(no subject)

[skygiants]

Recently I got a mysterious urge to reread Daughter of the Forest, the first book in Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters series. I read these books when they came out and the sum total of what I remembered about them is:

- six swans fairytale?
- vaguely Celtic?
- romance of some sort?

None of which is inaccurate, although I did not remember ... that the central romance was between a grown adult and a fourteen-year-old girl .....

Daughter of the Forest starts out in medieval Ireland with Sorcha and her distant father and her six brothers: Oldest Brother, Sporty Brother, Nerdy Brother, Other Sporty Brother, Sensitive Spiritual Brother, and Baby Brother Who Loves Puppies. Sorcha is the youngest, but she is Wise For Her Years and knows all about herbs and healing and gardens, which is nice, although sort of mysterious since everyone acknowledges that she is the only person around who has these skills and where ... did she learn them from ...?

Sensitive Brother also has language and philosophy skills that he picked up from somewhere. Nerdy Brother knows ALL the things, but this is explained by the fact that Druids have been secretly coming in the night to teach him things since he was a baby, as Druids do.

Anyway the plot really begins when Sensitive Spiritual Brother decides to secretly rescue a teenaged British prisoner that their father is trying to torture for information, because he has realized that prejudice and torture is wrong. Twelve-year-old Sorcha gets recruited to knock the guards out using special sleeping herbs, and then to spend several months healing up the sad, tortured teenaged British prisoner.

(SEVERAL OTHER BROTHERS: Hey, does anyone know where Sorcha is?
SENSITIVE BROTHER: Um ... you know, she's around, just busy, I guess .......)

The sad British prisoner threatens to kill Sorcha a few times, but then they bond and she promises to stay with him until he's well, but then their father comes home unexpectedly and Sorcha has to go home! to meet her father's new EVIL WIFE!

SORCHA: I can tell within thirty seconds of meeting this woman that she's EVIL.
SEVERAL OTHER BROTHERS: Yes we are all in agreement, 100% EVIL.
SPORTY BROTHER: I dunno, I think she's hot.
SEVERAL OTHER BROTHERS: ... except Sporty Brother who will probably come to his senses eventually.

Which he does! ... when their evil stepmother turns them all into swans, for no particular reason.

EVIL STEPMOTHER: Sorcha, you may be still human, but rest assured, there is absolutely nothing you can do about this, so ... good luck!
THE QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES: Actually, Sorcha, there is a way to break the curse! If you make six shirts out of stinging nettles, and don't speak until they're done, and don't explain anything to anyone about why you're doing it, INCLUDING your swan brothers, then put the shirts ON the swan brothers, everything will be FINE.
SORCHA: This seems like a strange and very convoluted set of instructions --
THE QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES: EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE. It's all according to fairy plan!

So Sorcha, alone with her brother's pet dog, sets down to a silent life of nettle-weaving in a hut by a pond for a year or so. Twice a year her brothers turn up and get to be human again and attempt to be helpful, but they are not very.

SENSITIVE SPIRITUAL BROTHER: I've had terrible visions of what might happen to you if you stay here, Sorcha!
SORCHA, THROUGH TELEPATHIC SIBLING CONNECTION: So what are the visions about? Maybe I should move?
SENSITIVE SPIRITUAL BROTHER: Oh, never mind, it's probably not very important.

[ONE DEAD DOG + AWFUL GANG-RAPE LATER]

A NOW HORRIBLY-TRAUMATIZED SORCHA, THROUGH TELEPATHIC SIBLING CONNECTION: TURNS OUT IT WAS IMPORTANT, ASSHAT.

(SOME BROTHER: Hey, don't you think it's a little regrettable how Sorcha's job, as the only girl, is basically to redeem us all through constant, escalating, extremely gendered suffering?
ANOTHER BROTHER: Dude, do you want to be a swan forever? No? Then shhhhhhhhhh.)

THE QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES: Sorcha, time to go! The fairies say you need to take a boat to the next bit of your destiny, pack up your stinging nettle shirts and move! Up and at 'em!
SORCHA: >:( >:( >:(

So, despite being horribly traumatized, Sorcha obediently packs up her stinging nettle shirts and goes sailing off, where she encounters some Britons, including, of course, her future love interest.

RED: I'm looking for my missing brother! Have you seen him, quiet girl?
SORCHA: ...
RED: SOMEHOW I FEEL LIKE YOU KNOW SOMETHING. You're coming with me across the sea to England until you remember how to talk, which I'm SURE you will sooner or later.
SORCHA: .... >:( >:( >:(
RED'S FRIENDS: Um ... buddy, why are we kidnapping a mute teenager and taking her home with us?
RED: Reasons.
RED'S FRIENDS: .... >:( >:( >:(

So Red drags Sorcha home and settles her among his friends and family, none of whom are exactly thrilled to have a weird mute Irish fifteen-year-old hanging out sewing creepy nettle shirts in their basement. Sorcha is not 100% thrilled about this either, but hey, it's a place to sew nettle shirts!

Red also has an Evil Uncle who occasionally shows up to leer and be a creeper. Red is supposed to marry Evil Uncle's Actually Pretty Chill Daughter, but! on the day of the wedding!

RED: Hey Sorcha! Want to come on a field trip with me to the beach?
SORCHA: ......??
RED: OK, so thing one, I'm calling off my wedding and going on another brother-hunting trip.
SORCHA: ....
RED: But I'm a little nervous about leaving you here alone, what with my Evil Uncle and the fact that most people here hate you, soooo I was thinking, what about if I marry you? Just for status and protection! Because everyone who currently thinks the inexplicable mute fifteen-year-old I keep in my basement is a spy or a witch who has me under a spell will definitely chill out if I even more inexplicably marry the inexplicable mute fifteen-year-old.

Sorcha, unfortunately, sees nothing wrong with this plan.

Red takes off, and Sorcha ... keeps sewing, until Nerdy Brother, who has extra special druid swan powers, turns up on one of his two human days a year to check in. Evil Uncle catches them hugging and promptly throws Sorcha in the dungeon where he comes every day to cackle and monologue until she can be burned at the stake as a spy-witch-adultress! THE MOST GENDERED DEATH SENTENCE OF ALL.

Fortunately, Sorcha is mooostly finished all her shirts by this point, so right as she's about to be burned at the stake she calls in her swan brothers and turns them all human, and also right about this time Red turns up again, WITH his brother, the tortured teenager that Sorcha saved all the way back in the beginning of the book, and ALSO there's a sympathetic priest who's like "this girl who just turned seven swans into Irish people is definitely NOT a witch, definitely a SAINT, let's all congratulate her on how well she endured all her gendered suffering!" so everything is fine.

VARIOUS BROTHERS: OK and now we are going to take our baby sister AWAY from these people who tried to burn her at the stake!
RED: But we're married!
RED'S BROTHER: You're married? Wait, hang on, I thought you were going to marry me!
SORCHA: WTF? Where is this last-act love triangle coming from?
RED'S BROTHER: Uh, you tenderly nursed me through terrible wounds? That means romance, right?
SORCHA: When we met, I was twelve ....?
RED'S BROTHER: I mean, OK, yes, but at least I was also a teenager at the time, which you must admit is SLIGHTLY less weird than when my brother, A GROWN-ASS MAN, decided to marry you three years later.

Anyway, Sorcha decides to go home to Ireland with her brothers and leave Red, even though he is her True Love, because, well, everyone there did pretty much decide to burn her at the stake.

SENSITIVE SPIRITUAL BROTHER: I understand how you feel, Sorcha, I too have had to leave my true love behind.
SORCHA: ...
SENSITIVE SPIRITUAL BROTHER: In a lake. With our baby cygnets.
SORCHA: ...this is perhaps too much information.

But after a year of pining, guess who turns up at her house in Ireland but RED!

RED: I have loved you ever since I brought you home, a terrified, traumatized, mute fourteen-year-old girl that I kidnapped to live in my basement. In fact, I love you so much I decided to give up my home, my lands, and my entire future to be the weird British son-in-law on the Irish estate of the people who captured and tortured my little brother.
SORCHA: Awesome! Public makeouts?
A BROTHER: Ew! Gross.
ANOTHER BROTHER: Ugh, get a room.

THE QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES: FYI, this was destined all along, because your babies are going to be Important.
SORCHA: Couldn't you have finagled it in a way that involved, idk, less awful gendered trauma and suffering?
THE QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES: Mmmm, nah.

And that's Daughter of the Forest! I think ... probably I will not reread the sequels, though I did read the Wikipedia descriptions. The next one has accidental incest!

Comments

[watersword]

.....I think I noped out of this book about the time of the gang-rape. This was an EXCELLENT choice.

[skygiants]

I had TOTALLY forgotten the gang-rape in the fifteen years since I last read this book.

[newredshoes]

Oh my god, I had this book on my shelf all through middle and high school and never... got that far. O_o

[skygiants]

If I remember right, it was one of my middle school BFF's favorites! But ... neither of us had excellent taste in middle school.

[ceitfianna]

I've often wondered about these books, they have pretty covers and now I will take them off my list. Wow, this really highlights how messed up this fairy tale is though it didn't have all the baby dying that appears in the Jim Henson Storyteller version. I recommend that, its a horrible story but beautifully done.

[skygiants]

The covers are extremely pretty! I think that same artist might have done a bunch of nineties-era vaguely Celtic fantasy covers -- there's a certain look to them that's sort of familiar.

I DID appreciate that this version ditches the dead babies.

[meganbmoore]

Storyteller is EXCELLENT. There were a couple I don't care much about, but the ones I did was great.

[cahn]

So... for twenty (?) years I have mistakenly and inexplicably thought this book was about Maid Marian!

[hokuton_punch]

Heh, I think that one's Lady of the Forest! Which I know I have read, but I don't remember much about it except it explicitly mentions Richard I being into dudes.

[kalloway]

probably I will not reread the sequels, though I did read the Wikipedia descriptions. The next one has accidental incest!

My first, terrible thought, was that it hopefully doesn't involve the cygnets.

[skygiants]

I WOULDN'T PUT IT PAST HER

[annotated_em]

...wow. Once upon a time, a friend recommended these to me. I think I'm glad I didn't ever follow through on that rec.

[skygiants]

I think everyone who read 'em and loved 'em did it once upon a time, they are perfectly targeted to a fourteen-year-old audience.

[ambyr]

Thank you for convincing me that I never need to read this book!

[skygiants]

I am here to help!

[aquamirage]

One of my friends was SUPER TOTALLY OBSESSED with these books when we were in high school, but I never looked into them at all. Thank you for answering many questions and closing that circle for me...?

[skygiants]

Honestly I think MANY people were obsessed with them in high school, they hit exactly the right level of teenaged angst. And when you're fourteen, you don't think it's weird that the heroine is also fourteen ..... and the hero is .... not .........

[wakuchan]

I attempted to read these books about 12 years ago and I too noped the fuck out around the whole gratuitous, awful rape bit. I'm glad to hear I apparently wasn't missing much! (and I will continue to side-eye forever, just a little bit, the friend who recommended them.)

[skygiants]

I was about to say '12 years ago is probably when I actually read them too!' but hah, no, it was probably more like 17 years ago. Long enough ago that I enjoyed them at the time, anyway, so it's not like I can side-eye all that much.

[issenllo]

I remember the gangrape thing now (had blocked it out) and only sheer obstinacy made me finish the book and then I realised there were sequels? No thanks. All that silent suffering was tedious.

[skygiants]

To be fair, it's hard to write a Six Swans take that doesn't involve lots of silent, gendered suffering. On the other hand, why add an extra dose of gratuitous suffering that's not in the original fairy tale? THERE'S ALREADY SO MUCH.

[ashen_key]

I read these. And...two of the sequels? Or was it three. And. I remember so little of any of this. Gang-rape what. And. Wasn't Sorcha older. And.

Oh, teenage!me.

(Although I remember about the brother/swan and IDK, I kinda feel sad for him. No one ASKED if he wanted to be turned back, MAYBE HE WAS HAPPY. :| )

Maybe weirdly, I was always disappointed in the sequels for not being as messed up fairytail-esque. And more 'generic historical fantasy with messed up magic'.

[brownbetty]

I know! I remember none of this! Obviously it wasn't the bit I was in to, so I just elided it.

[sovay]

The next one has accidental incest!

JUST SO LONG AS IT DOESN'T INVOLVE THE CYGNETS.

(Unknown parentage is a killer in these stories.)

[skygiants]

Someone else is going to have to jump on that bomb to find out! I'VE DONE MY PART.

[thistleingrey]

On the ?plus side, this post has reminded me that another friend has recommended Wildwood Dancing, repeatedly, and I've identified a public library that can loan me an epub someday. (On hold.) So, um, good? unless anyone here has a strong caution against that one?

[evewithanapple]

I don't have any strong caution against it, but I do recall finding it rather boring and bland, and it has the same dynamic as in Sevenwaters #2, where the older sister is horribly traumatized and depressed and the younger sister is like "BUCK UP SIS, WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS." Also, it tries to pull a surprise!Frog Prince ending, which fails because it's blindingly obvious that the frog is a prince from page one.

[genarti]

WOW. I read this book, and its sequel! (I never read the third.) I HAD DEFINITELY FORGOTTEN MANY PLOT POINTS. Like the entire dead-dog-and-gang-rape bit, golly. And the age difference. And the tortured British prisoner's existence. Basically everything that wasn't in the original tale, layered with a vague impression of numinous pretty prose and a memory of the gorgeous cover art.

I. Well. Golly.

[skygiants]

I mean, the prose is indeed Tiny Gen-targeted vaguely Celtic numinous! :P

[vass]

I think I'll pass.

But I am curious: did the Tristan and Iseult elements of the story go anywhere?

[skygiants]

I'm not as versed in the Tristan and Iseult except the vaguest outlines, tell me which bits you're thinking of and I will try to answer!

[cinaed]

Haha, interestingly, I read a book by Juliet Marillier which was a take on the Twelve Dancing Princesses (though there were only five daughters) that had two dudes being in love with their cousin though at least...I think she was...no, you know what, she might've been a teenager and the cousins were both definitely in their twenties. (Also cousins, like live-right-next-door to you, our fathers are brothers, cousins.) I was mostly weirded out by the older sister's plot line which was also uh self-sacrificing and weird. Also the Queen of the Fairies is ALSO super unhelpful in this one too!

[skygiants]

Someone asked about that above! Wildwood Dancing, which I read many years ago, so I went to go look up what I thought about it. It turns out that I thought the frog love interest was really sketchy.

...I probably thought other things as well, but this is the prevailing impression.

[evewithanapple]

everyone acknowledges that she is the only person around who has these skills and where ... did she learn them from ...?

It was ~THE FOREST~, Becca. All bizarre plot holes in these books can be explained by ~THE FOREST~ protecting the Sevenwaters family, except in cases of gangrape, British kidnappers, evil stalkers, abusive husbands, or witchy stepmothers. Oh, and if you ever express a desire to leave ~THE FOREST~ you are probably an irredeemable hobag who deserves accidental incest and an abusive husband AS WE LEARN IN BOOK 2. We don't talk about Book 2.

[skygiants]

To be fair, ~THE FOREST~ makes it pretty clear that it has one and only one goal, and that goal is PROPHETIC BABIES. Human suffering is irrelevant!

(Did you ever read the Cheysuli books? That was the main thing I was reminded of, mostly because it also features lots of Celtic names and a weird prophetic breeding program!)

[luzula]

So...cloth from nettles was an actual thing, and I don't think it was painful to make (or wear). It's called "nättelduk" in Swedish. Or is she weaving cloth from live nettles? In that case it would wither and fall apart, but I guess it only has to hold together for one wearing. Also, she could wear gloves and then it wouldn't be painful, or was she forbidden to do that?

...I'm giving too much thought to this, aren't I.

[ellen_fremedon]

I don't think it was painful to make (or wear)

The nettles were retted and hackled like linen, so it wouldn't have been painful, and the fiber was even finer than flax. Picking the nettles might have been painful, though I think there's a trick to grasping the stalk in the direction of the growth of the prickles.

[meganbmoore]

I thought about rereading this a while back,, and am glad I opted out. I DO think I enjoyed the sequels more though?

[skygiants]

I vaguely remember enjoying the sequels less, actually! But for the life of me I could not tell you why. All I remember about the third one in particular is a weird sense of disappointment.

[littledust]

*laughing* Oh goodness, my ten-year-old self had some interesting taste in books. I remember the gang rape, but not the HUGE HONKING AGE DIFFERENCE. Maybe I assumed Sorcha was older/Red was younger because all teenagers seemed old at that point?

[skygiants]

I definitely did not blink an eye at the age difference when I was a kid! It never bothered me either when I read them. But I never blinked an eye at age differences when I was a kid, there are many books I still love that if I'd come to them as an adult I'd have been like WHOA WAIT. HANG ON.