There was a time in my life when I would read basically anything, because there wasn’t enough good stuff on TV to keep me entertained. One day, I decided that everything on TV was so bad that it was really time I should get my life together and go do something. I started school, learned to program, graduated school, got a job programming, got really sick of programming, and kept doing it anyway because of the money. If this were happening now, when there’s a ton of good stuff on TV, I’d probably never have decided to get my life together and I’d still just be sitting around watching TV, and I never would have read the Exiles “trilogy” by Melanie Rawn.
I say “trilogy” because the series was supposed to have three books—The Ruins of Ambrai, The Mageborn Traitor, and The Captal’s Tower—but it’s been over fifteen years since the second book came out and the third one is nowhere in sight. There was an announcement in 2014 that she was going to get started working on, so it could still appear.
Exiles takes place on a planet called Lenfell. Magic is real and mages loaded up in a ship with a bunch of Catholics to fly off somewhere they wouldn’t be persecuted. They proceeded to have a gigantic war for dominance that poisoned the world and made it so most women couldn’t have children. After a series of eugenic pogroms, the Lenfellians created a society which is basically a mirror of Elizabethan England: women are dominant, men are property and have no rights, women have all the power, men are generally treated like garbage.
I have two major problems with this setup: a) It’s ridiculous, and b) It’s nonsensical. I find it very hard to believe that a bunch of magical Catholics would have created a female-dominant society when a bunch of distinctly non-magical Catholics (and other sects) are some of the greatest impediments to equal treatment for women in modern society. I also find it very hard to believe that the infertility and subsequent eugenic pogroms would have led at any remove to a female-dominated society. For a much more convincing portrayal of a similar scenario, read The Handmaid’s Tale, where a military dictatorship with strong religious influence takes power and known fertile women are made into sex slaves and forced to bear the children of high-ranking men in society. I actually found the speed with which women’s rights were lost in The Handmaid’s Tale a little jarring, but in a medieval society like Lenfell, it makes perfect sense, magic or no magic.
You can tell from reading the books that Rawn didn’t really care if this scenario made sense, she just wanted to do all sorts of table-turning by having women talk about men as property and progressive women supporting men’s rights. There’s even a weird sex scene where the woman is on top, but the man still has to do all the “work”. I have trouble imagining how that works. I guess he squishes himself back into the mattress, then thrusts upwards, repeat until satisfied. Also, I’m disappointed that none of the women in this society have discovered pegging yet. It seems so natural.
Given that, I wish Rawn would’ve just left it unexplained how this world came into existence. After all, she doesn’t bother to explain magic at all. It’s not a mutation and it doesn’t involve midichlorians or unlocking the remaining 90% of your brain. It’s just there. I think readers would have accepted that it was purely a plot device to be able to write all those table-turning scenarios and given her a pass on it. In the real world, the development of patriarchy had complex, multivariate causes; the later development of women’s rights also had complex, multivariate causes mostly linked to social shifts that came out of the Industrial Revolution, when machines made the greater upper body strength of men matter way less than it used to. But who cares, that stuff is boring. I would’ve ignored all that if Rawn hadn’t made a show of just how backwards and unlikely her scenario was.
The main story takes place about five hundred years after the above-mentioned war, when the Lenfellian society is well established. It follows the last members of a once powerful family called Ambrai. Throughout the following summary of the first book, Ruins of Ambrai, I’d like you to keep your eyes open for details that sound suspiciously familiar:
Auvry Feiran, a powerful and somewhat arrogant young mage who all the older mages are afraid of, marries Maichen Ambrai, a princess. The constant belittling Feiran receives from Maichen's mother and the older mages causes him to turn against the Mage Guardians and join their enemies, the Lords of Malerris. Auvry Feiran and Maichen Ambrai have three children: Glenin, Sarra, and Cailet. Feiran takes Glenin with him when he goes over to the Lords of Malerris. Maichen dies giving birth to Cailet; Sarra is sent to grow up surrounded by pomp, luxury, and circumstance while Cailet is raised by distant relatives in the desert. While there, Cailet is trained in magic by Rinnel Solingirt, a mysterious old man who is actually Gorynel Desse, a famous and powerful Mage Guardian. Sarra becomes involved with the Rising, a movement to overthrow the tyrant Avira Anniyas, who came to power during a time of civil war and rules with an iron fist along with her servants Auvry Feiran and Glenin. After many travails, Sarra and Cailet meet and come to realize they are sisters and Auvry Feiran is their father; Gorynel Desse is killed, and Cailet becomes Mage Captal, leader of all the mages. They also meet Collan, a good-looking, roguish minstrel who at first infuriates Sarra, but later she falls in love with him and is heartbroken when he is captured by Auvry Feiran. In the final scene, Collan returns; Cailet fights Avira Anniyas, who is killed, and then faces Glenin, trying to bring her to the side of good. Auvry Feiran appears and realizes Cailet is his daughter and in a final act of good, sacrifices himself to save her from Glenin's magic. Cailet burns his body and Sarra and Collan get married and live happily ever after.
Didn’t notice anything? Maybe this selectively edited version makes it more clear:
Anakin Skywalker, a powerful and somewhat arrogant young Jedi who all the older Jedi are afraid of, marries Padme Amidala, a queen. The constant belittling Skywalker receives from the older Jedi causes him to turn against the Jedi and join their enemies, the Lords of the Sith. Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala have two children: Luke and Leia. Padme dies giving birth to them; Leia is sent to grow up surrounded by pomp, luxury, and circumstance while Luke is raised by distant relatives in the desert. While there, Luke is trained in the Force by Ben Kenobi, a mysterious old man who is actually Obi-Wan Kenobi, a famous and powerful Jedi. Leia becomes involved with the Rebel Alliance, a movement to overthrow the tyrant Emperor Palpatine, who came to power in a time of civil war and rules with an iron fist along with his servant Darth Vader, a.k.a. Anakin Skywalker. After many travails, Luke and Leia meet and come to realize they are brother and sister and Darth Vader is their father; Obi-Wan Kenobi is killed, and Luke becomes the last of the Jedi. They also meet Han Solo, a good-looking, roguish smuggler who at first infuriates Leia, but later she falls in love with him and is heartbroken when he is captured by Darth Vader and frozen in carbonite. In the final scene, Han Solo returns; Luke faces Emperor Palpatine, and tries to bring Darth Vader to the side of good. In a final act of good, Darth Vader sacrifices himself to save Luke from Emperor Palpatine's Force lightning. Luke burns his body and Leia and Han get married and live happily ever after.
Ruins of Ambrai switches things up a tiny bit: it rips off a few things from Dune, such as a scene where Glenin is forced to abort her first child because it’s a daughter and she was ordered to bear only sons (the opposite of Jessica!); it forces Anniyas and Glenin to share the part of Palpatine; and it adds tons of filler and lots of extra characters that mostly die, because Rawn loves introducing mildly entertaining bit players and then killing them off while making it abundantly clear that the main characters are safe, sort of like The Walking Dead. There’s also no real analogue to the Death Star; instead, everyone has schemes within schemes, like in Dune except not smart. In the second book, Sarra and Collan have two annoying children who are analogous to Jacen and Jaina, Han and Leia’s children from the Star Wars EU novels, while Glenin takes on the role of sloppy second villain along with her son. I won’t say his name because his reveal is a surprise in the second book, but the now thirty-year-old Cailet decides pretty early on that Glenin’s son has to be one of two characters, so by a third of the way into the second book, you’ve got a 50/50 shot at guessing who he is. (Yes, a third of way in; the second book takes forever to get going. Which isn’t surprising since it has to resume with a fifteen-year-old Cailet where the first book left off, send her on a pointless side quest, show how she establishes a mage academy, show how Sarra and Collan have kids, show how they’re still hot and in love even though they have kids, show how their kids are annoying, show how their kids have personalities that are annoying, show how Sarra and Collan are the cool parents and not the creepy ones like Glenin, who has incestuous undertones with her kid, then show how the kids go to the mage academy, then finally get to the main plot.)
I’m picking on Exiles because it’s an easy target and I actually read both books, but this sort of crap is really widespread in modern fantasy novels. There’s no originality whatsoever. Exiles is actually at the high end of the scales because Rawn didn’t just do a world where elves and dwarves fight orcs and trolls and the hero is an unassuming farm boy who is actually The Chosen One and gets to bang elf maidens. Exiles is actually out ahead of the pack because the characters have personalities (even if they’re annoying or plagiarized from Star Wars) and the focus is on story and character arcs instead of stats and video game-like powers. It’s no wonder Harry Potter was such a huge hit. I like it too, but its main strength is character and plot, not shocking originality; yet compared to the drivel that the fantasy genre has devolved into, Harry Potter is indeed shockingly original and strikingly creative. I like Harry Potter better than The Hunger Games, but they did similar things to find their audiences: they took old ideas, put a new coat of paint on them, got them in front of a young audience, and managed to impress an older audience by not being total garbage or plagiarized from The Lord of the Rings, Dune, or Star Wars.
But let’s circle back to the things I did like: Cailet. Before I figured out that she was Luke Skywalker, I actually liked her. Even after that, I still liked her, because of all the blasted ripoffs, Cailet was the only one whose personality wasn’t an exact copy of her Star Wars analogue. Where Luke was whiny and cocky, Cailet was...well, she could also be whiny, but she was often unsure of herself and would blame herself for everything. Then she would come over all confident, do something bold, screw up, and blame herself for everything. That, her adorably tomboyish personality, and her occasional bad-ass moments made her fun to read about. Plus, she had the most confusing love life. She started out in love with her adoptive older brother, then discovered that her elderly mentor had kind of a crush on her just as he died, then saw her adoptive brother killed, and then was hit on by her bisexual adoptive cousin, who explains that she likes to have sex with men but prefers to fall in love with women. Cailet gently rebuffs her and there are no hard feelings between them. In the second book, Cailet finds out that one of her students, who is fifteen years younger than her, has a crush on her, and is encouraged by all (including aforementioned bisexual cousin) to break her celibate streak and jump his bones. (If I remember correctly, she was mind-raped and had half her breast blown off by Glenin during the final battle of the first book, which pushed her into celibacy.) I don’t know that I’d call all this bad luck in love, but it had to be confusing as hell, especially for a girl as young as Cailet was in the first book.
Cailet becomes drastically less interesting in the second book as she spends all of her time brooding and trying to unroll Glenin’s wheels within wheels that end up making not a whole hell of a lot of sense. The story, having used up the entire Star Wars original trilogy, drifts without a purpose and succumbs to filler and boredom and the irritating minutiae of the teenage love lives of Sarra and Collan’s kids. Since the books were at their best when they were stealing the plot of something else, I’m hoping that if The Captal’s Tower ever does get written, it’ll just rip off something. Maybe The Wizard of Oz: a young mageborn girl named Dorothet sets out on a journey to find The Captal’s Tower, meeting along the way a mageborn without a brain, a mageborn who used magic to replace his entire body with tin (losing his heart in the process), and a Wraithenbeast who was too scared to be Wraithen. Along the way, they sing a song whose chorus goes “We’re off to see the Captal, the wonderful Captal of Lenfell.” In the end, they find Cailet at her tower, where she sends them to defeat Glenin and bring back her loom (the Malerrisi are obsessed with weaving and threads). It can’t be worse than Tom and Jerry Meet the Wizard of Oz, and at least it wouldn’t wander through years of filler like The Mageborn Traitor.
