Head-scratcher of an ending
Aug. 19th, 2009 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalOver the last month or so, my work commute reading has been the Sevenwaters trilogy by Juliet Marillier, which you may have seen me mention in those book memes or whatever. The series is set in medieval Ireland, with all the inherent lore (druids and fairies and magic), and each book centers around a heroine (three generations of the same family) who must complete some perilous task and/or journey in order to save her family and possibly all of Erin. The first two books were really good, if somewhat predictable (and a little iffy on the feminist values - she has to save her brothers by... sewing? Really?), while the third was somewhat unsettling, since the narrator is from the black sheep side of the family and thus is working against all the people we've come to love in the first two books. But it was still, on the whole, enjoyable... until I got to the ending.
So, the whole series has had this undercurrent of an epic rivalry between Erin and Briton that's been going on for generations, fighting over these magical imaginary islands in the Irish Sea, but it comes to a head in the third book, when the Child of the Prophecy is supposed to lead the Irish in a campaign that will win back the Islands and defeat the Brits once and for all. It has to happen, you guys. The prophecy says so.
Right, okay. I'm on board. So, there's all sorts of medieval battle-fu, and the Irish are winning for once, and then Prophecy Boy (whose name is Johnny, btw) gets taken captive by the Brits. The Brits, of course, are like, "Ha! Surrender or we kill your golden boy." Now, the Irish need the Child of the Prophecy to win this battle, so if he's killed, they're going to lose, and all that fighting and death will have been in vain. But if they accept the deal to get Johnny back, they have to surrender, and they'll have lost the Islands anyway. Bit of a pickle, you see.
After a bit of tense deliberation, the Irish vehemently decide to pass the buck: "Let Johnny decide!" Johnny, having clearly been schooled in the Buffy Summers art of decision-making, goes for neither option A nor option B, but challenges the Brits' best fighter to a duel, a one-on-one match that will decide the outcome of the whole battle. (At this point, I will forgive anyone for wondering why they didn't just do that in the first place and spare all the people who died in the previous day's battle, but let's move on.)
They fight, and Johnny wins, and then in typical hero fashion, he pauses with his sword at his opponent's throat and asks politely (yes, it says "politely" in the text), "Is this a battle to the death?" OMG just kill the guy already.
And THEN, our heroine (who has been hiding in the bushes, watching all of this play out) walks out onto the field of battle and says, "Hey, guess what? Nobody gets the Islands, because a big ol' tidal wave is about to hit, and they're going to disappear forever underwater. How about we all call a truce and go home before that happens, eh?" The Irish: "But... we won..."
Er - what? You're telling me we've spent three whole books on the Irish struggle to win back these Islands from the Britons, and now that they're about to achieve their goal, it turns out nobody gets them?? I'm sure there is some sort of peacenik "make love not war" lesson here, but really, could we try for a more satisfying ending?
But wait, there's more! Now that the actual battle is over pending tidal wave, there's a second battle (of magic) between our heroine, her father, and her two uncles on one side, and her evil sorceress grandmother on the other side, who's been plotting all this time to foil the prophecy because... well, that's never really explained. She's evil, okay? And the way you can tell she's evil is because of how much she gloats. Seriously, Grandma goes on and on and on insulting our heroine and her father and her uncles and even her poor dead mother and that leads to exposition about how her mother didn't actually commit suicide, Grandma killed her.
So she's definitely evil, and still trying to kill Johnny, because oh by the way, aside from the whole Islands thing, there's a second part of the prophecy, which it is blatantly obvious that there is no way Johnny can fulfill, so she's sort of like, "Haha, I've won! But I'm gonna stick around and kill you all for fun anyway." But oh by the way, our heroine is ALSO a Child of the Prophecy and she's the one who's supposed to fulfill the second part. So she kills Evil Grandma and goes off to live for centuries in exile (prophecies kinda suck).
To be fair, it's actually pretty well foreshadowed that our heroine could be the Child of the Prophecy, but both the tidal wave and the whole "second part of the prophecy" thing pretty much come out of nowhere, and I can't help but think there must have been a better way to set up this ending, letting the Irish win and giving her a role in the prophecy without so much WTFery.
Uh, that said, the first two books were definitely worth reading, and I really haven't spoiled anything for those books if you want to check them out. They are, in order: Daughter of the Forest, Son of the Shadows, and Child of the Prophecy.
So, the whole series has had this undercurrent of an epic rivalry between Erin and Briton that's been going on for generations, fighting over these magical imaginary islands in the Irish Sea, but it comes to a head in the third book, when the Child of the Prophecy is supposed to lead the Irish in a campaign that will win back the Islands and defeat the Brits once and for all. It has to happen, you guys. The prophecy says so.
Right, okay. I'm on board. So, there's all sorts of medieval battle-fu, and the Irish are winning for once, and then Prophecy Boy (whose name is Johnny, btw) gets taken captive by the Brits. The Brits, of course, are like, "Ha! Surrender or we kill your golden boy." Now, the Irish need the Child of the Prophecy to win this battle, so if he's killed, they're going to lose, and all that fighting and death will have been in vain. But if they accept the deal to get Johnny back, they have to surrender, and they'll have lost the Islands anyway. Bit of a pickle, you see.
After a bit of tense deliberation, the Irish vehemently decide to pass the buck: "Let Johnny decide!" Johnny, having clearly been schooled in the Buffy Summers art of decision-making, goes for neither option A nor option B, but challenges the Brits' best fighter to a duel, a one-on-one match that will decide the outcome of the whole battle. (At this point, I will forgive anyone for wondering why they didn't just do that in the first place and spare all the people who died in the previous day's battle, but let's move on.)
They fight, and Johnny wins, and then in typical hero fashion, he pauses with his sword at his opponent's throat and asks politely (yes, it says "politely" in the text), "Is this a battle to the death?" OMG just kill the guy already.
And THEN, our heroine (who has been hiding in the bushes, watching all of this play out) walks out onto the field of battle and says, "Hey, guess what? Nobody gets the Islands, because a big ol' tidal wave is about to hit, and they're going to disappear forever underwater. How about we all call a truce and go home before that happens, eh?" The Irish: "But... we won..."
Er - what? You're telling me we've spent three whole books on the Irish struggle to win back these Islands from the Britons, and now that they're about to achieve their goal, it turns out nobody gets them?? I'm sure there is some sort of peacenik "make love not war" lesson here, but really, could we try for a more satisfying ending?
But wait, there's more! Now that the actual battle is over pending tidal wave, there's a second battle (of magic) between our heroine, her father, and her two uncles on one side, and her evil sorceress grandmother on the other side, who's been plotting all this time to foil the prophecy because... well, that's never really explained. She's evil, okay? And the way you can tell she's evil is because of how much she gloats. Seriously, Grandma goes on and on and on insulting our heroine and her father and her uncles and even her poor dead mother and that leads to exposition about how her mother didn't actually commit suicide, Grandma killed her.
So she's definitely evil, and still trying to kill Johnny, because oh by the way, aside from the whole Islands thing, there's a second part of the prophecy, which it is blatantly obvious that there is no way Johnny can fulfill, so she's sort of like, "Haha, I've won! But I'm gonna stick around and kill you all for fun anyway." But oh by the way, our heroine is ALSO a Child of the Prophecy and she's the one who's supposed to fulfill the second part. So she kills Evil Grandma and goes off to live for centuries in exile (prophecies kinda suck).
To be fair, it's actually pretty well foreshadowed that our heroine could be the Child of the Prophecy, but both the tidal wave and the whole "second part of the prophecy" thing pretty much come out of nowhere, and I can't help but think there must have been a better way to set up this ending, letting the Irish win and giving her a role in the prophecy without so much WTFery.
Uh, that said, the first two books were definitely worth reading, and I really haven't spoiled anything for those books if you want to check them out. They are, in order: Daughter of the Forest, Son of the Shadows, and Child of the Prophecy.
no subject
Date: Aug. 20th, 2009 12:28 am (UTC)Johnny? Johnny??? A mystical hero of ancient Ireland is called Johnny? That's almost as bad as calling the Chosen defender of mankind 'Buffy', except that Joss was being deliberately ironic...
I mean, couldn't she at least have called him Séamas?
no subject
Date: Aug. 20th, 2009 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 20th, 2009 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 20th, 2009 01:14 am (UTC)(It's also classified as "young adult" in the library, which was a little embarrassing, lol.)
no subject
Date: Aug. 20th, 2009 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 20th, 2009 07:37 pm (UTC)