I would say I’m not a great fan of fantasy novels, but then I remember how many fantasy novels I’ve read since the Narnia books and Lord of the Rings in a long-ago childhood. However, The Merciless Ones is certainly not a children’s books and I wouldn’t classify it as “young adult” fiction either. It has plenty of relevance of someone of my advanced age.
Namina Forna takes us for a second time into a cleverly imagined world which has enough detail to make it real but not so much that we get bogged down in lengthy descriptions and digressions. That in itself reflects the writer’s art. Too many fantasy writers feel a need to pad out their narratives with long lists of long-dead rulers and other distractions. This author gets straight to the point.
Having said that, you don’t get all the detail up front. As the narrative develops, new and often surprising details are revealed to the reader – and to the narrator, Deka – and things become more complicated and uncertain before the fog clears. I won’t say any more about the plot except that this sequel is full of surprises and overturns many of the assumptions you might have been making at the end of The Gilded Ones.
One thing I can’t help doing when I read a fantasy novel is trying to discern how much it relates to or derives from contemporary reality. In the first volume we had a deeply patriarchal society fuelled by a religion that teaches female subjugation. The religion is clearly an amalgam of our monotheistic with a priesthood, purity rituals and a holy text. Girls are forbidden education and women must wear a mask and be chaperoned when they go out. In the sequel we begin by believing that the patriarchs’ religion is false, their gods don’t exist and the only true gods are female. However, as the story unfolds, the theology changes. We move a long way away from a binary world of female and male and good and evil. The only certainties are that Deka and her companions remain loyal to each other. It’s a great myth (and I mean that in a positive sense) of enduring friendship.
Deka’s story doesn’t end with this novel and I can see a third volume on the horizon.
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Customer reviews
I gave 4 out of 5 stars because I just can't wait for the third book. This story was thrilling, emotional, gipping, and just phenomenal. When I read the first book, I thought it should have ended there because I didn’t enjoy it but this second book is vastly different. I kiss my hand to the author's brilliance.
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