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Power and the Pattern #1
Daughter of Prophecy
A blend of science fiction and fantasy, Daughter of Prophecy, set in the ruins of an America destroyed by magic, tells how the love and power of two people can change the course of fate.
368 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 14, 2009
I bought this book in 1996, 'cause the Thomas Canty cover art was so very pretty. Having just reread it, my feelings are mixed but on the whole positive.
This is a fantasy novel, with an unusual setting that (the first time I read it) I only caught onto about 2/3 of the ways through the book -- I suspect most adult readers would catch on quickly. Kelleher (she seems to have dropped the 'Bush' later in her career) writes decent prose, and her pacing is both good & interesting, and the story she has to tell is delightfully melodramatic, full of romance and passion and nation-shaking events and some really pretty good characterisation. I particularly liked the odd magic system, sourced in mathematics and with reasons that magic doesn't just solve every problem facing the world.
My mixed feelings come in with the gender roles. Kelleher does something interesting by providing a lot of believable interiority for Nydia, a woman whose motivations are split between stereotypically feminine desires (the Love of her Man, the desire for children) and her sense of duty towards the knowledge she protects. If I look at the book from one angle it's painfully gender-binary, with big strong men who are Heroes and a beautiful sexy female Heroine, dangerous to the Heroes because of her amazing sexual power, yet emotionally dependent and clinging once sex has happened. But from another angle Nydia is very much her own person, whose fatal flaw is not so much her own sexual appeal but the attraction she feels to Abelard, that overcomes her own reason and intelligence.
Writing this, I think what strikes me as discordant is that Nydia's story is in many ways a typically male story -- it's the story of the intelligent honourable scholar whose sexuality interferes with their need to preserve knowledge. By making Nydia female, Kelleher creates a lot of tension, because the wife/mother connotations sit so uneasily with the scholar/lover connotations; she's both preserving knowledge and a source of mystical woo-woo, both a passionate lover and a clinging woman. If this were slash I don't think I'd have mixed feelings about the relationship at all, which partakes of some tasty tropes about doing stupid dangerous things for the person you love or maybe just lust after. So yes, I think Kelleher is actually telling a 'male' story with a female character, and more power to her!
This is a fantasy novel, with an unusual setting that (the first time I read it) I only caught onto about 2/3 of the ways through the book -- I suspect most adult readers would catch on quickly. Kelleher (she seems to have dropped the 'Bush' later in her career) writes decent prose, and her pacing is both good & interesting, and the story she has to tell is delightfully melodramatic, full of romance and passion and nation-shaking events and some really pretty good characterisation. I particularly liked the odd magic system, sourced in mathematics and with reasons that magic doesn't just solve every problem facing the world.
My mixed feelings come in with the gender roles. Kelleher does something interesting by providing a lot of believable interiority for Nydia, a woman whose motivations are split between stereotypically feminine desires (the Love of her Man, the desire for children) and her sense of duty towards the knowledge she protects. If I look at the book from one angle it's painfully gender-binary, with big strong men who are Heroes and a beautiful sexy female Heroine, dangerous to the Heroes because of her amazing sexual power, yet emotionally dependent and clinging once sex has happened. But from another angle Nydia is very much her own person, whose fatal flaw is not so much her own sexual appeal but the attraction she feels to Abelard, that overcomes her own reason and intelligence.
Writing this, I think what strikes me as discordant is that Nydia's story is in many ways a typically male story -- it's the story of the intelligent honourable scholar whose sexuality interferes with their need to preserve knowledge. By making Nydia female, Kelleher creates a lot of tension, because the wife/mother connotations sit so uneasily with the scholar/lover connotations; she's both preserving knowledge and a source of mystical woo-woo, both a passionate lover and a clinging woman. If this were slash I don't think I'd have mixed feelings about the relationship at all, which partakes of some tasty tropes about doing stupid dangerous things for the person you love or maybe just lust after. So yes, I think Kelleher is actually telling a 'male' story with a female character, and more power to her!
July 15, 2011
Many years in the future, there has been an Armageddon based on the things we call science and math and what they call Magic. A few are still able to wield the equations to make things happen, but most of the people (who are immune to disease and only die from injury or old age or childbirth) live on the things built hundreds of years ago and the things they can make from their hands.
Nydia Farhallen and Abelard Ridenau cross paths - a prescient witch and the King of the Estates of Meriga. Their love is epic, colored by a pledge-bond between them and her knowledge of the future. The book stayed intriguing throughout and I had trouble putting it down. The names are similar enough to America, as is the map, to help the reader know where in the country the characters are. There are enough changes to the landscape to make the reader also wonder what has happened to this future.
Nydia Farhallen and Abelard Ridenau cross paths - a prescient witch and the King of the Estates of Meriga. Their love is epic, colored by a pledge-bond between them and her knowledge of the future. The book stayed intriguing throughout and I had trouble putting it down. The names are similar enough to America, as is the map, to help the reader know where in the country the characters are. There are enough changes to the landscape to make the reader also wonder what has happened to this future.
December 12, 2022
I had a lot of feelings about this book, but I think the ending was what convinced me to give the book 4 stars. This book is set in America, but it is future America. This isn't immediately apparent when you start the book because this America, but what if it was like the Dark Ages in Europe and no one remembered when America was... America? So this book is alt-history, but one of the things that really irked me about the book was the fact that words like "senator" and "mayor" became "senador" and "mayher" respectively. I understand why the choice was made: to indicate that the ideals of America are half-remembered like if someone described how it worked through a telephone with a bad connection, but it makes for a cumbersome reading experience. I had to restart this book three times before I got past it. I really like when authors take the magic is really advanced science approach , which really meshed with the world-building. I really appreciated the plot. People who you think are the good guys turn out to be not so good. People who you think are the bad guys, may have a point. There are twists. So many twists, but I won't spoil them. One last thing, I wish this weren't the cover art. It feels extremely misleading. The cover says high fantasy, but it is really a dystopia with high fantasy overtones. I feel like the cover should be grittier, because this is a gritty story.
June 15, 2020
It was okay. Parts of it felt original, but other parts of it did not feel realistic or believable. It's also hard for me to like a book when I don't like the protagonists. Phineas was great, and for sure my favorite character. I quite liked Melisande as well. Nydia had such promise, but didn't live up to it and felt rather flat. Plus she didn't stick to her convictions. Abelard was an ass throughout, and more unlikeable the farther I got through the book.
The Meriga/America connection was interesting--initially rather amusing (and obvious), it was also rather distracting at times. And I could not take the Harleyriders seriously.
There was a lot of evil in this book, moreso as the story progressed. I felt that it ended on a dark note, and I didn't like that. But it's clearly a setup for a continuing story.
The Meriga/America connection was interesting--initially rather amusing (and obvious), it was also rather distracting at times. And I could not take the Harleyriders seriously.
There was a lot of evil in this book, moreso as the story progressed. I felt that it ended on a dark note, and I didn't like that. But it's clearly a setup for a continuing story.
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November 21, 2008TBR
January 21, 2009
See Cera's review.
January 24, 2022
I liked the ideas behind the premise of the book but wish it would have explained a little more about what happened as well as given us better references to what areas were now verses before.
August 29, 2014
well-written but very bleak. another reread.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews