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A review by sherwoodreads
Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge
It's interesting that two fantasies have come out within a few days of each other that contain such similar elements that I wonder if we're about to see a resurgence in pastoral fantasy. Because I do not think that Rosamund Hodge and Naomi Novik know one another--for all I know they haven't even read the other's work.
But I'll do a post about that aspect later, because this is a review for this book.
Rachelle is a seventeen year old peasant girl studying under her aunt to become a woodwife in a small village on the edge of the great wood. Her aunt warns her against the dangerous Forestborn as well as the even more dangerous bloodbound (which for the first few chapters I read as bloodhound, and it worked that way, too) as she teaches her history and mythology, specifically the story of the Devourer who might come again to plunge the land into darkness.
Rachelle, being seventeen and determined to make her mark in the world--convinced she is special--sees a sinisterly handsome Forestborn, and is intrigued, and excited, and, well, she learns what too many seventeen year old girls learn when they believe they are special and that the rules don't apply to them because attraction and will are so much stronger.
She loses. And the resulting violence is something she must live with for the rest of her life.
Three years later she is someone very different, outcast from her village, bound to the king at the cost of her life, forced to do what she is ordered. She loathes herself, and lives as one already damned--and yet still struggles to cleave to goodness, beauty, love and trust, while hating herself for doing so, and well as despising herself for her stupidity. But of course you can never go back.
Ordinarily I don't get much into symbolism. I mostly don't read that way--I am too much a visual reader to suss out the symbolism game. But I think that those opening pages are an extended metaphor for exactly what happens to a teenage girl who mistakes lust for love: Rachelle drops her protections deliberately, one by one, the way a teenager drops her clothes when she confidently thinks that this first, overwhelming encounter with the handsomely dangerous bad boy is going to tame the beast because she's special, right? And love conquers all?
Because the rest of the novel resonates so deeply on the emotional level as Rachelle fights her own nature, and skews her worldview while trying to impose trust and love over attraction and laughter, while trying to discover what friendship means. And this is what, I think, makes the love triangle interesting here: the emotional confusion, when anger and attraction are so strong, impels the characters into a dance of dazzlement, danger, promise and pain that rings so true.
It's not only questions of love and its attendant emotions that drive the novel, but also a deft and fascinating look at faith versus superstition, myth versus truth, and all the many layers to belief. Here, the fairy tale France functions as the perfect setting, right down to the nascent printing press and minor saints movements of seventeenth century France--that strange amalgam of medieval thinking and modern all fighting for dominance. While at the center dances the court and the king in their beautiful setting, and around them the tale teller, La Fontaine, spins her own distinctive web of magic.
For those who like badass heroines, Rachelle is right up there with the best of them. Duels there are aplenty, and in the dashing mode of Dumas; the story is chockablock with the Wild Hunt, creepy critters and masked assassins and battles. While not losing sight of female friendship, and the power of simple human touch--and appreciation of little gifts, even if they aren't of the sword-swinging variety.
But I'll do a post about that aspect later, because this is a review for this book.
Rachelle is a seventeen year old peasant girl studying under her aunt to become a woodwife in a small village on the edge of the great wood. Her aunt warns her against the dangerous Forestborn as well as the even more dangerous bloodbound (which for the first few chapters I read as bloodhound, and it worked that way, too) as she teaches her history and mythology, specifically the story of the Devourer who might come again to plunge the land into darkness.
Rachelle, being seventeen and determined to make her mark in the world--convinced she is special--sees a sinisterly handsome Forestborn, and is intrigued, and excited, and, well, she learns what too many seventeen year old girls learn when they believe they are special and that the rules don't apply to them because attraction and will are so much stronger.
She loses. And the resulting violence is something she must live with for the rest of her life.
Three years later she is someone very different, outcast from her village, bound to the king at the cost of her life, forced to do what she is ordered. She loathes herself, and lives as one already damned--and yet still struggles to cleave to goodness, beauty, love and trust, while hating herself for doing so, and well as despising herself for her stupidity. But of course you can never go back.
Ordinarily I don't get much into symbolism. I mostly don't read that way--I am too much a visual reader to suss out the symbolism game. But I think that those opening pages are an extended metaphor for exactly what happens to a teenage girl who mistakes lust for love: Rachelle drops her protections deliberately, one by one, the way a teenager drops her clothes when she confidently thinks that this first, overwhelming encounter with the handsomely dangerous bad boy is going to tame the beast because she's special, right? And love conquers all?
Because the rest of the novel resonates so deeply on the emotional level as Rachelle fights her own nature, and skews her worldview while trying to impose trust and love over attraction and laughter, while trying to discover what friendship means. And this is what, I think, makes the love triangle interesting here: the emotional confusion, when anger and attraction are so strong, impels the characters into a dance of dazzlement, danger, promise and pain that rings so true.
It's not only questions of love and its attendant emotions that drive the novel, but also a deft and fascinating look at faith versus superstition, myth versus truth, and all the many layers to belief. Here, the fairy tale France functions as the perfect setting, right down to the nascent printing press and minor saints movements of seventeenth century France--that strange amalgam of medieval thinking and modern all fighting for dominance. While at the center dances the court and the king in their beautiful setting, and around them the tale teller, La Fontaine, spins her own distinctive web of magic.
For those who like badass heroines, Rachelle is right up there with the best of them. Duels there are aplenty, and in the dashing mode of Dumas; the story is chockablock with the Wild Hunt, creepy critters and masked assassins and battles. While not losing sight of female friendship, and the power of simple human touch--and appreciation of little gifts, even if they aren't of the sword-swinging variety.