Seer of Sevenwaters
I've loved the Sevenwaters novels by Juliet Marillier since early adolescence when I discovered them. It's been ten years (more or less) so it's hard to say if I'd love the early ones as much. Maybe my perspective has changed, or maybe the books have actually declined in quality, but as an adult my response to the books has certainly changed. Some aspects of Marillier's newer work are downright startling.
First, the basic premise: Sibeal, a young girl with the gift of sight, is a druid-in-training who has been sent away to stay with relatives on an island for one last summer before she makes her final pledge or what-have-you. A terrible shipwreck blows up to the island, bringing many drowned and a few survivors: Knut and Rogan, strong Norsemen; Svala, Knut's mute and addled wife; and a mysterious amnesiac man, at death's door, whom Sibeal herself saves from drowning.
I had a few problems with the last of Marillier's Sevenwaters novels, Heir to Sevenwaters, which is the story of Sibeal's sister Clodagh (more on her in a minute), but even though it felt a bit trite and expected (even the climactic battle between adventurous Clodagh and Mac Dara, king of the fairies, to save her baby brother and the man she loves, which sounds like it couldn't be anything BUT awesome), I decided to try this one. No sense breaking a streak, right?
Wrong. I may have anticipated some of the issues with this book, but not the shitshow it turned out to be. There were a few stylistic and characterization issues to which I objected-- for instance, Sibeal's communication with the mute woman (which is supposedly mostly in hand gestures) is so precise it's basically amazing. Marillier really took shortcuts with her characters this time around, too. Everyone gets one or two character traits/one or two physical traits to identify them for the reader, and that's all. Any deeper attempt to show you who they are is totally abandoned. It was a lazy cookie-cutter approach to character development.
Also, all of the sections narrated by the anmesiac young man are headed with the name "Felix," even though he himself does not recall that this is his name for 221 pages, and as a result everyone must call him Ardal, a name Sibeal makes up for him. That was obnoxious. Also, even though all he does more or less for 200 pages is lie in bed recuperating and drinking broth, Sibeal is unnaturally obsessed with him from the start. Like, I get being interested in his recovery-- she went to great pains to save his life-- but it's not like there aren't way more interesting subplots going on.
Speaking of more interesting subplots... SPOILER ALERT: Svala turns out to be kidnapped from her home, where she was A SEA SERPENT QUEEN. It's not like this isn't foreshadowed, either. It just comes as a complete surprise to Sibeal because she shows absolutely no interest, choosing instead to focus on this boring whiny sick guy and nurse him back to health even though she is not a healer and no fewer than THREE of the other people on the island are gifted professional healers who are on hand to tend to this direly ill man.
Felix/Ardal, for his part, is equally stupid in his immediate love for her. Look, I get being grateful to someone who saved your life. I understand bonding with someone who sat at your bedside and talked to you during your long recovery. BUT. Even on page 31, before he's regained coherence or anything other than spotty consciousness, while he's freshly rescued and burning with fever, he is focused intently on the presence or absence of Sibeal and her "eyes that startle and compel, eyes like pools under early morning sky. They fix on me and I feel the power of them in an untouched place, deep inside. I seem to know her." (p. 32) Keep in mind he doesn't even know HER NAME. Gag.
Bland predictability, slowest plot development EVER, and characters like cardboard cutouts of themselves really harmed this novel. I mean, as soon as "mysterious stranger" needed nursing back to health, didn't we all know Sibeal would be in love with him? And even though I think the sea serpent reveal is supposed to come out of nowhere, it became pretty apparent to me early on-- it's so, so clear that things are up with Svala from day one, but Sibeal and the other characters hardly bat an eyelash after some dude comes over and says "husband" and "doesn't talk" and "dead child." Yet it's seriously 300 pages before anyone even TRIES to figure it out. All the strange happenings and clues happen literally by accident, and provoke not the slightest bit of curiosity or apprehension in Sibeal. WORST NARRATOR EVER.
But the worst thing about it is its blatant lack of any consciousness of female power. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some super critical postfeminist icon or anything like that. But I expect the basic plot of my fantasy novel to boil down to something a little more complex than "should I take a vow for the vocation I was chosen for at birth or should I abandon my calling and marry a hot guy and make pretty babies?" Sibeal spends half the book whining about people not trusting her to know herself-- women keep going wide-eyed and asking how on earth she could bear giving up being a wife and mother for her work as a spiritual adviser, and her mentor made her take the summer off to consider her decision. I wasn't counting the number of times she said some variation of "I am ready to make this commitment and spend my life as a druid" but it has to be somewhere around a thousand, and she immediately begins constantly undermining herself with doubts and daydreams.
At one point Sibeal literally breaks down into angry sobbing and curses Felix's name and says she wishes she'd never met him, all because she has a dream (she calls it a vision) of herself and Felix with their imaginary daughter. She acknowledges him as her soulmate and maintains in the same sentence absolute certainty that she will give it all up to be a druid. But of course she doesn't because all women want babies, OBVIOUSLY, so she changes her life plan last-minute to run off with him. Granted, this is rationalized with a rough explanation of a religious community where she can honor the gods AND have sex and a daughter, but it's such a brief airbrushing of the conflict, so convenient a retcon to tie things up a little too neatly, a possibility so excluded from the rest of the book, that it's a little tough to swallow. The takeaway message becomes that women are emotional and need a family to survive, that without one they would be empty robotic shells. Even though in theory Sibeal gets the chance to have it all, which is supposed to be a happy ending, it's a cheap happy ending because it comes at no cost whatsoever. And that makes the struggle to choose insignificant and totally devalues whatever choice she might have made.
Once I was tuned in to this anti-feminist undertone, I started seeing it everywhere-- women in this book have careers only if they're peripherally related to childrearing (cooks, healers). Clodagh, who in the last book (which also had a romance plot you could see coming from the first sentence) was (clumsily) characterized as a radical free-thinker and unafraid of defiance and willing to stand up for herself, has suddenly become anxious, weepy, overtired, emotionally needy, weak, and meek-- all because she is... wait for it... pregnant. *headdesk* Women are only strong until they marry, only headstrong until they become mothers, when they're suddenly mysteriously tamed. Fatherhood has no such effect on the men, who continue to be sailors and warriors and intelligent leaders
This is super frustrating because-- even though I personally DO want a family-- I resent the implication that anyone choosing another life simply doesn't understand what they're giving up. The only acceptable role for women in this book is as a wife and mother. It leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Tl;dr-- paper-thin characters, invisible plot, and some alarming messages about women made this book a fail for me.
I don't get it at all; as I said before, I was a real fan of Marillier's early work, which featured some wickedly strong (but still feminine) female protagonists. They all had fire and personality and real struggles to overcome. Almost nothing happens in this book other than Sibeal whining, up until the very end when the plot sneaks up on you (it literally ATTACKS). Even then it feels like the plot was tacked on as an excuse for Marillier to write a romance between a tragically underage druid girl and a mysterious stranger-- like I've never read that before.
It was shoddy work from a writer I used to consider an idol. I'm appalled.