I’m just going to come out and say it. The best fantasy books I encountered this week – Uprooted and The Invisible Library – didn’t have these stupid maps in the front. That’s definitely sample enough to root out poorly drawn fantasy maps as a serious drain on the quality of a book. It’s a rigorous, scientific analysis, and I hope that from now on fantasy authors will knock it off with the damn maps. There. Now it’s said.
Onto Myrren’s Gift, then. Which, by the way, has a map.
The prologue to Myrren’s Gift is wholly unnecessary. It gives us some history (that we don’t yet need) and some character backstory (that could have been covered in a couple of paragraphs during chapter one). Bizarrely, the prologue is clunky and ungainly in ways that the first chapter isn’t, save one passage describing a castle that was so dull it blurred before my very eyes. It’s as if the prologue wasn’t even proof-read for readability. The first chapter promises a story with conflict at its heart – between the newly sworn in King’s Champion, Wyl, and his King-in-Waiting, Celimus. Though Wyl is sworn to protect Celimus with his life, the Prince has few if any redeeming qualities, putting desire and duty at odds from the off.
The titular Myrren, I noticed, is relegated to the opening sentence of Chapter Two, and according to the blurb she dies pretty quickly, leaving her “gift” upon Wyl, who witnesses her death. I had hoped for another woman-as-protagonist, as the previous six books I sampled this week went for, but the fantasy tradition of men left front and centre seems to have finally reared its ugly head in Myrren’s Gift. The only women mentioned are either dead, or young girls who worry about nothing but playing with dolls. A nine year old sister to Wyl is described as young enough that the death of her father doesn’t affect her because she is presented with a kitten, which is utterly ludicrous. Does McIntosh really think women so simple and vain? It would seem so – Celimus and Wyl both have dead mothers defined only by their love of fashion and their great beauty.
If yesterday’s Empress contained brutal depictions of sexism, Myrren’s Gift is laced with the real thing in a more subtle manner. There’s no outright hatred here of women, but instead a remarkable absence of them; they are mere props for the men in the story, which is always a shame to see from a female author. Perhaps this will change further into the book, but my hopes aren’t high, and the prose doesn’t flow all that well either. Reading Myrren’s Gift elicits the same sensation as running your hand along an unevenly gravelled path: it jolts, and jabs, and requires some real work before it’ll be fit for purpose.
Rating: meh, and also bleh
Keep reading? My first “no” of the blog, but maybe I’ll come back to it when I’ve read everything else
Maybe you disagree, and would like to buy Myrren’s Gift from Hive, but I don’t endorse the decision.
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