The Waking Land by Callie Bates

It is a very bad mistake to have two female characters in your YA fantasy novel who are far more interesting and less whiny than your main character. I know you might think you know the story you want to tell, but if there's one that looks way better in the background, all the flaws of the foreground are going to show up rather blatantly. And that, unfortunately, is the problem there.

The problem is not the world! The world is interesting, this form of magic is interesting, the world history we find out about is interesting, and many of the minor characters are interesting! It is mostly that the main character is irritating beyond belief, holding tenaciously to views long past when she should have at least started to question them, and worse than that, many of the conflicts in this novel are the kind where they could be solved by two people sitting the fuck down and talking to each other. Just...talking to each other and saying things honestly, and if that is all that is supplying your damned tension, then there is something very, very wrong here.

This is a story of a divided and conquered land. The king in the south brought together two previously united lands, but by claiming one as the home of civilication, and the other the home of barbarism, only in need of subdual. This is colonialism, at least in part, but that's not really ever grappled with. I suppose it has most resonance with the British and Ireland, not least because of all the standing stones and the place names that sound vaguely Irish.

Elanna is the daughter of the lord in the north who tried to raise a rebellion, taken as a hostage by the king in the south. The inside cover blurb talks about how intensely devoted she is to this substitute father, but on the page, it really comes down to a relatively tepid dinner. Her allegiances more circle around how she has been taught to feel shame at her heritage and hates her parents for letting her go, than that she really loves or does more than like the king. At any rate, it's not long until he's dead, and she's on the hook for his murder, framed by the king's daughter, the new Queen, and her minions.

One of the problems is that Elanna is supposed to be around twenty here, and acts like she's twelve. She believes everything she's ever been told by the king, and nothing she's ever heard otherwise. If we had some more exposition about why she's this sheltered, particularly when her best friend is a revolutionary firebrand, that might help. As it is, it seems impossible that she's been best friends with Victoire, who as soon as the king is dead, heads out on the road to start leafleting about how corrupt the king was, his daughter will be, and the ways in which the taxes on the subjects have been misused. With all the facts at her disposal. Not once in more than ten years of friendship did Elanna ever have a remotely political discussion with her entirely political friend? Not once?

(And that's a big part of the problem - Victoire is way more interesting and intelligent, and able to see what's in front of her face, and analyze what's going on. I wanted to be with her, as she struck out on her own to foment rebellion, leaving the story for a while. It sounded far, far more fun.)

Elanna escapes and is reunited with her parents, at whom she is mad for...I'm not sure? Having let her go to be a hostage, even though Elanna well remembers how the king (whom she's supposed to love like a father, remember) put a gun to her head to force her father to give up a hostage. I mean, if we were into Stockholm Syndrome, that would be one thing, but nothing happens to make that make sense. It seems like she's had a distant life without too many fetters, or too many freedoms. Nothing that wouldn't let her talk to others and make up her own mind about things.

She goes to the north, to Caeris, and harnesses the magic she has long hidden (and wouldn't that also give her some questions about where she's lived for half her life?) to become one with the land, bringing the very rocks and trees to bear in the ensuing battle. But not before a bunch of times she decides she hates her parents and whines. (Another young woman shows up, from the tribes to the very north of Caeris, and she's more interesting than Elanna too.) Oh, of course, there's a young male magician for Elanna to swoon over, and I just...I don't mind romance, but this was so rote, while somehow thinking it was inventive.

The publisher tries to compare this to Naomi Novik's wonderful Uprooted, and I picked it up because it was recommended as a "Read-Alike" for Catherynne Valente's masterpiece, Deathless. Those are poor books to compare this to, because next to those two very assured fairy-tale-like adventures, this looks even dingier. It is another in my series of reading Read-Alikes where I am reminded, yet again, of Ebert's Law. It's not what it is about, it's how it is about it.  What The Waking Land is about is interesting. How it is about it is not.