Alright, up front, this is one of my favourite books of the year. Its a thoughtful paean on the horrors of war. It's a story of what family is and what it means. It's a means of exploring and understanding grief, and conflict, and trust, and faith. It's a story about kicking goblin arse, and a story of war with an unapologetic, harrowing darkness to it, a razor edge that makes sure you know you're bleeding. It's a tough read, no doubt, but also one that made me think and feel, and explore a little more what it means to be, well, human. It's a book that can be brilliantly funny, understatedly smart, and emotionally devastating in a handful of pages.
Anyway. That's probably telling you that I quite liked it. And I did! It's worth noting that it's a prequel to Buehlman's The Blacktongue Thief, but I'd say it could happily be read as a standalone. And it's very tonally distinct from that story, with an interlocutor whose perspective is very different to that of the previous novel, and in a different time and place entirely. Decades before, during the last Goblin war, which ripped apart a continent.
Our protagonist is Galva, a young woman who has defied her family to go to war. It helps that her family are one of the pre-eminent noble families of her kingdom, and it helps that two previous wars with Goblins have savagely lowered the number of men available to, well, fight wars - so now the military is heavily populated by women. Incidentally, the story does delve into the socio-political issues this causes, with a minority of rich men struggling to come to grips with the idea that their command structure is now populated mostly by women, many of whom both aren't taking any of their crap, and also are looking to step up and replace the existing hierarchy pretty soon now.
But anyway, Galva. Those of you who read The Blacktongue Thief may recognise her from there, but here she's twenty years younger, and it shows. This Galva is blunt, but thoughtful. She struggles to reach out and make human connections, but also seems very incentivised to make them - trying to be a little less self contained, looking for, if not romance, at least peace and comfort during a conflict that means life is likely to be cut short at any moment. Galva is also well trained and dangerous, though not yet a hardened killer - she has an innocent side to her, slowly calloused by the sheer brutality of what she's exposed to. But she's also sweet, compassionate, and probably not going to put a sword in you unless you deserve it. Her struggle to really understand people is something that gives her startling vulnerability, even when she's slogging through mud, falling headlong into the horrors of war, and marching with magical war-ravens (read and, well, find out). I mean...I don't want to go on about this exactly, but as a protagonist, she's pitch-perfect, drawing us in, letting us empathise and sympathise, and showing us not only the best and worst of her world but what it means and how it feels. She does also kick serious butt, but her emotions are there, her humanity is there to make us feel the raw nature of the events she's embroiled in. In summary, Galva is wonderfully realised here, and if you've seen her before, then this adds a rich texture to her previous appearance - and if not, well, she's still great.
This is a war story, and I will say that the Goblins, as primary antagonists, are brutal. This is not a happy-go-lucky book. It's laced with blood and tragedy, and you know what by the end I absolutely loathed these creatures as much as Galva does. Buehlman manages to make them repulsive while also giving the, a life and culture of their own, it's just one that sits at a solid ninety-degrees to our own (actually, since they can't abide straight lines, probably at eighty-five degrees). They're viciously intelligent, brutal, and horrifying in equal measure. And every battle (and there are a few) is viscerally felt, bloody, uncompromising in the grit and sweat and horror. But this is also a world that plays with triumph and with subtler emotions - the grief, for example, that an equestrian nation feels when its horses are cut down by an engineered plague, laced with a need for vengeance, and sorrow.
Anyway. Maybe I haven't sold you with all that. So I'll say this. The Daughter's War is a war story, a story of family, born and made, a story of horrors and a story of love that could light the stars. It's a story that you'll want to tear through, a story that you won't want to end, an story that will make you feel. Go and get a copy as soon as you can, you won't regret it.
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