“Heir to the Sun” by Jennifer Allis Provost

I forget how I ended up with this book, but somehow I landed a free ebook on Kindle. As far as free fantasy goes, it was pretty middle of the road. Some things were cool, others not so much. Mostly it’s just me protesting over how all fantasy just has to be so sexist, what on earth is with that?

The book starts by following two fae that are trapped in what’s called a doja by demons. They are more-or-less used as sex slaves and it’s pretty brutal even though you don’t get a description directly of the violence. These two are Torrin and Hillel and they start working with their fae guard slaves to try and escape. The story then swaps to a priestess, Alluria, and her guard Caol’nir who are clearly in love with each other, but as a priestess Alluria is sworn to be the mate of their god. So Alluria has to figure out how to leave the priestess role and be his mate. So while that romance stuff is going down, the slaves escape, led by Hillel, and they rename her Asherah (or the Deliverer). They travel around freeing other dojas until they get to the elves. Once there, the elf king Lormac falls for Asherah and agrees to help her. They end up teaming up with some of the fae (including Caol’nir) to take down the fae king, who they learned has teamed up with the demons and is letting them set up these dojas.

They also learn that Alluria is likely the daughter of their god, so she joins the fight with some new magic powers. They capture the king, but in the confusion Lormac is killed by the fae guard that Asherah originally worked with because the guard didn’t want anyone else protecting Asherah. Asherah kills the fae king and she ends up ruling both the elves and the fae all together. Alluria and Caol’nir take off to the countryside to have several children.

The main thing about this book that’s pretty cool is the narrative structure. It starts off as third-person perspective from Hillel and then swaps to third-person perspective of Caol’nir. But then there are also sections called Alluria speaks or Hillel speaks that are first-person accounts of what the characters are thinking or feeling. Which is pretty inventive, giving the reader both sides. But also the storylines of the slaves and the priestesses manage to come together and join forces so now you have the perspectives of multiple characters on the same events. This is used really well during battles when all of the characters are in different places.

But my main complaint is that it’s just such typical fantasy with all of this violence towards women and the general treatment of the female characters. The dojas are basically keeping fae sex slaves to breed demon babies. Asherah talks a lot to Lormac about how she’s “broken” and practically destroyed by her experiences there which is not a very feminist attitude to the whole thing. Getting sexually assaulted does not make you broken or weak or anything else, that’s just ridiculous. There’s also a scene where the demons get into the temple and Alluria ends up getting branded by one of them. Which is really taking this to a whole new level of possession as then there’s talk of her being marked and all that. I’m not about it. Plus in general I think Asherah is the only female warrior we see, Alluria wants to join the fight and is told no repeatedly but she insists on coming. Yes women do fight, but the model of there being exactly one woman is really getting old. And she is constantly compared to elven women who apparently do not fight and sit at home. Can we please move beyond this?

Only other thing I want to bring up is that there is some possible queer baiting. After escaping the first doja it is implied that Torrim and Hillel are interested in each other romantically. There’s a conversation that they have about how some of the other women are having sex with some of the men while they’re like snuggling naked before bed or something like that. But the relationship doesn’t go anywhere, they both end up with men by the end. There is an exchange where they state that they love each other very much, which is cool because platonic love is great as well, but it still seems odd to me that their relationship did not go the way I thought it would. I’m not sure if that counts as queer baiting or not, but it is off putting.

Anyways the book is part of a series, I think the next one continues Alluria and Caol’nir’s journey. Asherah’s seems like it has further to go as well so I would be surprised if she did not make an appearance. I probably won’t pick it up though, I’m just real sick of these fantasy sexism tropes and I think I need to find a series without them if I want to do a deep dive.