Book Review: Frostflower and Thorn

[osprey_archer]

In my youth I was an avid reader of children’s fantasy, and I fully intended to segue into adult fantasy as I grew older. However, somewhere along the way I stumbled off the path, and every once in a while I stop and wonder why.

Then I read an adult fantasy book and I remember: it’s all the rape.

Now obviously there are contemporary adult fantasies where no one gets raped at all, but still, I’ll pick up a perfectly pleasant-looking book and be reading along happily and then WHAMMO, we’ve hit rapetown.

Case in point: Phyllis Ann Karr’s Frostflower and Thorn



Frostflower and Thorn kicks off with warrior Thorn realizing that she is pregnant and too broke to pay a borter. (Abortionist, presumably.) (Also, all the warriors in this world are female. Why? Because.) Fortunately, she runs into the sorceress Frostflower, who offers to speed the baby’s growth so it will hurry up and be born in a couple of days, if only Thorn will give the child to her. This is the only way that sorceri can have children, as they lose their powers if they have potentially generative sex.

This is the moment when I should have gone “Ah, we’re going to have a rape.” Reader, I did not make the obvious inference that this piece of worldbuilding suggests.

Sorceri have terrible reputations, but Thorn wants to get over being pregnant pronto, so she agrees. Frostflower magics the baby out, they are on their way to the sorceri’s hideout, when they run into some farmer-priests who assume that Frostflower stole the baby.

And she can’t tell them she magicked it out, because if she does, they’ll kill it for being an unnatural baby.

So of course they decide that it is their duty to get the baby back, which of course means that they have to strip Frostflower of her powers, which involves kidnapping some luckless merchant and forcing him to force himself upon her while he begs her not to steal fifty years of his life because he would really rather not be doing this, actually! Literally being forced to it at swordpoint! So actually he’s being raped too which is quite impressive.

Anyway later on it turns out that actually being raped does NOT rob you of your powers, at which point Frostflower loses faith in her entire belief system because if that’s not true, then what else have they been lying about? Which actually I thought was a nice touch.

But also just why. Why is fantasy like this?



On a different note, I remember that someone (troisoiseaux?) mentioned that one of Karr’s other books has a big theme about forgiveness, and that is definitely something that shows up here. Frostflower also is forgiving people right and left, and I felt like, you know, it’s nice not to have to carry the anger around I guess, but also maybe occasionally it’s fine to stay mad for a bit?

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

o__O

Well.... literally everything about this book sounds like a nightmare.

On a different note, I remember that someone (troisoiseaux?) mentioned that one of Karr’s other books has a big theme about forgiveness

Forgiveness is, like, a whole Thing in The Vampire of the Savoy, although I... don't think I actually posted about that in my review...? (here) so it might have been someone else who brought it up.

[osprey_archer]

I feel that this book is probably in interesting conversation with the prevailing fantasy mores of the early 1980s when it was published, but also why is it like this.

Somewhere in the Floating DW Karr Bookclub, someone commented that forgiveness was a whole thing in Karr's vampire verse, but the nature of the Floating DW Karr Bookclub means that I'll never find it again. Anyway! A second data point! Karr has a thing about forgiveness.

[rachelmanija]

I actually like this book despite the rape, which are sentence I could say about SO MANY 80s fantasy novels. I like the central relationship and the worldbuilding is really interesting and original. (Only women are warriors because it's a sexist society, and men's lives are considered too valuable to risk.)

[osprey_archer]

I actually like this book despite the rape, which are sentence I could say about SO MANY 80s fantasy novels.

Ahahaha oh the 80s... OH THE 80S.

[asakiyume]

When I saw the title of this one in your subject line, I thought, Oh. another book with "and thorn" in it. How many fantasy books are "...and thorn"? Or, they can mix it up and have "thorn and...." If it isn't thorns, it's bone ("... and bone" or "bone and...")

A quick look on Amazon shows us the inevitable: Of Thorns and Bones. Oh boy.

So the farmers drag some merchant into this rape thing to try to avoid getting the 50 years taken off THEIR lives? If the magic system id so mechanical that Frostflower can't zing them anyway for the wicked deed, that's just incredibly dumb. Or is that just what the stupid farmers think? And how did the secret about retaining your powers not come out sooner?

I think one reason I gave up (mainly) on adult fantasy is dumb worldbuilding. Embarrassingly dumb. But yeah, also the rapeyness.

[osprey_archer]

This book was published in the early 1980s! So clearly the Thorn titles have been coming in waves for decades.

So the reason to use the merchant for the rape does have an in-book explanation: the sorceri can only work magic on a living thing if they're touching it. Also, they're forbidden by their creed to use magic for violent purposes except in times of dire necessity. The first part, okay, sure, the rules of magic can be whatever the author wants the rules of magic to be... but I'm not sure the author can decide the same thing about the rules of human nature, you know? I feel that most sorceri would in fact not wait until the very last possible moment before they decided it was dire enough to start zapping people.

I have kind of a Goldilocks problem with worldbuilding in adult fantasy, where on the one hand I do want the worldbuilding to make sense, but not in so much nitty gritty detail that I've got to practically learning the organic chemistry of magic in order to follow the story. Sometimes I just want to go through a magic doorway and meet a talking beaver!

[asakiyume]

I feel that most sorceri would in fact not wait until the very last possible moment before they decided it was dire enough to start zapping people.
--Sheeah! It's like the abortion bans that only have exemptions if the mother's life is at risk. "Is she nearly dead yet?" "Not nearly dead enough!" --One thing when it's other people deciding, but when it's you yourself?! "I think my life is plenty at risk RIGHT NOW, my friends"

And I hear you on Goldilocks and worldbuilding. I too just want to meet a talking beaver! I guess it's just at whatever level it is, I don't want to be going, BUT THAT MAKES NO SENSE.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it needs to make sense on whatever level its on! (I'm reminded of the bit in An Experiment in Criticism where C. S. Lewis says something like "every book should have as much realism as it pretends to have.") And in this case, even leaving aside the rapiness, I really struggled with the saintliness of the sorceri. Yes, yes, it's against their beliefs to use their powers to harm other people, but the whole "turn the other cheek" thing hasn't stopped Christians from starting an awful lot of wars, you know? I guess I just don't believe that belief is that powerful.

[anna_wing]

Patricia McKillip's novels are wonderful and don't involve rape that I recall. And I particularly liked the magic in them because it was always different book to book, but it always felt like magic, not like an alternative science.

[osprey_archer]

There are definitely individual adult fantasy books that aren't full of rape. It's just, like, a higher than expected number of them have it.

[rachelmanija]

80s fantasy is basically wall to wall rape. I remember one book that had both roving rape gangs and a rape festival.

[luzula]

A rape festival??

[rachelmanija]

Exactly what it sounds like.

[luzula]

*boggles again*

[osprey_archer]

...Dare I ask which book?

[coffeeandink]

Except for The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, which opens with a kind of obscured rape and then deals centrally with an attempted rape in the second half. (I would argue that these are thematically related; the book is very much about the uses and abuses of power.)

[lokifan]

Oh noooo.

:clutches my Diana Wynne Jones close:

[osprey_archer]

Truly it seems like the bar would be on the floor with this one, and yet. AND YET.