Charlotte Kersten

“If I can bear not to force everything to fit the looms I know…if I let the world begin to weave itself, what might it weave?”

Year published: 2016

Categories: Adult, fantasy

Summary: Roadsouls explores the power of art and creativity for transforming not only one’s own life but also the world one lives in. Timid Duuni has spent her life as abused and guarded property. Blind, arrogant Raim is determined to be again what he once was: hunter, lover, young lord of the earth. Desperate to escape their lives, the two lift up their hands to the passing Roadsoul caravan, and are literally flung together naked. Each of them soon learns that saying yes to the Roadsouls is more than just accepting an invitation to a new life – it’s a commitment that can’t be reversed. For Duuni and Raim, nothing is as it was. Lost to their old lives, hating each other, they are swept out of their cruel old certainties into an unknown, unknowable, ever-changing world of journey and carnival, artists and wrestlers and thieves. Behind them, inexorable, pads a lion. Inexorable, too, is Duuni and Raim’s inevitable encounter with it, an encounter that will change everything.

My Thoughts: No star rating would really do justice to my feelings about this book, because I absolutely loved some parts and really struggled with others. I’ll do my best to explore both sides of my experience here. To start with, I think the book’s central themes are beautiful ones that are explored really effectively. The main one is what I would describe as “breaking the batten” – taking the terrifying step of embracing the world in its true complexity and diversity and embracing that you can live outside the restrictive mold that is prescribed for you.

The book makes it clear that art is one of the main ways that this can be accomplished, and Duuni’s progress over the course of the story is built upon this idea. She starts out absolutely terrified of the world and her own power because of the abuse she has experienced and the incredibly patriarchal land she grew up in, but she gradually grows more confident and self-expressive as she makes a living with her art, falls in with a mentor who teaches her the value of art as prayer, and learns to stop being scared of the power of her creation, represented by the tiger that follows her through the story.

Another main way that this idea of “breaking the batten” is conveyed is through the way that the main characters travel throughout the story, learning about different cultures and struggling through their preconceptions about the world. They learn that words mean different things in different places (there is a running joke about Raim’s name meaning different unflattering things) and they see that the tasks and roles assigned to men and women in different places vary a great deal. Raim struggles with this in particular, wondering if different things that he knows how to do, like weaving, “make him a woman” because they are gendered differently in different places.

Another thing that I really enjoyed about Roadsouls is how good Betsy James is at writing children. Nine, one of the Roadsoul kids, plays a big role in the story and is an absolutely delightful little scamp. I’m not sure how James accomplished it, but she managed to write a kid character who is clearly very annoying to the characters in the story but not the reader themselves. I also love Ratling, the little girl who Raim befriends when he is enslaved. They survive together in the terrible mill, play a game where she finds unique objects to bring him so that he can guess what they are, and escape together to a better life. The writing in this book is also absolutely lovely in a free-wheeling and poetic way.

As for the things I struggled with, the main one is Raim and Duuni’s relationship. When Duuni tells him that she was molested as a child, his response can basically be summarized by that one meme of Britta from Community: “I can excuse [myself being a rapist] but I draw the line at [pedophilia].” In essence, he tells Dunni that not every woman he has slept with has “wanted it” and he has seen them resisting and saying no as a challenge, but it’s horrifying that she was molested and he would never do that to her (spoiler alert: he does almost assault her later in the story when she says no to him!).

I understand that his preconceptions are challenged by his own debasement and helplessness over the course of the story, his growing feelings for Duuni and his protectiveness of Ratling, but the internal journey with all of this never really goes beyond him thinking “Huh, I never really thought about what it was like for a woman to be raped. I guess it’s bad.” His boundary crossing with Duuni happens after the point where he has this thought, he apologizes and gets mauled by the tiger, and then they end up together and are about to have sex at the end of the story. His development in this regard is just fairly unconvincing to me. I do think it’s entirely possible that it isn’t supposed to be a fully satisfying redemption arc, however. Maybe what I wanted from Raim’s development was too complete and tidy and James had something messier in mind.

I do think that the very ending of the book is a bit confusing in how it resolves all of this. Raim almost assaults Duuni and she flees, and then he gets kidnapped and enslaved. When he is freed and returns, he apologizes, but Duuni just tells him that she doesn’t know if she can have a relationship with him anymore. She moves into a room next to a Roadsoul who she’s kind of had a crush on this whole time and he kisses her; Raim notes that they are spending a lot of time together. So Raim is wallowing in self-pity but then Nine suddenly reports to him that Duuni said she would be his lover in a heartbeat if he would just make a move. So he does, and that’s how the book ends. Duuni’s decision feels quite abrupt to me, and it just doesn’t make a lot of sense given all of these other developments.

In a note at the end of the book, James says that she wrote the Roadsouls as an analogue for the Romani people and tried to make it clear that they aren’t “good or bad; they just are.” That’s a noble goal, but they DO buy Raim, keep him chained up, force him to fight, and lock him in a tomb where he has every good reason to believe that he is going to die. We’re later clearly supposed to think that the mills are evil for buying and “indenturing” people, but it’s strange that we apparently aren’t supposed to think the same when the Roadsouls do it.

I’d also mention that there is a lot of repetition to the plot: Duuni is almost raped and is rescued by the Roadsouls. Raim falls off a cliff; he is rescued by the Roadsouls, tricked by Doctor Amu, and then taken in by a nice and wise old lady. He gets tricked again and sold to the Roadsouls. Duuni is taken in by a nice and wise old lady, and is then tricked by Doctor Amu. She is almost raped and then she falls off a cliff. She is taken in by another wise and nice old lady and is taken in by the Gatehouse. Raim is taken in by the Gatehouse, tricked by Doctor Amu and sold to the Mill. He is rescued by the Roadsouls.

So, yeah…very messy thoughts about a very unique book. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.