Debeehr's Reviews > Jaran

This book was not what I thought it was going to be.

I picked up this book because I had heard it dealt with a matriarchal culture and I was intrigued. I enjoy reading about matriarchies, and I was hoping for a woman-focused book with a lot of strong female characters interacting with each other, shaping events, taking action, and basically exercising a great deal of agency.

That's not what I got.

The people in this book, the Jaran, are basically matriarchal "in name only." Women are supposedly powerful, and supposedly exercise control over the clans .... but we see almost none of this as the most active and dynamic character by far is a man, Ilya Bakhtoriin. He is the head of the all-male jahar, or warrior group, of the Jaran clans, and he has dreams of conquest. He wants to unite all the Jaran and lead the jahar against the settled people of the towns, the khaja. He's basically a proto-Genghis Khan.

What do the women, the supposedly powerful matriarchs of the clans, think about this? Do they encourage this? Do they want to stop him? Is there a wise old crone around who either has decreed this shall be done or is determined to put this young whipper-snapper in his place? Well, the women don't seem to care one way or the other. They know Ilya has dreams but they seem remarkably unconcerned about this literally world-shaping vision of his, content to stick to gossiping about who is sleeping with who and who gets what tent. You see the affairs of the jahar are men's matters and have nothing to do with women. Their attitude seems basically to be "Well, Ilya gonna do what Ilya gonna do, and it doesn't have much to do with us."

It's possible there are Jaran women out there who are more proactive about this, but we just don't see them. That would be *very* possible in fact because the vast majority of this book about a supposedly matriarchal culture in which women are dominant is taken up with following the doings of Alpha Male Ilya and his all-male warrior band as they ride across the plains, waging and winning battles, outwitting political rivals, and so on. The message of the book couldn't be clearer: men have agency; women are just along for the ride.

Literally, in fact, and this brings me to the second part of the book that I didn't like. Ilya's jaran is not *quite* all male, no. There is one woman riding with it. Her name is Tess and she is the book's main character. Tess is an offworlder. She is the younger sister of Charles, the nobleman whose domains include Rhuy, the planet the action takes place on. In this book, humanity is something of a client species under the rulership of the Chapalii, a patriarchal advanced alien race. Yes, their name sounds like pasta noodles and yes, it is distracting and makes it difficult to take them seriously. Charles is the only human who's managed to achieve a title from the Chapalii, and under their extremely hierarchical rules, Tess is his only heir, even if she's a woman.

As a female character, Tess leaves a lot to be desired. She ends up on stranded on Rhuy after making a stupid decision that results in her getting left behind accidentally while her ship takes off, whence she is picked up by the Jaran. The Jaran, a pre-industrial culture, aren't aware of space travel or aliens so she has to conceal her background, telling them that she's the sister of a nobleman (true) and she needs to make it to the nearest large city, Jeds, to contact her brother (true, she needs to tell him some vagely important information about what the Chapalii are doing here).

Tess is very much a bog-standard romance protagonist (because despite what it was billed as, this is, in fact a romance novel). She has no particularly interesting character traits, and no skills whatsoever that would be useful in Jaran society, despite the fact that it would not be beyond the realm of probability for her to, say, have taken riding lessons, or done archery or fencing. She does have a standard-issue emo college break-up to angst over for a bit, but that doesn't help. Nor do her feelings of being in her brother's shadow and being out of place in his world help because we don't see enough of her brother's world before the action starts for it to feel "real." To be fair, she is Spunky (tm) and Feisty (tm) -- which honestly are two of my *least* favorite female character traits. By dint of this spunkiness, she manages to strong-arm Ilya into taking her with his jahar to help her get to Jeds, along with two Chapalii whom she wants to keep an eye on -- and the romance begins.

This brings me to another point: I *really* don't care for romance novels, and this one was hitting all the spots about romance novels that I don't like. Female protagonist passes up sweet, caring, respectful man to crush on brooding, arrogant alpha douchebag? Check. We're supposed to somehow find douchebag's arrogance attractive? Check. Female character is one-down to alpha douchebag even if she could have some attributes that place her as his equal or even -- gasp -- superior? Check. Female character has little agency and is dragged along in alpha douchebag's wake? Check. Alpha douchebag is somehow mysteriously attracted to female even though she displays no interesting attributes whatsover? Check. Alpha douchebag has secret pain that we're supposed to feel sorry for him about somehow? Check.

I *really* didn't like Ilya -- of course, I don't really care for speshul, god-like alpha douchebags to begin with, so that didn't help. My feelings toward him were basically mild to mediocre dislike for about two thirds of the book, until he pulled a certain particular stunt with Tess that tipped them over into outright hatred. In real life, that stunt should have caused Tess to be blindingly furious with him, completely re-evaluate everything she had ever known about his character, and eject him forcefully from her life forever, having recognized him as a thoroughly toxic, abusive, controlling creep with no respect for her, her boundaries, her free will, or anything else about her. And yes, they did have a cute little lover's spat over it for a chapter or two (if it even lasted that long). But even as I read it, I felt a sinking dread in the pit of my stomach because I knew the signs, and yes; she forgives him and by the end of the book they get their HEA.

(Someone else pointed out that Tess shows a remarkable lack of concern for the fact that her main squeeze Ilya's plans involve bringing brutal violence, death, destruction and war to thousands of innocent people; this is certainly true and ... not exactly a point in her favor.)

This isn't a bad book. It's well written, and Elliot has a vivid descriptive style. People who like romances will probably like this. But it wasn't what I thought I was getting when I picked it up, and in fact it was several things I really, really don't care for. I was disappointed, and don't think I'll check out the rest of the series.