My Fair Viking, continued, part two

Part one of this masochistic dissection was here.

Clash between slapstick and gritty plot

My Fair Viking strains between gritty realism and wacky matchmaking-driven slapstick. The result is a book that jumps from one to the other in no logical emotionally true order, trying to elicit sympathy for one thing that is later laughed off as inconsequential.

Here, the winters were long and bitter, often with only one or two hours of daylight; survival took precedence over all else… or it should have.

No one at Stoneheim cares about survival. But more to the point, the slapstick: we're treated with a scene intended to elicit heart-wrenching grief, the scene that should be setting up Adam's inner turmoil and reasons why he doesn't easily open up to people anymore.

Adam the Healer dropped to his knees and beat his breast.

It is the Big Reason why he doesn't want to ever heal again, why he is willing to just sit on his estate and write his book... but then we leap straight into a scene of Rashid (the wacky, comical relief Muslim) pestering to have a harem. The change is simply too abrupt.

And this happens repeatedly. Bolthor (the comedy relief skald) entertains us all with a terrible, terrible poem about how Trya captured Adam and hurled him over her shoulder (in order to get him to save her father, of course):

Now, some say she needed his talent,
That a miracle in him the gods sent.
That very well may be true,
But on this idea you should chew:
Exactly which talent of the knave
Did the fair maid crave?

But this is whilst Thorvald is still in a coma, his life still at risk and no one knows whether or not he'll survive. If he dies , the succession will be in question; whilst Tyra is supposed to take over and has been groomed to take over by her father, but the reader is given no indication that she is capable (because the narrative is too busy grooming her to be Adam's bride and helpmeet, see below) of that responsibility. But more to the point, it's fundamentally tasteless to be suggesting that an action done out of filial piety is done for sexual desire when the fate of her father is still unknown, when in theory they're all bracing themselves for his possible death and consequent political turmoil. Perhaps afterwards there can be some ribbing about it, when the danger has passed (not all danger, of course, that would be silly)but joking during, and especially when everyone knows Tyra is uncomfortable with the idea of being with Adam, it seems... yes, tasteless.

Tykir and Alinor declared it the best poem Bolthor had ever created.

Of course, some may find it amusing, this undermining of their commander's power in a time of potential invasion. The humour isn't even potentially bracing or encouraging. Bolthor is singing this to Tyra's family (all about to suffer personal loss) and the three hundred fighting men of Stoneheim. These men are about to put their lives on the line to defend the place; they need to be utterly confident that Tyra is the best warrior to lead them.

The second day, she'd taken a bath, willingly, in a marble tub big enough to hold twelve people. Then it took eight eunuchs of considerable size to hold her down while every single hair on her body was plucked off.

Tyra is plucked clean of hairs at the harem where she was held captive. This is clearly quite a traumatic experience for her since she was held down during it and afterwards her shaved crotch is enough to drive her to run away from Adam so that he won't see it.

"They plucked all the hair off my body. So there! Now you know." She started to weep again, this time with mortification.

But this incident isn't treated as a violation of her, only actual rape counts as that. Adam reacts violently to the possibility that Tyra may have been raped during her stay at the harem:

He immediately stiffened. "You were raped? My God, I will go back and kill the old buzzard. I thought you said you had not been touched."

However, having hairs plucked from her body, is something to be laughed off until the woman realises she's being silly. It surprises him that the experience bothers her. That being held down by burly eunuchs and plucked, chicken-like, is a physically painful and traumatic experience whilst being held captive in a land where no one speaks her language surprises him. He does not even bother assuring her that she is still attractive without hairs and simply wouldn't stop the stream of chicken-jokes – under the impression, no doubt, that such humour will shame her out of feeling violated. Hill seems to share this opinion as Tyra's mortification is played for laughs and it really doesn't make me feel inclined to like Hill.

My Fair Viking is simply surreal in the characters' inability to react to the gritty reality around them and the author's refusal to acknowledge that the reader may find some of these details harrowing. There isn't even a show of stoical survivalist ethic against the hardships. They are simply forgotten within the chapter. No one remembers the women and children who were taken in the raid. Dagma's rape, difficult labour and consequent stillborn child is brought up in the middle of a sex scene. (I know Hill's going for unsexy, irrelevant conversation to contrast with the "sexplay" but it's unpleasant to point of reminding us of... well, see below)...

 

The Rapist Hero

It's often the case that one hero or another is described as having dubious ideas about consent (Decadent's hero comes to mind) or is a little too forceful for one to be actually comfortable with him.

"Nay, I will not kill you immediately. [...] I have other plans for you first. [...] First, I intend to tup you till your toenails curl.[...] Then I will tup you again till your eyes roll up into your head. [...] And then I will make love to you again and again till you beg for more. That should take, oh, a sennight or two… or five. [...] Then… and only then… will I kill you," he concluded, and grinned mirthlessly at her.

Azrael: "It is creepy. It is not a piece of hero dialogue. That is cheap villain dialogue. Normally, in this genre, I would expect that paragraph to be eventually followed by a revelation that the speaker is secretly an evil gay paedophile."

After he is captured by Tyra, he is tied to the mast and part of their merry banter includes his threats of raping her when he gets free. Now, granted, he's held captive against his will and there is some obvious physical attraction between them – but attraction is certainly not consent. And from his point of view, without the aid of an omniscient narrator, he's just issuing threats of repeated rape that ends in murder. That's neither sympathetic, justified nor sexy. 

The dialogue must also be placed in the context of a world in which rape is a very real threat. Dagma, a fourteen-year-old girl, we are told, has been raped by a passing tradesman. Women and children were captured by Danes and you can imagine what will follow. Tyra is held captive in some sultan's harem and whilst not actually raped, felt violated and it was a distinct possibility in her time there. 

When he was done stitching her wound, he acted quickly. Grabbing her by the waist, he tossed her onto the table face down and flipped up her tunic. She was screaming like a banshee and trying to rise, but he had one hand firmly on her neck and the rest of his body weight pressed over her bottom. Leaning back, he noted that she was not wearing a codpiece, but she did have on some kind of loin cloth. He ripped it off so that he could examine her arrow wound. 

For a bit of context, this takes place right after Tyra has claimed she word a codpiece under her clothes. Tyra had specifically stated last time he offered to look at the wound that she doesn't want his hands on her. Adam is "examining" the arrow wound her on her ass (from Alrek's careless bowmanship; because Vikings never bother teaching their children the common sense of not firing when there's someone between you and the target) without her consent. I really don't care that he's a doctor and is more qualified than the blacksmith. He simply didn't even bother asking her to show it him before flipping her over and ripping her loincloth off. As Azrael put it, "Well, he's clearly a cock."

 

Chronology and Internal Inconsistencies

It's October throughout the book. Despite constantly being informed that sennight after sennight has past in the italics before a chapter, it's always, always October. Adam arrives in Norway in October, sees "Butchering Day" (early October, we're informed) and after the wacky adventures in the Byzantine Empire (taking at least seven sennights of travel or something like that, it's still October.

Exactly when does Adam earn his fame as a healer? I know people have long memories, but he was in the East learning medicine from "the world's best physicians" (but not a university the way a real medieval physician would have) for several years, during which he wasn't practicing and therefore can't be reputation-earning. After returning and finding Adela dead, he hides for two years – It's upwards of five years he spends away from the West. How is it that he is still the most far-famed and allegedly best Healer in the West? Is his absence making him into some sort of living myth? Have people forgotten about his failures? Is it because he's related to Rain?

Also, why does Adam have a dozen changes of clothes, his sword, his books and his shield with him at Stoneheim? He was kidnapped and wasn't exactly given any time to pack for his trip and his captors are hardly the considerate sort that would helpfully gather his belongs for him. Even if they gathered whatever looked like medical equipment, why would they pack his weapons? He's not going to need it on a trip to heal the king of Stoneheim.

Ingrith sniffed the air that morning, noticed the frost on the herbs in her kitchen garden and a few snow flurries in the sky. Clear signs that winter was almost here.
Satisfied, she gave a hearty shout of "Butchering day!" in the great hall where everyone was breaking fast.

Yes, but different cattle and pigs were butchered at different times during the year. Given that we're in October, it should be cattle and sheep that meet the fatal knife, not pigs. Swine get butchered later, somewhere in November, usually.

 

Wacky Muslims

"Nay, master, do not speak such sacrilege. Only Allah, or your Christian God, should make such destiny-decisions," his assistant Rashid cautioned softly, putting a comforting hand on Adam's shoulder.

Rashid is the wacky Muslim sidekick of Adam. He specialises in obsessing over harems and doling out Arabic proverbs. It's a walking, talking insultingly simplistic stereotype. He's also really, really annoying.

To all of these, Rashid nodded and replied, "I swear on the feet of Allah!"

Islam is an iconoclastic religion. Among many other things, it doesn't do humanoid depictions of its deity. Allah doesn't have feet. Even a quick swing onto The Godchecker could tell you that.

The odd thing about Rashid is his sheer inability to get along with anyone. He cites his god Allah with great frequency, he tries to get every attractive woman to join his harem and generally makes a nuisance of himself by offering unwanted advice. The real question is, why hasn't he been chased out of whatever settlement he's in with pitchforks? He's obviously foreign, speaks in some unknown language (possibly of curses) and keeps calling on his heathen God. The Norse might put up with him, what with being polytheistic and quite far travelled (the men, at least), but why are the Anglo-Saxons putting up with him? It's mind-boggling how no one regards him with even the slightest bit of suspicion. Especially since he's doing a lot of dodgy things: he utters a constant stream of blasphemy; he almost certainly doesn't attend church and he's been hitting on all the woman.

"Perhaps you could travel partway with me… you and Rashid. He speaks often of a yearning to return to the warmer clime of his homeland."

And why does Rashid return with Adam to Hawkshire at the end of the book? He's been trying to get Adam to travel back with him home for most of the book, but then when he's in the East... he comes back?

 

Names, oh, the names!

Yes, England has shires, Sandra Hill. Well done. But none with names like "Hawkshire" and "Ravenshire." They stick out like sore thumbs and in a bad way. Shires, sorry to disappoint, don't have romantic names like that. Just to name a few: Bedfordshire (Shire of Beda's Ford), Legeceastershire (Shire of the city of legions), Grantbridgeshire, Wiltonshire (shire of Wilton, name of town, which is named after the river Wylye), Hertfordshire (Shire of hart's fjord), Buckinghamshire (Shire of Bucca's home), etc, etc...

Stoneheim's keep was a wood fortress, like most others throughout Norway. But that was the only way in which it was similar.

Stoneheim. What sort of a name is that? Heima is Old Norse for "home," which is why it appears in mythological place names like Jötunheimr (home/homeland of the giants). The settlement of Stoneheim is certainly not made of stone and the fields of its holdings are stone-studded. Are the people of Stoneheim made of stone? Where is the stone? And why mix an English word (Stone) with an Old Norse one (heima) in this jarring way? What reason has she to do so?

Dragonstead. Stead is English. Staðr, however, is Old Norse, meaning "place" or "stead," so pretty much the same thing. But why mix it with "Dragon"? (The Old Norse word would be Draki.) Dragons aren't really a good thing in Germanic myth and legend. You put it on the front of your longship because it's fearsome and scary, not because it's cuddly and lovely.

Fagrfjord. Here, we have an Old Norse word. But Fagr? Fair Ford?

Now, not all places in Norway or England or the rest of the world have prosaic names. After all, there's a Ravenswood and a Seven Oaks... but there's also the places in Iceland named by Ingimund when he got there: Saudadal (Sheep valley), Svinavatn (Swine lake), Hunavatn (Cub's lake), Hof (Temple), Stigandahrof (Stigandi's Shed), Hrutafjord (Rams' fjord), Vididal (Willow valley), Bordeyri (Plank headland) and Thordisarholt (Thordis' wood).

In fact, all of Tyra's sisters were legitimate. Her father had a tendency to marry his women, even more than one at a time.

Breanne, Drifa, Vana, Ingrith, Tyra. All legitimate daughters of Thorvald.

That makes no sense given the Germanic alliterating naming traditions for royal families. That's all I can say. They should all begin with same letter, if not the same component.

To be continued...