F/F Friday: Ash
May. 31st, 2019 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI put off reading Malinda Lo’s Ash for years because someone described the book as “depressing,” and I envisioned a reading experience rather like Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar where the book sucks you down into a whirlpool of despair.
In fact it’s not like that at all. The heroine, Ash, spends most of the book in mourning for her dead mother and the happy life that she lost when her father remarried and shortly thereafter expired, leaving Ash’s embittered stepmother to use her as a servant.
But this mourning in large part takes the form of a love of fairy tales and a yearning for the court of the fairies, who live in the Wood that borders the kingdom - at least according to the old superstitions; this belief has fallen out of favor in the capital. But one day Ash walks into the Wood and follows a path to her mother’s grave - which should be too far away for her to walk, but the Wood has a strange quality of bending time and space.
There she meets a pale man with an unearthly lovely face, a fairy prince, and asks him to take her into the woods. She knows this will probably result in her death, but at least it will be a beautiful end, rather than long weary dragging years serving her stepmother and stepsisters. But instead he walks her back home.
Now technically the point of the book is that Ash falls in love with the king’s huntress Kaisa and embraces life again and no longer wants the living death of fairyland, but let me be real with you: although I’m intellectually on board with the idea that this is a better and more healthy end, emotionally and aesthetically my heart is given to the fairies. Go to fairyland, Ash! Embrace the strange and alien beauty!
I was particularly aghast when the fairy prince (fulfilling the traditional role of fairy godmother) gives Ash the equivalent of clothes for the ball in return for her agreement to spend the rest of her life in fairyland - and then allows her to bargain it down to simply spending one night with him.
And then we cut to the next morning! We don’t get to see Ash’s night in fairyland at all! Was there dancing? Was there a banquet? (We’ve already seen Ash eat fairy food to no ill effect.) Were they having wild fairy sex, Malinda Lo?
In fact I strongly suspect that they were not, but there’s really no way to know. And I realize that sending Ash to fairyland as the climax of the book, and following her through the journey and describing all the wonders she’s seen, and then sending her back to Kaisa would probably throw the balance of the book out of whack… and I don’t really have an idea how to fix that problem, but I am not convinced that leaving the readers behind when Ash goes to fairyland was the best possible solution.
In fact it’s not like that at all. The heroine, Ash, spends most of the book in mourning for her dead mother and the happy life that she lost when her father remarried and shortly thereafter expired, leaving Ash’s embittered stepmother to use her as a servant.
But this mourning in large part takes the form of a love of fairy tales and a yearning for the court of the fairies, who live in the Wood that borders the kingdom - at least according to the old superstitions; this belief has fallen out of favor in the capital. But one day Ash walks into the Wood and follows a path to her mother’s grave - which should be too far away for her to walk, but the Wood has a strange quality of bending time and space.
There she meets a pale man with an unearthly lovely face, a fairy prince, and asks him to take her into the woods. She knows this will probably result in her death, but at least it will be a beautiful end, rather than long weary dragging years serving her stepmother and stepsisters. But instead he walks her back home.
Now technically the point of the book is that Ash falls in love with the king’s huntress Kaisa and embraces life again and no longer wants the living death of fairyland, but let me be real with you: although I’m intellectually on board with the idea that this is a better and more healthy end, emotionally and aesthetically my heart is given to the fairies. Go to fairyland, Ash! Embrace the strange and alien beauty!
I was particularly aghast when the fairy prince (fulfilling the traditional role of fairy godmother) gives Ash the equivalent of clothes for the ball in return for her agreement to spend the rest of her life in fairyland - and then allows her to bargain it down to simply spending one night with him.
And then we cut to the next morning! We don’t get to see Ash’s night in fairyland at all! Was there dancing? Was there a banquet? (We’ve already seen Ash eat fairy food to no ill effect.) Were they having wild fairy sex, Malinda Lo?
In fact I strongly suspect that they were not, but there’s really no way to know. And I realize that sending Ash to fairyland as the climax of the book, and following her through the journey and describing all the wonders she’s seen, and then sending her back to Kaisa would probably throw the balance of the book out of whack… and I don’t really have an idea how to fix that problem, but I am not convinced that leaving the readers behind when Ash goes to fairyland was the best possible solution.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-31 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-31 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-31 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 01:28 am (UTC)And of course showing the cruelty of the Fair Folk also makes a difference. Ash has heard stories about it, but unlike Kate, she doesn't really meet with any of it herself. If she did, that might also have tipped the balance.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 01:53 am (UTC)