Warning: spoilers and ranting
OK… It was a very bad read.
When a book is boring for over 700 pages it isn’t a good sign. When it makes you angry and irritated, and feeling that you’ve wasted your money, it’s even a worse sign.
And the worst thing is that this reading wasn’t a foretold catastrophe. Nothing—nothing—would make me think as I was reading book of Karen Miller about Lur that she will produce something like this. They were quite nice books with unaffected representation of female characters and with implicite and smooth descriptions of sex. If there was anything controversial in them, such a content wasn’t big in them. And then… She produced a crude, boring, sexist, caricaturedly naturalist and off-putting pastiche of ASoIaF.
Because, apparently, somebody didn’t realized something about the said series by GRRM.
ASoIaF, having some drawbacks as it does, isn’t only about ruthless white cis privileged male nobs making intrigues, talking about the said intrigues, and having sex with women whom they slut-shame afterwards. The Falcon Throne is exactly about this.
Every low-born character is a token protecting Hidden Princes or sharing their Folk Wisedom. Every the only character of colour is the main villain working off-stage. Every female character is somehow cliched, and often slut-shamed. Really—such an amount of slut-shaming is far beyond ASoIaF. Or rather, it looks like a pastiche comment on quasi-medieval sexism.
One girl in the book is married off against her will and takes a revenge on her husband by cheating on him with her former fiance (and the said fiance likes calling her a whore, apparently). Another girl is your stock Princess Imprisoned. There is also a common-born woman hiding The Lost Prince. And a witch who gains influence through having sex with an Influential Guy. Of. Course. And hell bunch of second stage wives who are either already dead or cringing.
You may say that the book tries to give you a hint how badly women were treated in medieval times and, anyway, #lifeisbrutal #timesweredifferent. But such a reasoning and such excusing is faulty for several reasons.
At first, many of our opinions on the medieval position of women were shaped by the lense of nineteenth century. At second, fantasy doesn’t need to be precise about evoking an era. You can choose from the elements you are going to put into your work. You don’t need to be precise about every social injustice. And you don’t need to change the said injustice into humilation porn. Also… In this novel, you get magic and talking severed heads but you can’t get women who mean something and who take some real action? And at third, there are so many novels proving that you can have both strong female characters and medieval realism more or less imitated.
I’m not even speaking of Kristin Lavransdatter—although I can’t see why a Classy Classic shouldn’t be compared to a fantasy novel. I’m speaking of all those books by Philippa Gregory on Plantagenets and Tudors, or about books by Elizabeth Chadwick.
Those two authors show women—princesses and queen consorts—who were often perceived as wives, mothers and daughters by the outer world. Nevertheless, they managed to gain influence. Not necessarily by sex. Not necessarily by duping their husbands. Sometimes even—like Catherine de Aragon—they became military leaders, rare as it was. Sometimes—like Elizabeth Woodville—they were trusted by their husbands who listened to their advice. No slapping and whore-calling, somehow.
In ASoIaF, you also get some creepy stuff; the stuff which I would criticize eagerly, actually. But you get much more female POVs as well. And you are offered images and perspectives showing that the depicted world is not only gritty. It can be beautiful, too.
Reading The Falcon Throne, meanwhile, doesn’t offer any depth or beauty. Descriptions are either square or plain there, and you get exactly no feeling of aura, of landscape, of mood. No magic and no wonder. Just your stock conceptions about Epic Fantasy and quasi-Late Medieval Period mixed with misconceptions about the usage of naturalist techniques. As a result, all this gritty toughness makes the book horribly boring and disgusting.
And that’s why, above all, it irritates me so much.
Left Hand of Fiction 