Sara Douglass is an Australian author, and The Wayfarer Redemption (TWR) is her first American-published fantasy. It came out in 2001 and has been compared to Robert Jordan's and Terry Goodkind's books (which may or may not be a good thing). I borrowed it from the library after noticing that it had an interesting map; some of the names, such as "Forbidden Valley", "Silent Woman Keep" and "Widowmaker Sea", intrigued me. They brought the adventurous world of role-playing gamebooks to mind, and suggested that the author knew how to make her world sound just threatening enough. After the map, however, there was a very long poem-prophecy that went on for a page and a half, and continually exhorted a creature called "StarMan" (which made me think of the television series) to fight the Destroyer, in the usual good v. evil battle. I went straight to the prologue.
The prologue is, simply, brilliant. Two women struggle through snowy mountain slopes; one is very pregnant, and the wraiths, creatures that feed on fear as well as blood, are trailing her. Because of her pregnancy, she can't run from them, and she starts feeling labor pains as she stumbles towards the shelter of the trees. Does she reach safety? Does she deliver the child? The answer's chilling, and I won't spoil that for you.
The second woman is suffering from advanced frostbite, and she collapses exhausted. A winged shape drifts down to her, and she says, "StarDrifter?" That's where the prologue ends. So, for that matter, does the suspense and the good writing.
What turns the rest of the book into a wretched mess that no rational person should have to read? Well, let's begin with the characters in this so-called fantasy...
Faraday : The heroine. I can't see her name without thinking of Physics 101. At first I thought this was a joke of some kind, or else that the author really admired Michael Faraday, but then I realized that the author is clueless about the basics of naming one's characters.
Axis, Battle-Axe of the Axe-Wielders : The hero, ladies and gentlemen. He's from the Department of Redundancy Department. Then again, he was raised by the "Brother-Leader of the Religious Brotherhood", so I can see where he gets his taste for repetition and duplication and recurrance.
Belial : No, this isn't a demon or Satan himself. He is Axis's lieutenant.
Belaguez : No, this isn't a Spanish or Portuguese character. He is Axis's horse.
Priam : No, this isn't a character from the Iliad, even though he's the king.
The Icarii : Winged creatures, named StarDrifter SunSoar, FreeFall SunSoar, GoldFeather... you get the picture. When names are altered to appear 'fantastical', either by addition of apostrophes or by creative use of capitals, a little of them goes a long way. Too much, and they become thoroughly artificial, as they do here. And phonetically, is the pronounciation any different?
In fairness to the author, there are many names that don't sound quite so ludicrous (eg. Jayme, Gilbert, Timozel, Judith, Borneheld, Yr). On the other hand, the above names are a weird cross-section of Greek and Hebrew mythology, with dashes of Spanish, Native American and science history thrown in for added flavor. There is neither rhyme nor reason to it, and each time I encountered one of these names, it jerked me right out of the story.
Interestingly, I've encountered the mismatched-names motif before, in Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy, and in Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter. However, Bishop's books have a tongue-in-cheek quality, and Swanwick's world is in constant touch with our own, an overlapping that could have given rise to the differing names. Anyway, I read those books and liked them, but what stopped me from finishing TWR?
Pages 31 – 32: “Faraday... sat soaking up the atmosphere with her intelligent green eyes... Faraday’s green eyes, chestnut hair and fine bone structure held the promise of such great beauty that she had already caught the speculative eye of a number of young nobles... Faraday looked up from the goblet, her green eyes serious now.”
What is this crap?
The end result was that I didn't have the highest opinion of either Faraday or Ms. Douglass. Later on, when the author revealed the heroine to be well-born and rich, as well as intelligent and beautiful, and all this at the tender age of 18, I lost what little connection I might have had with Faraday.
Anyway, here's the background. Axis and Borneheld are half-brothers; their mother Rivkah was King Priam's sister. Rivkah supposedly died giving birth to Axis. Since Chapter 39 (in the index at the start of the book) is helpfully titled "Rivkah Awakes", I knew she wasn't dead, but Axis believes she is, and Borneheld hates his younger half-brother because of this. No one knows who Axis's father is. I groaned, knowing that this situation would be rectified later. If you're a a bastard male in an epic fantasy, you can rest assured that your father is a famous person and you are going to save the land. That's the law, gentlemen, whether your name be Richard Cypher or Daemon Sadi or Jack the baker's boy.
But anyway, Axis is a brave handsome specimen of masculinity who attracts women like Borneheld never can. His men, the Axe-Wielders, are passionately loyal to him and would follow him through the fires of hell, though a good session with an editor might be a different matter. Of course, you know that Faraday and Axis are meant for each other. Such peerless pedestal-toppers could not be satisfied with lesser beings.
Faraday's dad betrothes her to Borneheld, who is a good fighter but not much else. Immediately I flipped to the prophecy at the start of the novel, and read the words:
A wife shall hold in joy at night the slayer of her husband.
Damn, poor Borneheld.
God, I could build a whole fiction writing course on the remnants of this novel. But let me just say a few things about prophecies, now that we're on the topic...
The ideal prophecy is :
An example of a great prophecy is the one in J. V. Jones's Master and Fool. Here is part of it...
Two houses will meet in wedlock and wealth
And what forms at the join is decay
A man will come with neither father nor mother
But sister as lover
And stay the hand of the plague.
This is what a prophecy should be - short, to the point, and not giving details of the plot away.
Anyway, now we know that Axis is going to kill Borneheld and that Faraday will be very happy about this. Just in case we hadn't gotten the point...
Despite her best efforts, Faraday could not help comparing Borneheld to his half-brother. She was sure that conversation with Axis would not be peppered with the same embarrassing silences that her conversation with Broneheld was. Whereas Faraday would somehow imagine Axis being gentle and humorous, she could only foresee Borneheld being terse and impatient.
Whenever the word "somehow" appears, it's a sign that the author either (1) didn't know how to convey the process that led up to an event or decision or (2) was too lazy to show such a process. So Faraday "somehow" confers a mantle of gentle humor on Axis and knows intuitively that they'll have exciting conversations (what about, I have no idea). Even without this, I have a knee-jerk reflex about comparisons. I don't like to see people, especially siblings, being compared to each other. It's unfair. Can't the author find a better reason for Faraday to like Axis?
Anyway, when she is told that she will be making a journey to stay with a family friend until the wedding, “‘It sounds like the best solution,’ she finally said dutifully.” What’s with the adverbs? But anyway, Axis will be escorting her to the friend's home. Okay, you know where this is going.
Faraday feels "a welter of complex emotions about Axis." She hasn’t even spoken to the man, and she feels complex emotions? Confused, she seeks advice from an older woman, late at night, only to find a naked Axis in the woman's room. To her credit, the woman tells Faraday that perhaps she'll grow to love Borneheld. But I wasn't holding my breath. So far, Faraday's acted younger than her eighteen years; you wouldn't have thought this was a medieval land where women grew up quickly and were used to the idea of marrying for reasons other than love.
And speaking of love - what, again, is with the "welter of complex emotions"? What does she feel for him - curiosity, lust, love at first sight? The author doesn't seem to want to describe these emotions. What Faraday should feel is a good slap; perhaps that would encourage blood flow to her oh-so-lovely head.
At some point along the journey, Faraday tells Axis that she wants him “More than life itself.” Granted, she’s eighteen and sheltered, but does she have to be such a romance-driven idiot? She doesn't know him. She hasn't spoken to him or spent any time alone with him. She doesn't know his thoughts, fears, hopes... oh wait, she saw him naked. It all makes sense now.
Of course, Axis kisses Faraday, since a bubble-headed eighteen-year-old named after a famous physicist is just what he wants as well. And to hell with Borneheld and promises and what-not.
Later on, the whole lengthy prophecy is repeated for Axis, in its entirety. My first question is, if it's going to be spelled out in the novel, why bother putting it before the start of the book and spoiling the little suspense there is? My second question is, why "StarMan"? It sounds like one of the Masters of the Universe, and since Axis is identified as the StarMan (knew it), we're going to hear that silly name many, many times. Each time will be one more reminder that the author apparently used all her imagination in the map and the prologue.
To spoil the perfect love of perfect Faraday and perfect Axis, the Sentinels, a group who know of the Destroyer and the prophecy and the yada yada, tell Faraday that she has to marry Borneheld so that he doesn’t get enraged and kill Axis. In other words, her needs take second place to those of the world’s. Faraday sadly agrees. It was at this point that I stopped reading, because I knew I couldn’t go any further. Why did the author do this? After all the stupidity and clichés of the first half of the book, why go through with an equally stereotyped marriage?
Firstly, we know that Axis is going to kill Borneheld, and Faraday will get the man with whom she’s infatuated. Therefore, Faraday’s marriage to Borneheld doesn’t have the same level of suspense as, say, Melli’s marriage to the duke of Bren in J. V. Jones’s Book of Words trilogy. In fact, it has no suspense whatsoever.
Secondly, it engenders sympathy for Borneheld. Whatever their faults, anyone deserves better than a spouse who marries them while longing for another person. I have no admiration for either men or women who marry under false pretences, and that was exactly what Faraday was doing. Were Borneheld completely evil and depraved, and were she marrying him in order to quickly slip a blade between his ribs, that might have been different. But she’s merely going to suffer through marriage (singing “Some day my prince will come”) until Axis arrives to save her. Which brings me to my final point…
When it comes to heroines, action is better than passivity. Always. I would have cheered for Faraday if she’d told the Sentinels : “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. My love for Axis is not something I’m prepared to lie about, nor am I going to sacrifice my dignity, my freedom and my body. I will be with Axis and I will do my best to protect him from Borneheld. The world will be saved through loyalty and love, not through deception and betrayal.”
Now that would have been one hell of a speech. It would have shown Faraday as a woman, rather than a vapid preteen; it would have made her a heroine, rather than a Barbie doll passed from hero to villain and vice versa. She would have been in charge of her destiny. She would have been the kind of heroine I cheer for, the kind who has me running out to the bookstore to see if the next novel is there yet (Dany in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is such a heroine).
But no. Since the author apparently cannot rise above clichés and soap-opera reactions, Faraday wimps out, and agrees to marry Borneheld. I stopped reading and flipped through the pages until I found Faraday’s reaction to her wedding night with Borneheld. She’s not happy about it – hey, you made your bed – and when Borneheld says that he hopes he’s given her a son, she prays that she won’t bear any children except Axis’s. Great, it’s not bad enough to cheat the poor man in marriage, now you don’t want to give him children either. Just so we know that Faraday is absolutely correct to lie to her husband and withhold children from him, she has some kind of a vision-meeting with the “Mother”, a goddess-type who assures Faraday that she’ll only bear children to Axis. Well, I’m glad we got that straightened out. Dishonest, loathsome babes have got to stick together, don’t you know.
Thoroughly revolted, I next turned to the back of the book and read the last chapter, to see if it improved at all. At the end of the novel, we find out that StarDrifter, the head of the SunSoar clan of the Icarii, is Axis’s father, and also the father of the Destroyer, the child I mentioned in the prologue. Wonderful, so this StarDrifter is supposed to be a hero, and he sees nothing wrong with spreading his seed around and leaving the women to bear the consequences (literally). Anyway, he takes Axis into the SunSoar clan (you’re welcome to him, pops) and Axis rides away from Borneheld’s castle. But before he leaves Faraday, the love of his life who married another man, he kisses her. Hard. On her mouth. In front of everyone, Borneheld included.
That was where I started wondering if Axis had thumped himself on the head with his BattleAxe one time too many. What does he think Borneheld will do after his departure, forget the kiss? Isn’t he at all worried about Faraday’s safety? I’ll bet I’m putting more thought into this than the author ever did.
And just in case the pathetic ending didn’t make it clear, there’s a sequel, one which I will not be reading. A reviewer on Amazon.com commented on the popularity of this novel by saying, "It's like they are looking to relive the success of Harry Potter. The problem is, sometimes foreign means fabulous [Rowling]. Sometimes it just means from far away [Douglass]." Exactly. The only merits of TWR are the map and the prologue. I suppose the rest of it could be used as a primer of how not to write.
Once you get past the prologue, there is nothing redeeming in this novel. What does the title mean? How could the Icarii, winged creatures, mate with "Groundwalkers"? Is Axis a mule, sterile because of his parentage? Now that I would pay money for. Does the author realize how soap-opera-ish it is to have Axis's two half-brothers, one on daddy's side and one on mom's, be evil?
But I'll buy almost any book (Margaret Weis's and Don Perrin's Draconian Measures, with its typos and mistakes, for instance) if I care about the characters. In that novel, I did, very much so. And I cared in Agatha Christie's They Came to Baghdad, where the heroine, a poor secretary called Victoria Jones, leaves England in the nineteen-forties and travels to Baghdad because she's infatuated with a young man whom she meets for a single afternoon. So she's impetuous and silly and I usually detest that in a heroine. What makes Victoria different?
Just that Dame Agatha shows us Victoria in daily life, doing a clever and wicked impression of her boss to entertain her coworkers, and getting fired for it. She tells her boss that she can be discreet, and receives a little extra money in her severance package. I liked that. I also liked the fact that (unlike Faraday) Victoria isn't a great beauty. She's got small, almost plain features, and she's a brunette. And she tells complex lies, because she likes thrills and excitement. Not having these in daily life, she tells people that she was late for an appointment because she helped the police regarding a hit-and-run. Being a brunette who has told a few shockers in my time, I was on Victoria's side right away. Therefore, after she left her workplace for good and went down to the park where she first met the young man, I wasn't likely to close the book.
And I was rewarded. Although she does a stupid thing in going almost penniless to a country where she knows no one and cannot speak the language, Victoria acts, unlike Faraday. She is never passive. She does her research on Baghdad and secures herself a place as a traveling companion, with the aid of some self-forged references. Once in Baghdad, with her money running out, she thinks on her feet, searches for the young man (it's so refreshing to have a heroine on the hunt for once) and gets herself involved in an archaeological expedition. When the young man turns out to be eminently unsuitable, she turns the tables on him and finds a better man. Now that's what I call a heroine.
And as for heroes, at the start of TWR, I was prepared to sympathize with Axis because he didn't know who his father was, and he thought his mother was dead. I'd just finished reading Daughter of the Blood, the first book of Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy, and the hero, Daemon, is tormented because he's a bastard, and has no idea who his parents are. Despite the ill-treatment, Daemon's an attractive character who does not jeopardize the people he loves. I liked Daemon a great deal. I went into TWR prepared to extend that same feeling to Axis.
Axis behaves like a world-class snot. He makes moves on an immature girl who is promised to another man, and gets snappish at her; when she asks why the Silent Woman Woods are so named, he retorts that they don't talk as much as most women. And let's not forget that going-away kiss that's more a slap in the face for Borneheld than a tender caress between lovers alone. And what does Axis gain for his childishness? Well, he finds out who his parents are, and that they're both alive and well. Faraday falls in love or lust with him, and wants to have his children, as opposed to her husband's. Daemon didn't get that by the end of the first book, and he's a thousand times better than Axis. Screw TWR; I'm off for more Black Jewels.