Georgia raves about books: warning for length
Alright, I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but I wanna give a shout-out to two of my favorite YA series of all time. These books were formative for me, and I still love them madly.
Series #1: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede
Consisting of four books (Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons and Talking to Dragons), this is hands-down the best ‘fairy tale with a twist’ series I’ve ever read. I picked up the first book when I was about eight years old, and still a favourite almost twenty years later. The books follow the adventures of a princess named Cimorene (who begins her adventures by running away from an arranged marriage in favor of living with dragons), her friends (and in the fourth book, her son), as they thwart the attempts of power-hungry wizards to steal all magic in the world.
Cimorene is an incredible protagonist. Although she dislikes her life as a princess, this is to do with the frivolous nature of her expected duties and not any rejection of femininity. Cimorene’s position of princess-in-residence to the dragon Kazul involves cooking, cleaning and organising--all duties that Cimorene embraces as a chance to do something practical. She rapidly gains Kazul’s respect, and when it becomes clear that the Society of Wizards is up to something, Cimorene and Kazul plot together to find out what they’re doing, and stop them--with the assistance of Morwen, an extremely down-to-earth witch who has a longstanding friendship with Kazul and develops an equal bond with Cimorene; and Alianora, the princess-in-residence to another dragon. Dealing With Dragons not only passes the Bechdel Test as a whole, but passes it nearly every chapter. (Book Three has a similar standard, and the only reason that Books Two and Four don’t follow is because their POV characters are male. That being said, neither male POV displays a shred of hypermasculine BS--Daystar, protagonist of Book 4, is particularly notable for navigating through his novel almost entirely on courtesy and kindness.)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles are also notable for their take on fairy tales. The world of Cimorene and her friends is governed by the tropes of the fairy tales we all know--something that all the characters know, and navigate accordingly. One character in the first book reproaches himself for attempting to complete a certain quest on behalf of a king--when the king had three sons, and the two eldest had already failed in their task. “Anyone with sense would have seen that the youngest son was the one who would succeed; it sticks out all over,” he complains. But by unorthodox interpretations of the tropes that dominate their lives, Cimorene and her friends take control of their destinies--and help others to do so as well.
Having been written in the late 1980s/early 1990s, there isn’t a huge amount of diversity in these books. That being said, it’s explicitly mentioned that dragons choose their own names and sex, which is pretty cool!
There aren’t really any trigger warnings attached to this series--it’s entirely G-rated with no ‘onscreen’ death, and no particularly dark themes.
Series #2: The Stormbringer Trilogy (’The Rat and the Raven’, ‘Lightning Nest’, ‘Ravens Rising’) by Kerry Greenwood.
Anyone here a fan of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries? This is the same author who wrote the Phryne Fisher books. The Stormbringer Trilogy technically has four prequels--The Broken Wheel, Whaleroad, Cave Rats and Feral, but you don’t actually have to read any of them to understand the Stormbringer books. (Though I would recommend reading Feral--it gives a little more background on some of the events referenced in Stormbringer, and gives you more depth on a few background characters.) I picked up The Rat and the Raven when I was thirteen, and it has the honor of being the only book I’ve ever been so engrossed in that I read it during class.
The Stormbringer books take place in a post-apocalyptic Australia, following an event called the ‘Three Days’--when a satellite weapon either malfunctioned or was activated, burning huge stripes of the world and plunging most of humanity back into pre-Industrial Revolution tech levels. In the wake of the Three Days, superhuman talents began to emerge in the survivors: one of these is Scathe, the Mouth of the Oracle in the town of Rat, who interprets the Oracle’s predictions to the townspeople, and whose touch is fatal. Rat’s tyrant is growing increasingly paranoid about the predictions of a ‘Raven’, who will arrive to depose him--and this paranoia sets in motion events that will drive Scathe to question everything he thought he knew about himself and the world around him.
Meanwhile, Bran and his band of ‘Ravens’--mechanical expert and resident asshole Swart (who gets worse in the first book, and then better in the latter two), Maori giant Mill ‘the Hill’, the deadly archer twins Thel and Flae, and the thief Dismas--are traveling to Rat to rescue fellow University students sold as slaves to local warlords...
Kerry Greenwood excels in creating complex and fascinating characters, and the Stormbringer books are no exception. The Ravens and their distinctive personalities create a series of compelling dynamics and move through distinct character arcs--from the developing friendship between the twins and Dismas, to Swart’s abrasive nature being gradually tempered, to Bran’s development as a leader. The realistic personality clashes that arise from such a diverse group of characters are both entertaining and satisfying--the nature of human bonds is a theme that runs through all three books, coming to a gratifying conclusion in Book 3.
As for diversity, this book was an eye-opener for me. Among our protagonists, we have one gay intersex character, two explicitly bisexual characters, two arguably demisexual characters, and liberal mentions of polyamorous and queer relationships throughout.
Trigger warnings: hoo boy. Although little of the really dark stuff is onscreen, several characters have been severely abused in the past; there’s a couple of battles and a handful of deaths described; and there are also a number of references to incest, rape, torture, suicide and animal abuse. Be mindful of your comfort levels.
