Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, F/F
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense
Published on: 25th June 2024
ISBN: 1250887682
Goodreads
Enter the fray in this luminous new adventure from Christopher Buehlman, set during the war-torn, goblin-infested years just before The Blacktongue Thief.
The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men.
They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and still they wage war.
Now, our daughters take up arms.
Galva — Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill — has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.
The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted — not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights
~giant war-corvids!
~a wizard with a messed up sense of humour
~if you’re going to fall in love with a queen, make sure she’s a good one
~brace for nightmares
~carrots that swim
Well, that ripped my heart out.
The Daughters’ War is the prequel to The Blacktongue Thief, which you do not need to have read to enjoy this book. I do think a lot of the events in War will hit harder if you’ve read Thief already, but I have no idea what Buehlman’s intended reading order is and I don’t think either option – starting with War, which is chronologically first, or Thief, which was published first – is wrong. You do you!
But if you read Thief first, you know how War is going to end – if not the exact details, then certainly in sweeping generalities – and I think that makes for a very different reading experience. I’m going to do my best to avoid spoilers for both War and Thief, but I will just briefly say that having read Thief, reading War was extremely bittersweet. And yet, knowing how it would end did not stop me from becoming wildly invested in the characters and their relationships; it did not stop the events of this book from mattering to me. I thought I would be able to hold myself a little emotionally distant from the story – to protect myself from what I knew was coming! – and fellow readers, I could not.
Daughters’ War devastated me.
Buehlman, I applaud you, sir.
Galva was my second-favourite character in Thief, after the main character and narrator, so I was perfectly okay with waiting for a sequel when it meant we’d get a Galva-centric prequel first! And Buehlman took an approach that I wasn’t expecting, but think was the perfect choice: although the book is in first-person, the story is being narrated by an older Galva – so we have both the version of Galva we’re familiar with (and love so much) from Thief, but still get to see her as a younger woman as well. We get her older self’s commentary on her own behaviour and actions, and those of the people around her, as well as the war effort itself. To say nothing of her thoughts on the actual experience of battle and war: it was almost shocking, seeing a younger Galva being afraid of something! GALVA?! Feeling FEAR?! But it also made her…more approachable? Hm, no, that’s not quite the word I want. The Galva of Thief is glorious, fearless, and untouchable; Daughters’ War reminds us that she’s a human being like the rest of us, one who experiences awkwardness and naïveté and, yes, fear.
(Or it might be more correct to say, she experienced those things; I’m not convinced Thief!Galva still does. Pretty sure Thief!Galva gives zero fucks about awkward situations, is far too experienced and canny to be naive, and definitely doesn’t fear death.)
It makes her easier to grasp and understand; she’s not so untouchable here. That being said, from the first page it’s clear that, although younger!Galva and Thief!Galva are different, they’re not fundamentally different. The Galva of this book still (already?) holds tight to what she considers proper behaviour and honour; she still does not suffer fools well; she still gives all of herself unstintingly to whatever course she believes correct. She might be more open, and perhaps more emotionally vulnerable, than the Galva of Thief, but she’s very much the same character: potential readers don’t need to worry that Daughters’ War is going to present an unrecognisable version of Galva.
I loved that we got to see how Galva came to the worship of Dal-Gaata, the goddess of Death. The fact that Galva is/was a handmaiden of Death is definitely one of the things that makes her feel more like a more-than-human paladin than a normal person – who worships Death??? – but Buehlman actually managed to make me follow and understand Galva’s path to Her. I didn’t think that was something I’d be able to get my head around, but – hard as it might be to believe! – I got the appeal. And I am majorly impressed that Buehlman was able to pull that off. If asked, I would have said no one could make me understand why you might want to worship Death – but Buehlman did.
All she asks is that you look upon her with love, not fear; know that this is for your sake, and not hers, a gift she gladly offers. When you know the meaning of the Hourglass Reclined, when you delight in the Song of the Tongueless Mouth, when you understand the mystery of the Union on the Shore, you will at last reject the temporal promises of the great eye who is blind to his own blindness, you will know a peace that is not fragile.
A strength that is tireless.
A love that cannot be disappointed.
And yours will be the Paradise of the Last Grain.
In Thief, we saw what the world looks like after the (most recent) wars with the goblins. It made for an incredibly interesting setting, for many reasons. Through Galva’s eyes, and with the added insight of the older self who is narrating for us, we now get to see how the world got that way, and how unbelievably nightmarish the process was. Buehlman’s experience as a horror writer – including Medieval horror – serves him far too well here; I lost count of how many times I had to put the book down and walk away for a minute, nauseated by the horrors of, not just war – which is always horrifying – but specifically war with the goblins.
[This is where I’d normally stick a quote to demonstrate my point, but I’m not willing to copy out the passages that have been giving me nightmares since I read them.]
We knew the goblins were the bad guys. We did know that. Even if you haven’t read Thief, you know that. But ‘bad guys’ doesn’t really cut it. I can’t tell how much of what the goblins do/did are their own ways, their usual culture, and how much are tactics deliberately designed to horrify and terrify the humans they’re fighting, but wow are they good at the latter. It’s a level of pure fucking evil that would honestly be cartoonish coming from the pen (typewriter? keyboard?) of most writers, but Buehlman is too good to allow you to distance yourself from these horrors that way. There’s no room left to scoff, to reject any of it as ridiculously over-the-top, or reassure yourself in whispers that no one, ever, could ever really do that to another species they know is sapient.
Buehlman never lets you look away, never lets you forget, and makes it very hard to remember this is all fiction and never happened and goblins definitely don’t exist.
Fuck.
It’s pretty fascinating, when I take a step back from it (which I can, now I’ve had weeks to think about it): Buehlman’s approach to horror here, the way in which he presents these nightmarish ideas and acts, is simultaneously sickeningly detailed and yet also bald, blunt, almost unbiased. When Galva and her fellow fighters catch a small goblin scavenging party eating humans, there’s no purple prose, and it’s not plain, either, but it feels plain. Buehlman is just…showing the reader these things, not rubbing your face in them as some horror writers might; not dragging these moments out with disturbingly loving description. And yet there’s enough sensory description to make it visceral, to make it far more real than a dry recitation of the facts would have been. It’s an impressive line to walk, and an impressive effect, and I’d appreciate it more if it hadn’t left me gagging half a dozen times – maybe a full dozen – over the course of the book.
Point being, I really cannot overstate that there is a lot of very dark stuff in here that will keep you awake at night. There’s no book you need to read, and you don’t need to read this one if humans being eaten and skinned and lobotomised is Not For You. Please take care of yourself.
Minor spoiler View Spoiler »
Honestly, I was surprised that I managed to get through Daughters’ War – I do not have a strong stomach for this kind of thing – but I think this is where Buehlman’s real genius shines, because: this is not actually grimdark. Horrifying things are happening, but this is not a book that says horrifying things are intrinsic to life, and/or to human nature. It’s a very delicate balance, but it is balanced; for all the nightmares, there are also moments of brightness and joy and friendship, even hilarity, even love – between Galva and her brother, Galva and her sword-sisters, Galva and her war-corvids, and even a quiet but beautiful romance. Buehlman does not pretend that war is not monstrous (whether you’re fighting goblins or other humans), but we are also left with the sure, solid comfort that there is love and light even in the darkest times, that humans can and will display incredible courage and honour and kindness in the worst of circumstances. Life is often unfair, and not everyone is brave or honourable – some people become their worst selves in times like these; war is one of those things that allows terrible people to become worse, and even to flourish, sometimes.
But most people, when push comes to shove, are trying to do their best. And that is enough to give me hope; that is enough for me to cling to and to keep me going.
Also, eat fish and shellfish, but stop eating the flesh of animals. Esselve loves them also, and blesses with health those who spare them.”
“This will not happen.”
“I know. But you asked.”
“What about fish?”
“Excuse me?”
“She loves sheep and cattle, but fish can get fucked? What are they, carrots that swim?”
Carrots that swim has lived rent-free in my brain since I read that passage and I am STILL LAUGHING AT IT.
Ahem.
a rich name is expensive in obligation.
It may be that this is present in Blacktongue Thief and I just don’t remember, but I was surprised – pleasantly so! – to see how little respect Galva has/had for the hierarchies of power. Her world is more-or-less Medieval Europe, with nobility and kings, and being a noble herself, I wasn’t expecting her to be so critical and contemptuous of the ‘well-born’. Possibly this is something she learned at her very prestigious war college, which only accepts students based on merit, regardless of their backgrounds, but she is very aware that many of the people who are in charge of the war effort really shouldn’t be. Most of those in command are there because they’re nobles, not because they’re actually good at strategy or leading soldiers – and we get plenty of evidence of how stupid a system that is over the course of the book (and the war). It adds another layer of frustrating tragedy to the whole thing, because it’s easy to see how much better events could have gone if good commanders had been giving the orders.
In fact, power and the critique of and contempt for those who have it is really an ongoing theme throughout the book. Galva’s unit – of women who command giant, flightless war-corvids – is an experimental one, and it’s not an accident that everyone in it is a woman: despite the existence of female soldiers, even female generals, there’s still an air of ‘let’s not waste actual men on this nonsense’. And when it becomes clear that the experiment is a wild success, the fate of the birds is directly tied to the sex and social class of their humans. It’s enough to make you tear your hair out; the kings and generals and whatnot are so consistently stupid and short-sighted, more interested in keeping their power than in seeing the human species, you know, survive.
There may be exceptions – Galva and one of her brothers are both nobles who are not asshats, who believe their privilege comes with responsibility, not the freedom from it – but the system, Galva is very clear on, is completely fucked. It elevates those who don’t deserve elevating, and that’s a bad thing at the best of times, but when we’re talking about a war, it means people die who didn’t need to. Men who refuse a woman’s orders get their units slaughtered; as do nobles who have no skill at tactics or strategy but think blue blood will somehow compensate for that. Spoiler: it does not!
And honestly, it’s made even more tragic when you remember that this is not the first war against the goblins. It’s not the first war, period, and you would think people would learn that command positions need to go to those with merit, not wealth, but it took our world an appallingly long time to learn that, so I guess it’s not weird that Galva’s is as stupid. But still: if I remember correctly, this is the third war against the goblins within the last generation or so. You’d think the humans would have realised by now that they can’t take the losses accrued by inferior commanders, the way they maybe can in a human vs human war. You’d think desperation would have driven them to adapt, would have forced them to change their ways.
But no. Because of course not.
You see why I had to cling to those moments of levity and hope. There’s just so much pointless loss.
No one is so furious as a small man caught in a misdeed.
As I said at the start of this review, going into Daughters’ War was one of those times where I tried to hold myself emotionally distant from the story and characters. I’d read Blacktongue Thief; I knew in general terms how Galva’s war was going to go. I didn’t want to get attached to anyone, because odds were good that Galva was the only named character who was going to survive. (I will not tell you whether or not I was correct, guessing that.) But I wasn’t able to stay coolly detached, any more than I was able to let the horror bounce off me; Buehlman is just too good a writer, and Galva too great a narrator, to allow me to keep my distance. I could not do it, dear reader; I cared so much, even when I knew for sure that I shouldn’t. And Buehlman, the brilliant bastard, broke my heart for it, over and over and over again.
I don’t regret it for a second, though. In fact, I now want to devour Blacktongue Thief again, and then come back and reread War, despite knowing exactly how much it’s going to hurt (if it doesn’t hurt even more the second time around, with everything from Blacktongue fresh in my memory).
IT’S THE ADDICTIVE KIND OF PAIN, OKAY? I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT BETTER THAN THAT.
Why did Buehlman decide he needed to write this prequel before the sequel to Blacktongue Thief? I’m not sure – maybe it was to make sure we really grasped the full nightmare of the goblins; maybe it was to better establish Galva’s relationship to Mireya, which is briefly glimpsed in Thief and is probably going to be pretty important to the series. (I would like to write a whole essay on Galva and Mireya’s relationship in Daughters’ War – it’s definitely one of the most beautiful parts of the book, and one of my favourites, too – but this review is already VERY LONG and honestly, you’ll enjoy it more if you read about their romance for yourself.)
I don’t know why we got Daughters’ War – but I’m not sorry. I am traumatised, but I loved it. It’s a magnificent novel, even if it’s far darker than anything I usually read – but that only makes clearer Buehlman’s skill, that I enjoyed the book despite that. (Because of that? Not sure I’d go that far.) I never want to see a goblin again, but I’m so glad we got to see so much deeper into Galva, and how she grew into who she becomes.
The Daughters’ War is definitely not going to be for everyone, but those it is for will love it.
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