McIntosh, Fiona
About the Author:
Fiona McIntosh was born and raised in Sussex, UK but now lives in Adelaide, Australia with her family.
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
3 out of 5
(1 book)
Myrren's Gift
Book 1 of The Quickening Trilogy. Young Wyl Thirsk inherits the role of General of the Morgravian Legion from his father, earning him the patronage of King Magnus but the emnity of Magnus' vindictive son, Prince Celimus. When he offers a small mercy to a young woman tortured and burned as a witch, she imparts to him a magical gift which remains dormant until he is betrayed by the newly crowned King Celimus.
A common criticism I've seen levelled at this book is that, despite being written by a woman, it's actually quite misogynistic. That's not an entirely unfair criticism, with the male heroes all being strong and decisive and the women, all very beautiful of course, just have to wait to see if they're rescued or raped/murdered. I would mitigate the criticism, however, by saying that a) this book comes from a different era of fantasy novels where female protagonists were still rare in general (no excuse, of course, but the nature of the industry at the time) and b) the treatment of the women here, usually somewhere on a scale of brutal-to-dismissive, isn't entirely inaccurate to how women have been treated historically. (I will note that, as a man - albeit a feminist one, my ability to gauge misogyny does not always equate to what I woman would see).
Worse, for me at least, were two other issues. The first is simply that Wyl is a bit of a Mary Sue (a wish-fulfilment character, if you're unfamiliar with the term), who is the greatest swordsman in the land, is rich, is naturally empathetic and is naturally talented at strategy. His is short and a bit plain-looking (and *gasp* ginger!) but eventually, through a mechanism I won't spoil, ends up sexy and an even better swordsman. The other, worst, problem in my book is how derivative the first third of the book is. At first I thought it was just a general sense of many fantasy books of the early-2000s hitting similar beats but eventually I realised that the story set-up is lifted pretty much wholesale from the movie Gladiator. There's a General, who is loved like a son by the ruler but hated by the jealous heir-in-waiting and, when said ruler dies, the heir seizes the opportunity to ambush and betray the General. The details are a little different, but the core conflict is more or less identical.
Despite all of the above, however, I didn't hate this book. Honestly, I didn't even dislike it. I found it to be perfectly readable and it kept me engaged and turning pages consistently. It's really not a bad book at all. It's a reasonably good book with some glaring flaws. I'll absolutely read the rest of the trilogy at some point to see if those flaws get addressed.
3 out of 5
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