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September 2009
The Night Bird by Catherine Asaro
Paula Chaffee Scardamalia is the award-winning author of Weaving a Woman's Life: Spiritual Lessons from the Loom and a freelance writer for national online and print publications. With more than 20 years of study of shamanic dream techniques, myth and symbols, Paula weaves dreams, tarot, myths and fairytales into personal consultations, workshops and seminars that suggest pathways for action and empower choices for transformation. She writes about creativity, dreams and a woman's life at www.weavingthedream.com/blog.
Although it takes place in the fantasy world of the Lost Continent (the name of the series as well), Night Bird's setting and conflicts echo our contemporary world where a struggling desert people battle to regain control of their country and their resources, and where women struggle against a cultural mindset that values the fairer sex just below livestock. Interestingly, while other novels of high fantasy involve major battles played out on bloody fields, Asaro manages to find alternative solutions to problems of power and violence for her characters that are reminiscent of our own history as well. The story's heroine, Allegra, is traveling alone in the country of Aronsdale, the land of mages, on her way to Crofts Vale, home of the Song Weavers Guild. There she will be trained in her form of spellcasting — putting people to sleep with her songs. But she is kidnapped by nomads from the country of Jazid, the desert lands where women are property and hustled across the border of Aronsdale into Jazid to be put up for auction. Frightened and uncertain of her spellcasting abilities, Allegra's sense of self is too deeply ingrained for either the nomads or her potential buyers to knock it loose from her. And her captors are reluctant to do so as her blond-haired, violet-eyed, round-breasted beauty make her too valuable to harm, even when she refuses to obey the two men who are bidding on her — the seemingly cold prince regent of the Onyx throne Marcus or the masochistic General Yargazon. When the Marcus wins her, he quickly discovers that Allegra is not like the women of his country. Her determination to hold fast to who she is and what she believes to be true forces the prince regent to reevaluate his perceptions of women and his beliefs of what is right and wrong. Even while he struggles to hold on to his old ways, influenced by the older and more violent General, Marcus falls in love with Allegra and instead of keeping her as his pleasure slave, marries her — against the advice of the General. And when she escapes Marcus, taking the young prince Ozi with her on the eve of an insurgence into another country, he follows her, not just for his brother but because he has discovered he cannot be without her. Allegra, like the heroines of Asaro's other books in The Lost Continent Series — The Fire Opal and The Misted Cliffs — is not only strong, but also compassionate, independent and intelligent. Most of us would assume, as does Allegra at first, that putting people to sleep is not a truly useful spell. But with each increasingly challenging situation that Allegra finds herself in, her power to spellcast grows and with it her ability to influence the outcome of war negotiations between Aronsdale, Jazid, and the king of the Onyx Throne, Cobalt. Asaro manages to spin a tale of countries and characters at odds while avoiding the oft-used solution of violence against violence in order to win the day. This isn't to say there isn't violence in the story for there is, from the very first scene when Allegra is kidnapped. But embodied in Allegra is a new way to look at life, and a new way to respond to violence, forcing Marcus and others to look and respond differently as well. "'...All this fighting, fighting, killing one another. Hasn't he (Prince Ozarson) suffered enough? Haven't you? When will you have given enough of yourselves? When your country and titles have destroyed both of you?' Marcus stared at her. She wondered if it had ever occurred to him that he had been just as manipulated, used and hurt by his life as had Ozarson. He didn't look at the world that way..." And though Asaro gives us a bad guy to hate and a foil to Marcus, he is not some super embodiment of evil. Instead, the General, too, has qualities of care, leadership, and loyalty. And the tyrant king, Cobalt, has his own story, his own depth, showing compassion, thoughtfulness, and intelligence in his political decisions. Asaro keeps the story tight, even while weaving politics, fantasy and romance together. She's done a thorough job of creating her fantasy world and using it to subtly engage in contemporary concerns in intelligent and creative ways. Since this was the first novel by Asaro that I've read, I went back and read the previous book in the series, Fire Opal, and can't wait to read further books in the series. |
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