adult companion/teacher for the next few years of her childhood (who later became the above mentioned lover, after they had been separated for an appropriate number of years for her to grow up) before being sent to live with a bunch of dysfunctional magician/teachers for her teen and early adult years, reacted with anger when she found out her servant/friend and his erstwhile lover had rekindled their flame, and she asked him how he could "do that to his friend" (referring to the husband of the girl he has loved since childhood).
I am surprised by this reaction for many reasons... first of all how did a girl raised so much in isolation and then having only a small group of dysfunctional magicians to interact with manage to so buy into such a cultural fallacy as that one? Who in the hell taught her that it is "being hurtful" to someone if you dare to love the same person as they? And why would a character who so clearly rejects so many other things that she has been taught accept that one? Does she really believe that wives are only a possession, and that they are the sort of possession that it would hurt the feelings of the owner if anyone else dared to touch them?
Why does the author even buy into that particular mind set for her world, when she makes it clear that it is reasonably common in this world for people who are not married to take one another as lovers? She had plenty of complications to play with in the story already in the form of the huge class difference between the heroine and her lover and the even greater class difference between the heroine and her servant/friend and their apparent (though not (yet as of page 50 in book two) explicit) growing attraction towards one another. What possible value is there in the story by ramming jealousy on the behalf of someone who isn't even present down the reader's throat?
Another major problem I have with the book is the way the author goes to such great length to make it clear that the servant/friend's childhood lover is only rekindling that relationship in hopes of gaining personal profit/comfort/protection from it--as if it isn't possible for a woman to truly love someone she has cared about for much of her life just because she happens to be married to someone. I understand about how it can be useful to have "good guys" and "bad guys" in a story, but the lengths the author goes to in her efforts to get us to dislike this character is unreasonable and speaks volumes of her opinions about the possibility to love more than one person at a time.
I know that some of you have read these books before--did you notice this when you read them? If so, did you react to it at the time? How do you feel about it now? Does this continue to be an issue throughout the books (only looking for a simple yes-no answer here, I don't actually need spoilers about what is to come, either).
I am actually enjoying much of the rest of the story, it is only this topic which leaps out at me as totally flawed. Therefore, I also welcome your comments about things you think the author got right--there is no need for me to focus only on the part that makes me go "What???!"
Towards the end of the first book the author wrote a couple of scenes that hinted that the main character might wind up doing a threesome with her lover and her servant/friend and/or that their relationship could grow into a stable three person loving relationship, despite challenges in the differences in social class each of them belong to. However, before that tension went anywhere the author flipped the story on end, killed off the lover and sent our heroine and her servant/friend into a very dangerous flight for their lives.
To further complicate things they are accompanied, unwillingly, by the girl the servant had been in love with before he got sold into slavery. That girl had never been told the fate of her erstwhile lover; she was only told that he had disappeared without a word, and then her parents married her off to a rich man. Earlier in the book the girl found out that he had become a slave in a semi public setting, and she panicked when he called her by name and denied knowing who he was. However, once she found herself stuck in a cabin of a ship alone with her erstwhile lover and their magic-using traveling companion she choose to change her mind and acknowledge him again, and they quickly became lovers again.
Much to my surprise, the heroine of the book, who had been raised in total isolation in early childhood with only her mother and some wild animals for companions, and then had only one other adult companion/teacher for the next few years of her childhood (who later became the above mentioned lover, after they had been separated for an appropriate number of years for her to grow up) before being sent to live with a bunch of dysfunctional magician/teachers for her teen and early adult years, reacted with anger when she found out her servant/friend and his erstwhile lover had rekindled their flame, and she asked him how he could "do that to his friend" (referring to the husband of the girl he has loved since childhood).
I am surprised by this reaction for many reasons... first of all how did a girl raised so much in isolation and then having only a small group of dysfunctional magicians to interact with manage to so buy into such a cultural fallacy as that one? Who in the hell taught her that it is "being hurtful" to someone if you dare to love the same person as they? And why would a character who so clearly rejects so many other things that she has been taught accept that one? Does she really believe that wives are only a possession, and that they are the sort of possession that it would hurt the feelings of the owner if anyone else dared to touch them?
Why does the author even buy into that particular mind set for her world, when she makes it clear that it is reasonably common in this world for people who are not married to take one another as lovers? She had plenty of complications to play with in the story already in the form of the huge class difference between the heroine and her lover and the even greater class difference between the heroine and her servant/friend and their apparent (though not (yet as of page 50 in book two) explicit) growing attraction towards one another. What possible value is there in the story by ramming jealousy on the behalf of someone who isn't even present down the reader's throat?
Another major problem I have with the book is the way the author goes to such great length to make it clear that the servant/friend's childhood lover is only rekindling that relationship in hopes of gaining personal profit/comfort/protection from it--as if it isn't possible for a woman to truly love someone she has cared about for much of her life just because she happens to be married to someone. I understand about how it can be useful to have "good guys" and "bad guys" in a story, but the lengths the author goes to in her efforts to get us to dislike this character is unreasonable and speaks volumes of her opinions about the possibility to love more than one person at a time.
I know that some of you have read these books before--did you notice this when you read them? If so, did you react to it at the time? How do you feel about it now? Does this continue to be an issue throughout the books (only looking for a simple yes-no answer here, I don't actually need spoilers about what is to come, either).
I am actually enjoying much of the rest of the story, it is only this topic which leaps out at me as totally flawed. Therefore, I also welcome your comments about things you think the author got right--there is no need for me to focus only on the part that makes me go "What???!"