Take your daughter to the slaughter (Ironhand's Daughter - David Gemmell)

Member Name: calypte

Product:	Ironhand's Daughter - David Gemmell
Date:	26/06/08 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: not brain taxing, good pace, okay characters

Disadvantages: unoriginal setting, not cheerful

I do like a bit of mindless fluff in my reading sometimes. Well, okay, most of the time! And since I'm a bit meh on chick lit, a good fantasy novel - and with a strong female lead, all the better! - fills that niche rather well. Step forward David Gemmell, who can usually be relied upon for a nice little adventure without taxing a tired brain.

Ironhand's Daughter is the first of two books in the Hawk Queen series. We meet our eponymous heroine, Sigarni (s'fantasy. The names HAVE to be silly!), who's not just a strong female lead, but a male fantasy of what a strong female character should be. Oh dear. Actually, I shouldn't really mind that she's into her free love and independence, but there's just the tiniest tickle of 'meh' that this character was penned by a bloke - especially with the (I suspect deliberately shocking) rape scene, and the attitudes expressed around it, later in the book. Hmm.

Anyway. Sigarni does indeed live an independent life, in a forest, with her hunting dog and hawk, and flits between whichever lover she fancies at the time. However, all is not total sunshine, as the land she lives in has been conquered by the people who live to the south of her... Highland, mountains'n'glens idyll. An 'outland' enemy who rousted control of these Highlands in a battle at 'Colden Moor'. Oh, for crying out loud - it's not even subtle!! Pretty quickly into this book I was wrinkling my nose up in sheer distaste at yet another (from Gemmell, at that!) lazy, lazy setting of a story in a barely-masked British Isles, Highlanders against let's-not-call-them-English. Perhaps it just lacks the sense of the exotic I like in this genre, but with absolutely no limits placed on the imagination, I'm bitterly disappointed to see such a lack of it. Sigh.

Of course, me being me, I keep reading anyway, and I'm relieved to report that I did eventually find enough to like in this book to keep going. While the backdrop remains Eng- urm, Outlanders-v-Highlanders war, various fantastical elements creep in, as they should! Demons are hunting Sigarni - why? What's hiding in her past, that she can't quite remember? We also get a few chapters set in another world, which were actually somewhat frustrating: if you CAN have a setting so otherworldly, why settle for such dull normality for the bulk of the novel!?

Again, I can't get over that disappointing background, which is perhaps a shame as there are some good things here. Gemmell is pretty good at writing with pace and enough intrigue to hold the attention. I felt genuinely stirred by the injustice inflicted upon Sigarni, when she has a run in with the local Outlander overlord: as a Highlander, she has no rights; as a woman - less than that. The tragic consequences of that meeting are very well handled - horrific, and yet not described in sickening detail that your brain knows is really there. Alas, such moments only highlight the blandness of much of the rest of the book, as Sigarni sets out to become the 'Hawk Queen' and rouse the Highlands into defending their home. While I appreciate the fast pace rather than miring us in an overdose of atmosphere and detail, I was still disappointed by the bulk of the story, and semi-decent characters who barely have time to develop.

Finally... it's just not a happy read. Perhaps the follow-up injects some hope, but the tone here remains fairly bleak. I suspect that, on top of my disappointment in the setting, just failed to endear the book to me at all.

If you hate fantasy fiction - why are you reading this review (but thank you for the 1.5p!)?! If you are a fan of the genre, I'd suggest that this is okay - eventually! - but still strikes me as a fairly bland example of the genre, and of Gemmell's writing. So, while not really really dire, I just can't find enough here to really offer a recommendation: if you have the time to read Ironhand's Daughter, then there are soooo many other books more worthy of that time!

*Boring bits:
Paperback 283 pages (Orbit 2002)
First released in 1995
ISBN: 1857238516
RRP: £6.99

Summary: Mediocre fantasy - definitely not Gemmell's best