Charlotte Kersten

“I see you in the light of the water, in the swaying of the young trees in the spring wind. I see you in the shadows of the great oaks, I hear your voice in the cry of the owl at night.”

Year published: 1999

Categories: Adult, fantasy, retelling (The Six Swans)

Summary: Lovely Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters. Bereft of a mother, she is comforted by her six brothers who love and protect her. Sorcha is the light in their lives: they are determined that she know only contentment.

But Sorcha’s joy is shattered when her father is bewitched by his new wife, an evil enchantress who binds her brothers with a terrible spell, a spell which only Sorcha can lift—by staying silent. If she speaks before she completes the quest set to her by the Fair Folk and their queen, the Lady of the Forest, she will lose her brothers forever.

When Sorcha is kidnapped by the enemies of Sevenwaters and taken to a foreign land, she is torn between the desire to save her beloved brothers, and a love that comes only once. Sorcha despairs at ever being able to complete her task, but the magic of the Fair Folk knows no boundaries, and love is the strongest magic of them all…

My Thoughts: two years ago I read Heart’s Blood and it made me sob, then last year I read Dreamer’s Pool and it also made me sob, and now I’ve read Daughter of the Forest and…well, shockingly it left me a giant mess of emotions, crying away. Guys, I haven’t read a book where the main character faces such a nearly-incessant barrage of suffering since I finished Robin Hobb’s several series about FitzChivalry Farseer. Combine the constant onslaught of suffering with some Grade A Yearning in one of Marillier’s trademark swoony romances and you’ve got yourself an emotional sucker punch of a book.

I think the closest thing I’ve read to Daughter of the Forest would be Deerskin by Robin McKinley – both books are lush and beautiful and sorrowful, fairy tale-based and largely focused on the young protagonist’s recovery after her world is shattered by being raped. The romance plays a much bigger role in this book than Deerskin while in Deerskin the central relationship is between the protagonist and her dog, but I do think both are fairly excellent portrayals of survival through trauma. Sorcha is an incredibly strong character, and as I desperately wanted to see her be okay it was a joy to watch each little triumph as she started to heal, trust and save her brothers and herself over the course of the book. Her struggle is harrowing and well-written and you truly understand the extent of her devastation and fear, while a few aspects of her story particularly stand out to me. While there are symptoms like nightmares and flashbacks you really get to see how being raped has entirely altered the way that she fundamentally sees the world. Her cognitive distortions about men are particularly interesting to me, like the way she believes that Red is only good to her because the fae have compelled him to protect her.

As far as the actual rape scene itself goes, I’ll say that my initial response was that it was unnecessarily graphic. I posted asking about this on Goodreads and got some really interesting responses. What I realized is that everyone has a different line in the sand as far as what feels like too much for them…and while sexual assault is often used in an unnecessary and gratuitous way in fantasy stories, I don’t think it is necessarily gratuitous to show the horror of what it’s like in someone’s head while they are being raped if the point of the story is to explore the experience of sexual assault and its aftermath in a meaningful way. In my opinion Daughter of the Forest does this very effectively.

I will say, however, that it did seem to me that the consensual sex scene in the book isn’t as explicit as the assault scene, and I wish this had been different. I am not necessarily saying “I want Juliet Marillier to write explicit sex scenes”… but I’m NOT not saying that, either. Like, I really really don’t need to know how big a rapist’s dick is, Juliet, but I would be 100% into knowing that about her wonderful love interest. We get to live in Sorcha’s head while she is being assaulted so why can’t we be in her head while she’s having a frankly excellent time of it? Instead it’s just like, Red checks for consent, I have a flashback and he comforts me, my body opens for him like a flower (shudder) and then… end of scene. Idk, this is definitely subjective and maybe I’m just being a sensitive weirdo, but it kind of feels strange to me.

It’s easy, in a story about rape and sexism, to write off men altogether, and I really appreciate Marillier’s approach of regularly showing them in their goodness and complexity as human beings too. I love Red with his gentle nature, his deep thoughtfulness and his dedication to Sorcha through all their trials. Marillier’s romances are really something else -they’re the perfect amount of fraught yearning and sweetness and emotional intelligence and kind but broken people coming together and supporting one another. The only Thing about this story is that Sorcha is sixteen at the end when she marries Red, while he’s in his early twenties. Okay, YES, it’s set in ancient times when the age of consent wasn’t a thing and she’s being historically accurate! I know that! I know and respect that others may feel differently but my take on this is that you kind of have to balance historical accuracy with the values of the present day reader and how they’re going to respond to the story. Again, it feels like a weird component of teenage Sorcha’s healing journey to fall in love with an adult man while everyone keeps talking about how young and tiny she is.

Richard is a despicable villain, and I almost wish there was something redeemable or nuanced about him because he is more or less entirely horrible, while I love the depth and complexity of Sorcha’s relationship with all of her brothers. It rings so true that they are so controlling and protective of her after she saves them and turns them back into humans, because they still see her as a child in their minds and they can’t truly understand how much she has grown and suffered to end their curse. It’s also remarkable that each of the six manages to have such a distinct voice and personality.

Daughter of the Forest is also beautifully-written and indescribably atmospheric. You truly feel transported to the ancient Irish forest and its magical, fae secrets; you truly feel the sorrow and suffering as well as the sweetness and joy. Every one of Marillier’s books that I’ve read has been evocative in this way, and I think she’s a true master of this kind of descriptive and emotional writing. The ending is also absolutely perfect in my opinion, as her brothers gradually depart to live the lives they were denied for so long. I wouldn’t say that this is a read for the faint heart, but it’s so very worth it. I’ll be building up my emotional reserves again, and I’ll be back to sobbing over another Juliet Marillier book soon enough.