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Jun. 28th, 2022 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe pitch I'd heard for E.K. Johnston's The Afterward was 'sequel to an imaginary lesbian version of the Belgariad', so way back when I started my Belgariad||Mallorean Reread Project I also bought a copy of The Afterward as a palate-cleanser, and then promptly forgot about it for two years.
Anyway, now I've finally read it and it is indeed a perfectly cute lesbian fantasy about a knight and a thief who fall in love on a Big Fantasy Quest and then have to figure out if they can include each other in their normal, non-Big-Fantasy-Quest lives. This is a great premise and I have no bone to pick with it --
--okay, that's not true, I do have one bone to pick with the idea that we're picking up a year after a triumphant and successful Fantasy Quest and one of the book's two major conflicts is that the thief has had to go back to professional thieving to support herself but keeps getting arrested because she's too famous to thieve successfully. All her friends, including the queen of the country are wildly stressed because she's running out of get-out-of-jail-free cards but doesn't have any other life skills and she is starting to be under serious threat of execution. Guys! This is a solved problem! Are you telling me that no one in this group of heroic and honorable questers has figured out the Frank Abagnale solution? I'm assigning the queen and all of her advisors to sit down right now and watch Catch Me If You Can, as homework, and then read The Queen's Thief for good measure. It is not hard to create job opportunities for a famously heroic thief if you happen to have one to hand and you are the actual queen of the actual country. Someone does finally figure out that they could just hire her to work for them, but it takes 3/4 of a book to do so, from a character who's previously been offscreen, and in the meantime my respect for everyone else really took a deep hit.
The other major conflict of the book is that the knight has to get married to someone rich to pay off her knight student loans. I actually love this one; the concept of knight student loans that even saving the world doesn't get you out of is depressingly realistic and I'm really glad to see E.K. Johnston giving relatable fantasy representation for all our deserving and valiant but debt-burdened lesbian grad students trying their hardest out here.
Anyway, now I've finally read it and it is indeed a perfectly cute lesbian fantasy about a knight and a thief who fall in love on a Big Fantasy Quest and then have to figure out if they can include each other in their normal, non-Big-Fantasy-Quest lives. This is a great premise and I have no bone to pick with it --
--okay, that's not true, I do have one bone to pick with the idea that we're picking up a year after a triumphant and successful Fantasy Quest and one of the book's two major conflicts is that the thief has had to go back to professional thieving to support herself but keeps getting arrested because she's too famous to thieve successfully. All her friends, including the queen of the country are wildly stressed because she's running out of get-out-of-jail-free cards but doesn't have any other life skills and she is starting to be under serious threat of execution. Guys! This is a solved problem! Are you telling me that no one in this group of heroic and honorable questers has figured out the Frank Abagnale solution? I'm assigning the queen and all of her advisors to sit down right now and watch Catch Me If You Can, as homework, and then read The Queen's Thief for good measure. It is not hard to create job opportunities for a famously heroic thief if you happen to have one to hand and you are the actual queen of the actual country. Someone does finally figure out that they could just hire her to work for them, but it takes 3/4 of a book to do so, from a character who's previously been offscreen, and in the meantime my respect for everyone else really took a deep hit.
The other major conflict of the book is that the knight has to get married to someone rich to pay off her knight student loans. I actually love this one; the concept of knight student loans that even saving the world doesn't get you out of is depressingly realistic and I'm really glad to see E.K. Johnston giving relatable fantasy representation for all our deserving and valiant but debt-burdened lesbian grad students trying their hardest out here.
