The Waking Land

 The Waking Land

By Callie Bates

Lady Elanna is fiercely devoted to the king who raised her like a daughter. But when he dies under mysterious circumstances, Elanna is accused of his murder—and must flee for her life.

Returning to the homeland of magical legends she has forsaken, Elanna is forced to reckon with her despised, estranged father, branded a traitor long ago. Feeling a strange, deep connection to the natural world, she also must face the truth about the forces she has always denied or disdained as superstition—powers that suddenly stir within her.

But an all-too-human threat is drawing near, determined to exact vengeance. Now Elanna has no choice but to lead a rebellion against the kingdom to which she once gave her allegiance. Trapped between divided loyalties, she must summon the courage to confront a destiny that could tear her apart.

Honestly, I wanted to like this a lot more than I did.  I was not even going to read it at first because I was going to wait for all three of the planned trilogy to come out, that's how much I expected to enjoy it!  But fear not, I am NOT going to be waiting for any more of them.  I read this one and I'm partly through just finished the second one (because I was on a trip and needed something to read) and once that's finished, I am D.O.N.E. with this series. I think, in fact, that The Memory of Fire leaned into even harder the things I didn't like about The Waking Land, so buyer beware.

I did end up picking it for this prompt because it has a bunch of plants on the cover and in fact it's a lot about plants as well. There's a magical earth power in the book, and I know how silly that sounds but I promise it's not as silly as some of the rest of the book.  However, I will note that her power is very conveniently hidden when the book starts, even though she has no control over it, uses it again and again in public, and once she needs it, it is always available to do large or small magic without any training or knowledge whatsoever.  Convenient!

Almost as soon as I got into it I didn't like it very much because it begins with the main character, Elanna, in the court of King Antoine, who is holding her as hostage for her parents good behavior.  Within a chapter, the king is murdered and Elanna is arrested for his murder. Obviously she's rescued since otherwise it would be a very short book and finds her way to the land of her parents. Now you'd think that this would lead to a lot of tension and drama about being torn between two worlds, and the plot description makes it sound like she's really torn between two countries but in fact almost as soon as she gets back to her old homeland she switches allegiances just because they told her that everything she heard growing up with King Antoine was lies. and also she realizes almost instantaneously the three-party system makes more sense than a monarchy. This is why we shouldn't let 19 year olds run for office. They're pretty dumb.

It's even more laughable and doubly ironic when at the end of the book she unilaterally decides to let the daughter of the old King put in exile instead of putting her on trial and potentially executing her even though the new Queen is standing right there and is in complete disagreement with Elanna. Not only is this completely in contravention of everything they've said about checks and balances so far, nowhere in the history of history has letting a potential contender for the throne live been a good idea. In fact in most cases all it does is spur opposition who now has a figurehead behind which to put a rebellion.

SPOILER for the second book: They do this AGAIN in The Memory of Fire and OF COURSE it's going to come back to bite them in the ass in the third book.  But the second book leans even harder into this idea of "We're going to have a revolution and completely overthrow a despotic leader BUT ALSO NO ONE WILL DIE BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO USE VIOLENCE TO OVERTHROW AN UNFAIR SYSTEM ARE JUST AS BAD AS THE SYSTEM, WAAAH.  I have an abhorrence for this rhetoric, as you can tell, as not only is it completely unrealistic and cast the whole thing in a fake-y Disney-fied aura, it's also disingenuous to suggest that an oppressed people become as the oppressors if any attempt to overthrow their shackles results in a death.  There's obviously going overboard, example one being the Troubles in Ireland which had A LOT of civilian casualties, deliberately so, and Ireland being Waking Land's obvious inspiration, but as much as we might praise non-violent protests, these types of activities worked because of world opinion - in the environment that these books are set in, i.e., magical early Roman/British history, there are no televisions, no radios, that will put public pressure on the leaders to stop this.  Also, I need hardly add, that non-violent protests are almost always accompanied with violent protests, because of course you're going to get multiple factions arguing about which method is best to achieve your goals.  This gets to the heart of one of my biggest complaints about The Memory of Fire - even though what'shisname shows up in a country already fomenting revolution, as soon as he appears, everyone just defers to his ideas and plans, even though (in my opinion) his ideas aren't even directed to the same goals, he just wants to save Elanna and Eren.  I'll stop there before I get further sidetracked.  END SPOILER.

In fact I found the character of Elanna to be completely unlikable throughout the book. She's, I suppose, typical for a teenager but you would have hoped that someone with her history and in this setting she would have more sense and be more measured in her actions instead of hmm, just going around to whatever thing she thinks of is an emergency at the time. For example, even though she hasn't seen this man in fifteen years, and has no idea whether he's trustworthy, she demands that they go rescue one of the revolutionaries who was sentenced to be executed even though it could potentially cost more lives and, as we find out in the end of the book, completely ignores her own father who was actually executed. It's like the only things that she thinks about are the ones that are immediately in front of her; there's no layered sense to her understanding. She's mad at her parents until someone tells her that they didn't want her to be taken hostage then she loves them until she finds out that her mother has a relationship with one of the generals on the other side and she blames her mother for colluding with him until the general actually saves her life at which point she forgives her mother for actually passing information that did in fact lead to the death a quite a few of the revolutionaries. Some of that was pretty obvious but she has to have all of it pointed out for her by other people. And to bring it back to that initial suggestion that she would be torn between two worlds, once she finds out that King Antoine may not have been the kindly, charitably minded king she thought he was (leaving aside, also, how ridiculous she thought that in the first place, since he LITERALLY KIDNAPPED HER AT GUNPOINT) she doesn't give anymore thought to him or regret to his death.  Everything is black and white, no gray, and in a book that has such promise, a lack of shaded characters is a serious detriment.

I'm not going to discuss the romance too much except to say that I thought it was silly and improbable and definitely a distraction at a time when she had more important things to think about. And, now that I've read the second book, I also despise what'shisname, who is an absolute ASSHAT in book two.  The whole thing is just making me upset all over again.  In The Waking Land she spends all this time flirting with and creating drama over this guy, telling him her parents engaged her to someone else for political purposes, but she really loves only what'shisname, and it is so junior high, I can't even.  Let us move on.

Here's an eerily prescient portion of my review, which was written before I read book two: "The part with the mountain people was also frustrating, because at no point did anyone say 'If you don't help us then we'll both die so your options are: a king we know will kill you, or one who may potentially be on your side.' Tough decision, hmmmm. If this is the level of political machinations that this author can manage I'm not sure I want to read the next book, which is set at court rather than on the battlefield."  Yeah, that was borne out.  I hate to be so cranky, but this premise had such promise and it was squandered.  I will also make a final note that fantasy books clearly based on western Europe in shape, history, and mores allow authors to use shorthand in establishing the world, and it can be a serious crutch when, like here, the author does not spend enough time developing the fantasy world and relies too heavily on our own understanding of history to do the work.

O6: A book with a plant in the title or on the cover.