Charlotte Kersten

“I cannot say Deny your pain. There is no life without pain. But use it. Grow beyond it. And do not deny your joy either, for without it life has no meaning.”

Year published: 1989

Categories: Adult, historical fantasy

Summary: Baudino sets this engrossing fantasy-adventure in a mythical land that replicates the political and religious tensions of 14th-century Europe. The heroine, Miriam, unwillingly gifted with the power to heal, falls victim to a savage Inquisition that condemns her ability as witchcraft, and to a ruthless nobleman who rapes her after she saves his life. Baudino understands the psychology of the persecuted, astutely motivating the self-immolating rage that consumes Miriam and leads her to undergo a complete, magical physical metamorphosis (she becomes tall, strong and beautiful) so that she can be a scourge for her enemies. Though the plot has its share of exciting sword fights, bold rescues and similar stock-in-trade, Baudino focuses on Miriam’s interior journey–her spiritual (which accompanies the corporeal) transformation through contact with the uncorrupted Elves, with the pagan priestesses known as witches and with simple Christians. Her tale acquires an elegiac power, mourning the loss of innocent sources of wisdom even as it vividly imagines them.

My Thoughts: If you ever thought I was an overly biased reviewer, please know that this book contains a romance with a broody elf boy AND a trauma recovery arc but I still ended up giving it two stars. So there!!!!!!!! I’ll be the first to admit that there is a kind of cheesy delight to be found here – the book is very prettily written and I AM a sucker for elf boys and trauma recovery…it’s just that there is also so much that is messy/dissatisfying.

Miriam is a very interesting character – incredibly angry, guarded and bitter at the start of the story because of the horrors that she has experienced. I really enjoyed seeing her process of starting to accept love and kindness while healing. That being said, the whole point is that she learns to see how many choices she has and how everything is connected, ultimately choosing love and compassion, but I can’t help but feel that much of her transformation happens only because of her magical transformation from human to elf. I would have much preferred that she stay as a human so that her changes in worldview and personality aren’t simply accounted for by her becoming magical and elfy.

While her trauma is well-written in some regards, there are a few aspects of this book’s take on rape that read astoundingly poorly in 2021. At one point broody elf boy Terrill tells Miriam that it might have been “for the best” that she was raped in the Grand Mystical Wiccan Elf scheme of things, and then later after she is almost assaulted again he tells her that she might have been able to prevent it if she had been nicer to the perpetrator lol. Now you might just think ‘Well this guy Terrill sounds like quite the motherfucker, but that’s not what the TEXT is saying.” I’d be liable to think that’s a possibility except for the fact that the elves are presented as being infinitely wise and perfect and correct about everything in this book.

Like, I think what Baudino is trying to say is basically what’s expressed in the quote I chose to start the review with. This is something that I very much agree with, which is that part of healing from trauma requires you to make some kind of meaning from what happened. (Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl is probably the best person to read if you want to know more about this). But the thing that people often don’t understand about this process is that meaning-making is by no means the same as saying “It was for the best” or “it wasn’t that bad.”

Another reason I think Terrill sucks is that he consistently insists that it isn’t Miriam’s violent actions that are wrong – the problem is that she feels anger when she does them. So his take on morality is that killing and violence are permissible as long as they aren’t performed with anger. What?????? I think I believe the absolute opposite – any emotions are valid in the aftermath of horror, but that doesn’t mean that any actions are justified based on those emotions.

Speaking of violence, the book does that annoying thing where the heroes slaughter their way through waves and waves of minions but then when they finally get to the serial rapist who is planning on leading a genocidal Inquisition they suddenly decide that there are other options and killing is bad, actually.

The book pulls this super weird card at the very end when Miriam confronts said serial rapist who is planning on leading a genocidal Inquisition. His name is Roger; Miriam reads Roger’s mind and it’s all like “Miriam saw everything that made Roger the way he was and caused him to be a serial rapist and then she fixed him with magic.” It feels incredibly cheap to simply say that Miriam learns these things without actually doing the work to explain what they actually are or present them to the reader in the sections that are from Roger’s perspective; as it stands there is absolutely no insight into his psychology during his perspective sections and he is something of a caricature of evil until Baudino says all of this at the end.

The last weird thing is that another girl, Charity, almost gets raped by Roger too, and the book mentions offhandedly that she went to stay with the elves to have her “mind healed.” Later, Mirya heals Mika’s mind from her trauma after she is tortured. If it’s possible to use elf magic to heal someone’s mind from trauma then why didn’t they offer to do that for Miriam?????

Okay, time to stop complaining about a book that nobody knows about. Like I said I kind of love it in all its 80s Wiccan feminist excess, but that stuff also makes it pretty dang dated and