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published 1997; hardback 1997, DAW
The Mageborn Traitor is Melanie Rawn's long-awaited follow-up to The Ruins of Ambrai, her first full-length story after the popular Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies. I enjoyed Rawn's first two trilogies immensely, yet was pleased when she chose to set a new series in a new world. There are too many authors who invent a popular world and then hammer out novel after novel exploring every last aspect of it in minute detail, to the point where even a fan can't stand reading about it any more (this could be called the Pern Syndrome).
Unfortunately, I continue to be underwhelmed by Lenfell, the world of the Exiles trilogy, for reasons that I will set out in more detail. The story of Exiles is also not really grabbing me, especially in The Mageborn Traitor, which mainly marks time between the first and last books in the trilogy while certain characters, as in a good soap opera, grow up enough to influence the story substantially.
Exiles is about the conflict between two schools of magic, the Mage Guardians and the Malerrisi, and how it affects the society of Lenfell at large. Three Mageborn sisters are the last survivors of the ruling family of Ambrai, shattered in a purge of dissidents that nearly destroyed Ambrai itself. The sisters have chosen different paths, with two opposing one who seeks to control them and all Lenfell. Glenin Feiran is the Lady of Malerris, an order of Mages whose philosophy is based on controlling the lives of every person by ordaining their place in the Web, with Mages ruling the non-Mages and the Mages in turn being ruled by a hierarchy headed by the Lady herself. Sarra Liwellan is the Councillor of Sheve, a politician who is pushing for reforms in Lenfell's government and social order. And Cailet Rille is the Mage Captal, who trains Mageborns in the ways of the Mage Guardians. Unlike the Malerrisi, the Mage Guardians are sworn to serve Lenfell, not dominate it.
Part of my dissatisfaction with this series comes from my feeling that the characters are not distinguishable from each other except for the fact that some are obviously evil and the rest obviously good. Every one of the protagonists is dazzlingly good-looking, brilliantly intelligent, physically fit, sharply dressed, and incisively witty. Not a plain Jane in the bunch. As I read, I just fill in mental images of Barbie and Ken, with different colors of hair, eyes, and skin.
The other thing I don't like is that Rawn's society doesn't really work. I can accept the idea that under the appropriate circumstances a culture could develop in which women dominate men, as is the case in Lenfell. However, the basis of women’s power in this world comes from the fact that after a devastating disaster that rendered most of the population barren or prone to producing children with birth defects, the ability to bear healthy children became of primary importance. So why wouldn’t the men of Lenfell simply keep women in sexual servitude, as men have historically done in our world and still do in some cultures today?
Though it’s made clear that men have no rights within marriage and do not independently hold wealth, their oppression is curiously lenient. There are men serving at the highest levels of government, in elected positions (which hints at the idea that men are able to vote in this world, though this is never stated). There are men serving in the military, police forces, and as judges. There are male Mages. There's probably never been a society in which the downtrodden have as much access to power as the men of Lenfell.
Then comes the question of force. Though an unequal society can be buttressed by law and custom, the base of its power is violence. We are told that the powerful women of Lenfell don’t use weapons, but the men do. Just what exactly prevents the so-called slaves from banding together and turning these on their masters? In a scene that absolutely infuriated me, Sarra Liwellan's husband Collan Rosvenir is musing about the oppression of men on Lenfell and decides, “Masculine solidarity in the face of feminine domination wasn’t the answer. He’d never felt a twinge of it in his life.” Instead, he gets his powerful wife to persuade the (mixed gender!) Council to make new laws to protect men. Well, isn’t that convenient. Social change with the wave of a magic wand. Powerful groups never just tamely hand over their power. Lasting social change comes when oppressed people actively work for it, as any casual student of history knows. I wouldn't be so irked over the faulty sociology at work here if I didn't think that Rawn was trying to make some kind of point, and doing it badly (similar to when she threw an abortion subplot into Skybowl, one of her earlier works, for no apparent reason).
When Rawn sticks to what she knows best, the story is interesting. Toward the end of The Mageborn Traitor we finally start to get some real, if somewhat confusing, action. Everyone's secrets are revealed, but it's not clear yet what's going to happen now. I'm left with mixed feelings about this book: personal detachment from its characters, annoyance at the societal setup, and a certain amount of interest in what happens next. I'll probably read The Captal's Tower, the final book in the trilogy, to satisfy that interest, but I'm not going to blow $23.95 on it. That's what libraries are for.
Review by Sara Lipowitz
Reviewed February 23, 1997
ISBN 0-88677-730-5
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