Several years ago I attended a small science fiction convention at Amherst College, and it was all because of my college roommate’s nephew.
Really. My old roommate and I had been watching with some bemusement as her eldest nephew, Nathaniel, revived the SF and fantasy club at Amherst. He’d encountered many of the same issues we’d had to deal with when founding our college SF and fantasy club at Smith umpty-mumble years earlier, and there were times when I felt like was watching my life being lived over again. It only got weirder when Nathaniel asked me to be a sort of unofficial fan guest at the con, along with our friend Walter and a couple of writers I hadn’t yet read. It wasn’t as bad as being a Christian Scientist with appendicitis, as the saying goes, but I still felt rather like Ross Perot’s running mate more than once.
Fortunately the con went very well. I did my fan panels, the pros did their readings, and I got to hang out with Walter, which is always a treat. And since Walter was hanging out with the other pros, that’s where I found myself more than once.
One of the pros was a small, friendly woman from upstate New York. She’d written a few fantasy novels that I’d heard good things about but hadn’t yet read, so I picked up the first book in each series to see if they lived up to the advance billing. I didn’t actually start reading until after the con was over and I’d said good-bye to Nathaniel and Walter for the long, hazardous trek back to Easthampton, so I didn’t have the opportunity to give the author feedback at the time.
The cover of one showed a man hanging from a roof looking down at bunch of soldiers in what appeared to be a courtyard of some sort. I considered it, decided it could wait, then picked up the other book. The cover art, all in purples and grays and blacks, was of a woman suspended against a tree in a barren, leafless wood. It wasn’t the best I’d ever seen but it was more interesting than Roof Guy, and soon I found myself flipping through the book to read the review quotes, which were rapturous. I then read the first few pages.
Soon I had forgotten about the weirdly intriguing art as I drew myself a bath on automatic, got in the tub, and began to read in earnest. Some time later I realized that the bath water had gone cold, it was time for bed since I had to work the next day, and I had only gotten halfway through the book. And I was mentally kicking myself not buying the sequel when I’d had the chance since I knew I’d finish it the next night and would be wild to find out what happened next.
That book was The Bone Doll’s Twin, the first volume of a series called The Tamir Triad. I’ve read these three books at least seven or eight times since that first tentative look, and finally caved and bought the e-versions because I’d dropped mine in the bathtub so often that the books have swelled to approximately three times their original size. I also read the book with Roof Guy and its four (and counting) sequels, and was both amused and delighted to realize that Roof Guy was the grandson of a minor character in the Triad. I've read both series often enough that I had to buy clean new copies this spring because I finally had reached the point of being too embarrassed by my poor waterlogged paperbacks to loan them out.
The author of these books was Lynn Flewelling. Let me introduce you to her world.
The story that unfolds in The Tamir Triad is as old as King Arthur, with echoes of Hamlet: a usurper has claimed the throne of Skala after the death of his mother, Agnalain the Mad, then systematically eliminated the rightful heirs until the royal family has been reduced to himself and his son. He has no idea that a true heir has been born and raised in safety, and only awaits the right moment to step forward and claim the stolen throne.
What makes these three books so special is a deceptively simple twist on the old formula: the rightful heir, Prince Tobin, is actually a girl. Skala has been ruled by a line of warrior queens ever since a prophecy centuries earlier stated that the country would remain free only as long as a daughter of the royal line sat the throne. Tobin, later known as Tamir, has been raised as a boy in accordance with a second prophecy that Skala must have another queen to avert disaster, and to protect her, she's been deliberately kept in ignorance of her true self to prevent her from revealing herself before the time is right.
Putting a woman back on the throne means more to Skala than merely restoring the royal line. Warrior queens naturally want other women at their side, which means that Skalan women have come to enjoy tremendous legal and social freedom at all levels of society; women can and have led the armies, held municipal and political offices, and run their own businesses. There's also a good deal of sexual freedom since the queens can and do take as many consorts as they need to bear a daughter, and if it's good enough for the queen, it's good enough for the commoner.
All this has changed since Agnalain’s son displaced his half-sister and took power. Royal women are dying without explanation, and those of lesser rank are slowly being forced out of positions of power and sent back to their fathers’ hearths. Seasoned officers work as cooks and housekeepers to earn their bread, while girls whose grandmothers were great generals are not allowed to touch a sword. Far worse, the gods have withdrawn their favor from Skala since King Erius took power. Plague, drought, war that keeps the cream of the army away from home for years…disaster follows upon disaster with no end in sight. The only thing that will restore the land and its people is a new queen, and with all the royal girls dead, where can she be found?
That is where Tobin’s story begins. Born the daughter of the king’s younger sister, he is given a male body thanks to a powerful, gruesome form of magic that required the death of his twin brother at birth. He is raised as a prince far from the royal court, where he learns all the warrior arts that his fragile, unstable mother could never have mastered. It is only after his parents’ deaths and his move to the city that Tobin learns that he is really a girl, and that only after he starts to menstruate just before his twelfth birthday. Naturally he’s horrified – who wouldn’t be? He’s even more horrified when the wizards who have protected him from birth tell him that he must eventually displace his beloved cousin Korin and take his place as queen.
That’s only the first book. The next two, Hidden Warrior and The Oracle’s Queen, go into detail about he implications of Tobin’s life at court as a boy who is actually a girl, his eventual transformation into Tamir, and the reaction of friends, family, and the country at large. At one point in the third book Tamir complains bitterly to a friend that it’s bad enough having to rule a country, pacify rebels loyal to Korin, and repel an invading army...without also having to learn to walk and fight in a skirt. Add in that she’s fallen in love with her loyal squire, Ki, who is still reeling from the knowledge that his best friend is actually a girl…that the women who were forced out of the army are flocking to fight under her banner because she is their only hope for a normal life…that the oracle that prophesied her birth isn’t done with her by any means…that the ghosts of her mother and her dead twin still haunt her…and that she never, ever actually wanted to be a girl, let alone queen….
I think you can see why I’ve read these books over and over again. And it’s not just for the complex, beautifully handled plot, oh no. Very few of the characters are completely good or evil; the wizard who’s sworn to protect Tamir has no qualms about ordering her twin, Brother, to be killed at birth so she can take on his appearance and thus live long enough to rule, while the usurper Erius seized power only after learning that his insane mother planned to have him and his seven year old sister executed as traitors. Tamir herself may have been born and trained to save Skala and restore the land and its people, but she rejects her female self until almost the end despite taking on women’s flesh. It’s only after she nearly loses Ki in battle that she is forced to accept the final healing that separates her from her twin and brings them both the peace they need to take the next step, whether to a peaceful death (Brother) or a long and productive life (Tamir).
Gender roles, destiny, the place of women in society, the price one must pay to restore balance…all are considered and explored in these books, often with unexpected results. At one point a character tells Tamir that no birth comes without blood and pain, and she learns the truth of this as she comes to accept her rightful place in the world. Even if you don’t normally read fantasy, you owe it to yourself to give these books a try. You'll be pleasantly surprised by the depth and richness concealed by a weird little painting of a woman in a tree.
Flewelling also writes another fantasy series set about five hundred years after the Tamir books. Skala is now ruled by Tamir's descendant Idrilain II from Rhiminee, the new city Tamir founded to replace the capitol destroyed by an invading army at the end of her uncle's reign, and a glorious mess of wealth, beauty, poverty, filth, and intrigue it is. The gender equality hinted at in the Tamir books is firmly in place by now, while same-sex relationships are accepted if somewhat rare. The Watchers, a spy network begun by the wizards who protected Tamir, susses out trouble before it can threaten Queen or country, and helps keep Skala safe and free against the attacks of her old enemy, the slave holding nation of Plenimar.
The Nightrunner books (Luck in the Shadows, Stalking Darkness, Traitor’s Moon, Shadows Return, The White Road, and next year’s Casket of Souls) chronicle the adventures of two of the Watchers, Seregil, an exiled Aurenfaie (a long lived, magically gifted race), and Alec, a young Northerner with ‘faie blood. The two meet as prisoners in the dungeon of a minor lord who’s terrorizing the locals, escape and strike up an unlikely alliance as Seregil, who’s worked alone for most of his life and liked it, decides it’s time to take on an apprentice. Over the course of the series their relationship builds slowly from master/apprentice to equal partners, and then to much more as each realizes that the other is both his best friend and the love of his life.
These books are more action-oriented than the Triad, and it can be a shock to go from the serious, almost grim story of Tamir to the rollicking, picaresque tone of Luck in the Shadows, which opens with a jailbreak and ends with an assault on a nest of political operatives. At the same time, there are serious issues lurking just under the fun in Luck in the Shadows and Stalking Darkness, which tell one long story: an evil artifact protected by Queen Tamir's tutor Arkoniel so many years before is now kept by Watcher head Nysander, and Seregil and Alex unwittingly steal a related item during a mission. The artifact's original owners naturally want it back, and the sense of menace grows as the jolly adventures become darker and darker.
Complicating this is an ugly secret that has left Seregil both secretive and badly scarred, while Alec is too confident in his new-found skills for his own good. Add in the question of what loyalty truly means, Alec’s struggle to come to grips with his growing attraction to his mentor, Seregil’s bitter realization that the man he loves as a second father has chosen him to be his own executioner, political intrigue among Skala, Plenimar, and Seregil's homeland Aurenen, a band of amoral and utterly horrifying villains, and a climax that is so skillfully managed that it all but cries out to be filmed, and it’s easy to see why these books are still in print fifteen years after publication.
The third book, Traitor’s Moon, isn't as action-oriented, but the the political and emotional depth of the story more than compensates. The plot interweaves Seregil's recovery from the trauma of what happened in the last, a crucial diplomatic mission as Skala seeks aid from the Aurenfaie, Alec receiving a prophecy that rocks him to the core, and an attempted murder. Regaining one’s balance is the underlying message of the book, and it’s only when Seregil finally realizes that the best way to serve his country, his lover, and his friends is to do what he does best - be a Watcher, with all that implies - that a desperate situation is resolved for the best.
The last two of the series to date, Shadows Return and The White Road, were written after Flewelling took time off to write the Tamir Triad. She said in an interview that she had to write her way back to Alec and Seregil after such a long break, but after the first few chapters of Shadows Return it’s as if she never left. This time the Nightrunners face nothing less than their own pasts, and by the end of The White Road a disastrous event from Seregil’s boyhood and a secret Alec has unknowingly carried from birth have them on the run from Plenimaran slavers, vengeful Aurenfaie who blame Seregil for their lost prosperity, a fanatic shaman, Idrilain's brittle, angry successor Phoria, and Alec’s long-lost 'faie relatives.
These two books are as much a set as Luck in the Shadows and Stalking Darkness, and like those two, share an overarching theme. This time it's forced parenthood and its impact not only on the parent, but the child, the parent’s family and friends, and society at large. There’s also the question of how even the strongest love can survive jealousy and suspicions as an old boyfriend of Seregil’s appears when least expected and does his best to play divide and conquer. The resulting conflict has Alec and Seregil literally at each other’s throats as they try to escape from captivity, and leads to a terse, harrowing, painful “last stand” that left me gasping. Once again they’re out of balance, both as individuals and as a couple, and it’s only after they’ve found some measure of it in The White Road that they’re able to turn the tables on their enemies and starting acting rather than reacting.
There's plenty to like in these books: strong, self-assured female characters, especially Beka Cavish, citizen soldier, and her superior officer Princess Klia; a wonderfully fleshed out look at Aurenfaie culture; a cast of terrific supporting characters, from Beka's father Micum to Seregil's sisters to the prim young wizard Thero; a sharp exploration of Skala's enemy Plenimar, a slave holding culture that relies on a perversion of magic for its power; and a surprising amount of humor. Above all, the relationship between Seregil and Alec, two strong, determined survivors, is both heartfelt and realistic; neither they nor their relationship is perfect, and Shadows Return starts with a quarrel that reverberates through both books. Seregil is still too secretive by half and Alec has a jealous streak, but when danger threatens they are each other's rock and defense, and nothing, not even death, can tear them apart.
I've read a lot of books in my time. Some I've read once or twice, some I reread occasionally. Some I donate to the library book sale or sell at the local used book sale. A few I read and read and read again, until the characters and the plots are permanently part of my heart and my imagination. I may put them down for a few years, but eventually I'll come back to them, and when I do, I'll find something in them that I never noticed before.
Lynn Flewelling's books have joined that select group. A stronger recommendation than that I cannot make.