Make Me Smile: A Review of Sarah Micklem's Firethorn

I recently read Sarah Micklem's Firethorn, a high-fantasy novel for adults. To be perfectly honest, if I wasn't required to read it for class, I probably never would have picked it up. I put that out there just to acknowledge that this book is not the sort of thing I usually choose to read, so some of my feelings about it may be due to my lukewarm attitude towards the genre in general, rather than problems specific to this particular book.

To be clear: I love fantasy, but only certain types of fantasy, and even within the types I like I'm very picky. For one, I vastly prefer children's fantasy to fantasy stories intended for adults. The exceptions are pretty much Lord of the Rings and medieval literature like The Mabinogion and Sir Gawain. (Yes, I am a nerd. Sue me.) Then, even within children's fantasy, I vastly prefer 'low' fantasy--which, to me, is defined as fantasy that has its basis in the real world, like Diane Duane's Young Wizards books, to 'high' fantasy, stories set entirely in a fantasy realm with little or no connection to the real, modern world,  like Victoria Hanley's The Seer and the Sword. (Of course, my absolute favorites are the ones that take place almost entirely in a fantasy world, but manage to start or anchor themselves in reality, like Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, all of Eva Ibbotson's work, the Pendragon books, etc., but I digress.)

Firethorn is definitively both high fantasy, and intended for adults, not children. (I'm pretty sure anyone fifteen and up would be fine reading this, but that's true of most adult novels.) The thing was, even though Firethorn isn't my usual cup of tea (Twinning's Earl Grey, brewed for two minutes, with a slice of lemon if available.) there was a lot about it that was very, very good.

The writing was beautiful and flawless in a way that made me jealous with its flowing, lyrical language. The titular main character skated the hairy edge of Mary-Suedom (and, from what I heard, dove right off the freaking cliff in the sequel) but managed to be likeable, sympathetic, and engaging. The main thing that saved her (for now) was that she was flawed. She was naive, and impatient, and conceited at times in a way that made her entirely real and relatable. Then there was Micklem's world-building, which was phenomenal. Another review described it as 'typical serf and sword medieval with an Indian-Greek-Japanese mythology fusion,' which captures it very well.

Micklem's greatest strength is making this world feel incredibly real to the reader, from the sights to the sounds and the settings and, yes, the smells. For most of the novel Firethorn is travelling with a group of soldiers marching off to war, and there is no romanticising to be found. The entire experience is captured in gritty, realistic detail. Firethorn is travelling with the soldiers because she becomes the, ehm, "bed companion" of one Sir Galan, and though they have a mutual attraction that grows into something like love at the end, it is done in a very realistic, non-romantic way. Neither ever forgets that she is a mud (low-born) and he is a blood (noble) and therefore she is bound by law to obey him.

With all of that going for it, I really had to sit down and think to figure out exactly why I did not enjoy reading this book.

The one reason I knew I'd had an issue with it was because throughout I couldn't escape the distant feeling, like a minor itch, that Micklem had copied just a little too much of Firethorn's character from Tamora Pierce's Alanna of Trebond. The similarities were thus: both are redheads, both are healers who grow into their gifts over the course of their stories, both are stubborn and proud and suffer the consequences of their stubborness/pride, both are women operating in a mostly men's world, both grapple with their feelings for a high-born man because they fear losing their independence, and both are marked by a female god as special in the middle of a forest. All of what I just said could be and probably is true of other characters in literature, except the last point. Again, I'm probably over-reading it and I'm sure it wasn't deliberate. But I couldn't escape the feeling that I was reading about Alanna under a different name in a somewhat different set of circumstances.

The bigger problem though, and the reason I started this blog post, was that the book did not make me smile at any point while reading it. Now, again--this is not a cardinal sin. This is a problem that is specific to me, definitely not to every reader out there. But after thinking about it, that was the problem that I specifically could not overcome. There was nothing joyful in this book, and there was nothing humorous. I get that humor was entirely not the point of this story, but that didn't change the fact that it wasn't there, and therefore I didn't enjoy the book.

All of my favorite books, and even every one that I can recall enjoying, have made me smile.

I can and have read books mostly devoid of humor that I still enjoyed, like Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass. But I can still remember smiling when I first read about daemons, and the description of the kingdom in the North, and the bridge made of dust. If a book doesn't have humor, it needs to have wonder and awe, at least for me to enjoy it. To give a "literary" example, John Steinbeck's East of Eden is a heavy, serious, not-funny-in-the-least story. But the moment when Lee, Samuel, and Adam discover the meaning of Timshel gave me chills, and the ending, with its quiet promise of hope and redemption between Cal and Abra, gave me a happy, hopeful feeling inside.

Firethorn never did that for me. That's not to say the book is all doom and gloom, but it is heavy and serious, and even when things are going well or looking up for Firethorn, it's all still pretty grim. K.A. Applegate's Animorphs was even darker and heavier than Firethorn, for all that it was written for children, but it was still a rare book in the series that didn't make me laugh out loud. (Don't believe me about the darkness? Just try tracing Jake and Tom's relationship and character arcs sometime. If you're not weeping at the end, you didn't read the books.)

So my long, drawn out point is: I didn't like Firethorn because it didn't make me smile. Maybe I'm alone in this. Maybe it's because I'm addicted to happy endings. Maybe it's because high fantasy for adults really isn't my thing. Maybe it's because it started off with twelve pages of scenery and no dialogue, something that's sure to put me off. But I did not enjoy reading Firethorn, and I don't care for the book. To me, great literature--whether for adults or children, whether science fiction or literary novel, whether written a hundred years ago or a hundred days ago--are the stories that do it all. The ones that make you laugh, cry, smile, scream, tear out your hair and dance around the room. Great literature makes me smile.

Kates


P.S: On a mostly unrelated note: I strongly, strongly recommend reading Georges T. Dodd's review of Firethorn, and his objection to its (and other medievalist fantasies') portrayal of rape. Then, read Sarah Micklem's even better defense of her story and her character, and of rape survivors in general. Both of them have excellent points and present them in a logical, respectful, well-written manner. I'm going to meet Sarah Micklem tomorrow, and though I'll stay mum about my feelings about her book, I will thank her and congratulate her for her phenomenal, empowering essay.