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| Caledorian High Elf riding a dragon (©Games Workshop) |
Book: Dragonmage, by Chris Wraight.
3.5/5. Goodreads review also here. A rather shorter review than the last Warhammer post, although this review ended up inspiring a whole other post about Warhammer female representation in the miniature ranges xD
This review contains some spoilers of the plot of this book.
+1 Well-written and engaging, I especially liked how the initial battle
scene was constructed, as well as the action scenes featuring the
Caledorian dragons.
+1 I'm quite a fan of the Warhammer Fantasy
dragons allied with the High Elves, and they feature quite a lot in this
story (including a female dragon, which was my fave). The fact that
they can communicate telepathically with the Elves make them not just
cool steeds, but characters on their own right with their own distinct personalities.
-1 Of course, there's the fact that the bond
between the High Elf and the dragon is not always one of mutual
understanding. Even though they're far older and powerful, both
physically and mentally, dragons are also seen pretty much as servants
bent to the will of their Elven riders, and they're supposed to go fight
the Elves' enemies whenever they're woken from their long sleep :S In
the story's plot, the dragons ultimately were pretty proactive in this
respect, but there's that too.
+-1 Female representation
was minimal, to say the least, and there's of course no Bechdel
😕. Apart from the female dragon and mentions
of house servants, there's only a main female character, a mage called
Anlia. All the rest of players in this story - All the soldiers (we
assume), the other mages, the Sword Masters of Hoeth, the Elven Lords,
most dragons (we assume), most Chaotic antagonists (we assume), they're
all men. At least the ones directly mentioned. Which amounts to pretty much the same thing when it comes to representation.
Anlia's powerful and proactive, yes, but her powers also
keep being used by more than one man in order to achieve power and
glory, and her backstory includes the trope of the too powerful woman
who lost control and accidentally killed people (and this is not
particularly subverted as Frozen's Elsa's story is). So she also spends the whole
story being chased by her own people, who want to bring her to justice.
And she does the men's work while pretty much being locked up in a tower, because assassin mages and emissaries from the White Tower will try to kill her as soon as she sets foot in a village for a stroll. To cap it all, it turns out (spoiler!), that she has been
possessed by a Chaos daemon all this time (I really hope the 'being super powerful' stuff wasn't related to that :S), and said daemon ends up
killing her just as she seemed to be finally enjoying her fully-fledged
power. So yay 🙃😕.
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| I just wanted some badass-in-her-own-right female mage content, why can't I have nice things |
+-1 There's no explicit sexualization in the descriptions, which is unfortunately quite rare in Warhammer books (and miniatures heh). Of course, Anlia is also repeteadly described as beautiful specifically, even though technically all High Elves, male and female, are supposed to be canonically very beautiful. But what else is there when it comes to the women, you understand, you have to remind people they're pretty 🙄 xD
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| That double standards is oBVIOUSly a classic |
-1 There is a very cringy moment when the Ellyrian Elf Lord Anlia is working for gets into her bedroom uninvited at night to discuss plans and stuff, and Anlia jokes that he shouldn't be in a lady's room at that hour. The entitled Elf immediately replies without missing a beat that 'pah, if I were after that I would have had it a long time ago lol', and just eww 😣. If you're going to portray rape culture in your universe and your story, male writers, at least criticize it or something, make that inclusion to be about social criticism, and do it respectfully and productively. It isn't enough to say 'we're showing another example of how arrogant he is!' because Anlia, the recipient of this, doesn't seem to particularly mind about that incredibly creepy reply. it's all just so...cheap and disrespectful, the way it's handled. Can we please stop adding rape "humour" to fantasy stories? Thanks 😑.
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| Don't. Just don't. It really isn't funny and it doesn't add anything to the plot except to tell me that you don't care about women, really. |
+1 There's some anti-war and anti-binarism content as well, from the part of a follower of the Caledorian Elf Lord. The story features the war between the Ellyrian and Caledorian factions, with two Elf Lords who are vying for the throne of the Phoenix King (same old story, time and again, eh). This character keeps seeing the war between both sides and all the hunger for power as unnecessary and horrible, and his inner commentary was one of the most interesting parts of the story for me. He's also the one riding the female dragon, so bonus point 👍 xD
