Firethorn: A Novel - Softcover

Micklem, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 055338340X ISBN 13: 9780553383409

Verlag: Random House Worlds, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Introducing a mesmerizing debut in the rich tradition of Marion Zimmer Bradley–a passionate tale of love and war, honor and vengeance, in which the gods grant a common girl uncommon gifts…

Before she was Firethorn, she was Luck, named for her red hair, favored by the goddess of Chance. A lowborn orphan, Luck is destined to a life of servitude. But when her mistress dies, Luck flees to the forest. There she discovers the sacred firethorn tree, whose berries bring her fevered dreams, a new name–and curious talents. Transformed, she emerges from her exile a young woman with powers beyond her ken.

Firethorn has changed, but her world has not…until one chance encounter alters her destiny forever. In the chaos of the UpsideDown Days, when the highborn and the low trade places, Firethorn couples with Sire Galan, a highborn warrior. Emboldened by desire and her own restlessness, she follows fate and Galan to camp with the king’s army. But their unspoken love has no place in a brutal world ruled by caste and violence, and a dark future threatens from the shadows. Living among soldiers, concubines, and wastrels, and faced with a series of tormenting challenges, Firethorn will have to rely on the enigmatic gifts Fate grants her to survive–body and soul.

“A sweeping adventure saga as mystical as it is raw…this hypnotic tale of passion and survival will resonate with sophisticated readers of both sexes.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A great piece of gritty, feminist fiction, distinguished by a heroine whose vulnerabilities and fresh voice as narrator make her easy to love.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“Engrossing, suspenseful and uncompromising…will seduce even reluctant readers.”
–SciFi Weekly, A-pick

“Micklem’s majestic and powerful debut, the first volume of a fantasy trilogy, introduces a compelling heroine with a strong, original voice. A sweeping adventure saga as mystical as it is raw, the novel is also a biting commentary on violence and its effect on relationships defined by a caste system. Enriched but not defined by the influences of many cultures (Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, etc.) and authors as diverse as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. LeGuin, Mary Renault, Jean Auel, Margaret Atwood and, yes, even Tolkien, this hypnotic tale of passion and survival will resonate with sophisticated readers of both sexes.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Gritty, sinewy, exceptionally well researched, and highly impressive.” –Kirkus Reviews

“A great piece of gritty, feminist fiction, distinguished by a heroine whose vulnerabilities and fresh voice as narrator make her easy to love.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“Engrossing, suspenseful and uncompromising, this is a novel that sets a great story into motion, leaving readers eager for the next chapter.…Its story is so complex and compelling that it will seduce even reluctant readers.”
–SciFi Weekly, A- pick

“ ‘Expect the unexpected’ may sound like a stale cliché, but applied to the future volumes of this trilogy, and the future career of Sarah Micklem, it becomes both a lure and a promise.” –Locus, New & Notable Book

“A fully realized world, full of grit and beauty, hungers of every kind, and gods who are either remote or meddlesome. She takes the time to let relationships develop and events unfold, giving us the sense of having lived and loved our way through Firethorn’s world. Micklem makes a worthy bid to be ranked with Robin Hobb, Mary Renault, and George R. R. Martin as a brilliant creator of realistic, character-centered fantasy. My only complaint is that the second book isn’t out yet.” –Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game

“This is a stark and splendid novel. But the most astonishing thing about it is the suppleness of the style–almost no one writes a first novel this graceful. I look forward to whatever she does next.” –Robin McKinley, author of Sunshine

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sarah Micklem lives with her husband, poet and playwright Cornelius Eady, in Washington, D.C., where she is working on the second book of the Firethorn trilogy.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Introducing a mesmerizing debut in the rich tradition of Marion Zimmer Bradley-a passionate tale of love and war, honor and vengeance, in which the gods grant a common girl uncommon gifts...
Before she was Firethorn, she was Luck, named for her red hair, favored by the goddess of Chance. A lowborn orphan, Luck is destined to a life of servitude. But when her mistress dies, Luck flees to the forest. There she discovers the sacred firethorn tree, whose berries bring her fevered dreams, a new name-and curious talents. Transformed, she emerges from her exile a young woman with powers beyond her ken.
Firethorn has changed, but her world has not...until one chance encounter alters her destiny forever. In the chaos of the UpsideDown Days, when the highborn and the low trade places, Firethorn couples with Sire Galan, a highborn warrior. Emboldened by desire and her own restlessness, she follows fate and Galan to camp with the king's army. But their unspoken love has no place in a brutal world ruled by caste and violence, and a dark future threatens from the shadows. Living among soldiers, concubines, and wastrels, and faced with a series of tormenting challenges, Firethorn will have to rely on the enigmatic gifts Fate grants her to survive-body and soul.
"A sweeping adventure saga as mystical as it is raw...this hypnotic tale of passion and survival will resonate with sophisticated readers of both sexes."
"-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A great piece of gritty, feminist fiction, distinguished by a heroine whose vulnerabilities and fresh voice as narrator make her easy to love."
"-Booklist (starred review)
"Engrossing, suspenseful and uncompromising...willseduce even reluctant readers."
"-SciFi Weekly, A-pick
"Micklem's majestic and powerful debut, the first volume of a fantasy trilogy, introduces a compelling heroine with a strong, original voice. A sweeping adventure saga as mystical as it is raw, the novel is also a biting commentary on violence and its effect on relationships defined by a caste system. Enriched but not defined by the influences of many cultures (Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, etc.) and authors as diverse as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. LeGuin, Mary Renault, Jean Auel, Margaret Atwood and, yes, even Tolkien, this hypnotic tale of passion and survival will resonate with sophisticated readers of both sexes."
"-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Gritty, sinewy, exceptionally well researched, and highly impressive." -"Kirkus Reviews
"A great piece of gritty, feminist fiction, distinguished by a heroine whose vulnerabilities and fresh voice as narrator make her easy to love."
-"Booklist (starred review)
"Engrossing, suspenseful and uncompromising, this is a novel that sets a great story into motion, leaving readers eager for the next chapter....Its story is so complex and compelling that it will seduce even reluctant readers."
-"SciFi Weekly, A- pick
" 'Expect the unexpected' may sound like a stale cliche, but applied to the future volumes of this trilogy, and the future career of Sarah Micklem, it becomes both a lure and a promise." "-Locus, New & Notable Book
"A fully realized world, full of grit and beauty, hungers of every kind, and gods who are either remote or meddlesome. She takes the time to let relationships develop and events unfold, giving us the sense of having lived andloved our way through Firethorn's world. Micklem makes a worthy bid to be ranked with Robin Hobb, Mary Renault, and George R. R. Martin as a brilliant creator of realistic, character-centered fantasy. My only complaint is that the second book isn't out yet." -Orson Scott Card, author of "Ender's Game
"This is a stark and splendid novel. But the most astonishing thing about it is the suppleness of the style-almost no one writes a first novel this graceful. I look forward to whatever she does next." -Robin McKinley, author of "Sunshine

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

I took to the Kingswood the midsummer after the Dame died. I did not swear a vow, but I kept myself just as strictly, living like a beast in the forest from one midsummer to the next, without fire or iron or the taste of meat. I lived as prey, and I learned from the dogs how to run, from the hare how to hide in the bracken, and from the deer how to go hungry.

I was then in my fifteenth year or thereabouts. I had been taken into the Dame’s household as a foundling, and when I came to a useful age, she made me her handmaid. I was as close to her side as a pair of hands, and as quick to do her bidding without a word having to be said. I stood high in her regard; many a daughter of the Blood is not so well regarded, being counted more a debt than a gain to her house until she is safely married and gone. When the Dame died, and her nephew and his new wife inherited the manor, I became just another drudge. The world had its order and I my place in it, but I could not whittle myself small enough to fit.

In sorrow and pride I exiled myself to the Kingswood. I shunned fire for fear the kingsmen would hunt me down, and so by way of cold and hunger, I came near to refusing life itself. I never thought to anger or please a god by it. Sometimes I wonder if it was my stubbornness that caught the eye of Ardor, god of forge and hearth and wildfire. And sometimes I wonder–was it by my will alone that I fled to the Kingswood? Maybe Ardor had already taken me in hand, to test my mettle as armor is tested, under blows.

I was not such a fool that I could go hungry in high summer, when the wild plum waited for the touch of my hand before letting go of the tree. I could put a name to each useful plant, I knew its favored ground and the most auspicious season and hour to seek it. The Dame had taught me all this when we’d ridden to the Kingswood to gather dyestuffs for her tapestries and herbs for healing or the table. By root and stem, flower and leaf, seed and fruit, she’d shown me how every plant was marked by the god who made it, that we might know its nature, whether benign or malign or both at once. She’d taught me songs for many herbs, so I might keep in store what I’d learned: these songs were half riddles, half prayers. And the Dame’s housekeeper, Na, and Cook had given me other names for these plants, in the Low tongue, and other uses as well. We mudfolk have a green lore of which the Blood know nothing.

When I fled to the forest, I gave up begging the gods for favors, for my prayers had been ignored; I threw myself on the mercy of the Kingswood. But turn away as I might, I couldn’t turn my back on the gods, for they were everywhere before me. The Kingswood was their garden, everything named and known, fruitful and pleasing to the eye, ripe with signs.
What I couldn’t gather freely I stole: grain from the fields, fruit from the orchards, beans and seeds from the burrows of field mice, bulbs hoarded by squirrels. At times I felt I had stolen the Kingswood itself, for there was a heady freedom in roaming where I was forbidden to go, in lazing when others were working. I walked for days and days, from the slate-bedded ravines to the mossy woods high on the mountains, where the trees are stunted and stooped, and never lost my way. I have the gift of knowing where the Sun is, even if the Sun is behind clouds and I am under a fir tree at the bottom of a narrow valley.

Though I’ve traveled farther now and know the world is vast, I still think the Kingswood, inside its compass, may be endless.

Our village was an island in a sea of trees, one of many such islands, each with crofts, fields, hedges, orchards, and pastures, scattered across the great round waves of the mountains. The Dame held that village and two more at her father’s pleasure, and at King Thyrse’s pleasure too, for her holdings lay within the Kingswood and under forest law. The king had given her dispensation to take dyestuffs from the woods, as he prized the tapestries she wove. So she had wandered at will, and I’d attended her, and thought I knew more of the Kingswood than the other drudges of manor and field.

The villagers had leave to travel the market road that threaded the wood from one village to the next, and certain grants to underwood, pasture and forage, clay pits and such. All for fees, of course, always something owing to the king’s foresters and woodwards. It was said King Thyrse was so jealous of his belongings that he kept a tally of every deer and oak in his forest; and the pigherds swore he counted every acorn too, when they drove the pigs into the woods in autumn to fatten on the mast. The drudges could cut no wood save hazel and ash poles from the coppices, and every man had leave to fell an oak when he took a wife and built his house. Otherwise they were not allowed past the wards.

But I found signs of their trespass: a burned patch planted with a fistful of grain, a tree felled or stripped of fruit, a deer strung up in a snare. I never saw a poacher. They were too cunning, and for cause: the foresters would take a man’s eyes and hands and leave him to the mercy of the wolves for such an offense. It was bad enough to steal the king’s game, but snares were an abomination. The gods abhor weapons that leave the hand, cowards’ weapons such as javelins, bows and arrows, slings. No man or beast save vermin should die by such means.

The village folk kept other secrets, and I found those too: great circles of ancient elm, ash, or oak, their limbs so entwined that no sapling could take root under them. I supposed the groves deserted, but still I felt the prickling on the nape of my neck when I saw the lofty spaces and blackened stones inside. I’d heard tales of such places from Na when I was small. Late at night she’d whisper to me of the old gods in the woods, the numina of trees and groves, stones and rivers, until I feared to sleep. The Dame had given these tales no credence, so I too had come to disbelieve them. When the Blood took these lands many generations ago, they said the gods of the mudfolk were not gods at all, but rather malicious wights. They banned even their names.

It’s one thing to forbid the worship of a god, and another to command that it be forgotten. One day I found the oldest tree of all, a black oak bigger than twelve men could encircle with their arms, and I knew it for the one Na called Heart of the Wood. Dolls of twigs and shucks dangled from its branches: right side up to cure barrenness, upside down to bring on a miscarriage. Mudwomen had dared to put them there, knowing that if the kingsmen had caught them in the woods out of turn, they might also hang from those branches.

I was not the only inhabitant of the Kingswood. There were some few others there, with the king’s leave or without. Besides the foresters, there were woodcutters, charcoalmakers, miners, armorers, drovers, all to supply the needs of king and kingdom. I stayed away from them, with their noise and stink of smoke. Feral men and uneasy shades also dwelled in the woods, or so Na had said, and sometimes at night, when the strangled scream of a vixen sounded like a haunt, I believed her. I should have been afraid, but I was merely wary. I thought I was safe enough, as if I were a shade myself, who could go unseen and tread without leaving footprints.

Late in summer I crossed the pass between Barren Woman Peak and Bald Pate, and walked south along the ridge and down and uphill and down, until I came to mountains I couldn’t name and a forest groomed so that a man could ride through it at a gallop without bowing his head. It was a place of old trees, great shafts rising to a roof of leaves, lank grass underfoot. I saw a red stag cropping the grass, moving between the gray...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Worlds
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 055338340X
• ISBN 13: 9780553383409
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 401
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar