Notes

I do agree about Ylinestra's magical date-rape, of course. (And how disgusting is it that the only character who sees any problem with it is described as "prim". And our hero is just going "So that's what it takes to get you laid?" after Alec tells him she used magic on him – that kind of attitude is almost character assassination in my book.) But I don't generally mind if a rape threat exists for the characters, especially in world building that's already too grimdark to truly be light escapism (slavery, torture, mass murder, starvation-level poverty, rampant feudalistic power-abuse; racist attitudes even by hero, totalitarian intellectual censorship by the 'good guys', etc.). I can understand the wish for rape-free escapism, especially since so many of the female audience will have their own bad experiences, but to put all that real life, trigger-y awfulness in and then leave the one thing out completely would feel disingenuous to me. If it was a female character, in an obviously patriarchal society, I'd even say that the complete absence of a Schroedinger's Rapist kind of low-level awareness of the existence of a rape threat was both denial of it happening in the real world, and would make it hard to identify with the female character, just like a female character over a certain age who isn't aware of sexism - but that just as an aside, as it doesn't really apply here. (Though obviously, trigger warnings are necessary – which in my eyes was what Alec’s first two brushes with the threat were about, especially the first one coming a grand total of 4 pages in. Clumsy, maybe, but at least the reader is forewarned that the author is willing to go there. And the run-in with the Plenimaran soldiers tells the audience what will likely happen when the character actually falls into the hands of the enemy. It’s not like she sprung a graphic rape scene on the unprepared reader in the first chapter, like in “Mélusine”. )
As long this ‘realistic’ rape threat doesn’t conveniently only affect women, while never applying to men, like it’s usually the case in high fantasy, despite rape being used as a weapon of war and torture against men from the Ancient Romans to Guantanamo. Which, in Nightrunner 1+2: Why only threaten the gender-swapped but otherwise basic “young, pretty ingénue” character? Because Alec is still filling a traditionally female role in the story structure? (Rescue romance; being swept away by Tall, Dark, and Handsome; etc.) Why did no-one worry about poor, incapacitated Thero at the hands of the Plenimarans, or seriously wondered if Ylinestra had a spell running on him, too? (Yes, Seregil did at one point, but he meant it as a joke. Despite that there was evidence that this really was what was going on... So this whole mess could have been saved by the characters later comparing notes, perhaps because Thero would voice some old self-recriminations in "Traitor's Moon" and they want to reassure him. Such a scene could also have been used to fix the unaddressed date-rape - at least in terms of clarifying it's the characters who are socially conditioned to be rape apologists, not the author - with Alec now more sexually experienced and able to analyse his uncomfortable feelings afterwards, and Seregil perhaps finally realising how badly he and Nysander failed the boy by not investigating just what kind of magic Ylinestra used on him and finding out whether he really could still refuse consent.)

I also didn’t really mind that the mind rape by the dry… the dyrmag… by the lich was emphasized with sexual assault imagery – that just makes it more obvious to the slow that the magical metaphor version of rape is going on, anyway. (Telepathy doesn’t exist in the real world – but it’s still breaking into someone’s insides, robbing them of something extremely private, leaving them helpless and with psychological trauma. “Raping the memories from him” is an appropriate description for the action, IMHO.) Though why was there never a critical word about Nysander’s taking liberties and reading the minds of unsuspecting friends? Or an acknowledgement that what the rhuiau... what the ‘faie priests did to Seregil as a kid was judicially sanctioned, metaphorical rape and crippling, basically the magical equivalent of the movie “Sleepers”, and therefore evil, no matter how they justify it or how nice they treat him later on? And why introduce that kind of mind rape magic at all into the setting? (Yes, I know, because we want angst and danger, but not the realistic results of torture. Can’t permanently maim the pretty boys, after all. And because infallible truth checks are narratively convenient since real world torture doesn’t actually work.)

I don’t even much care if rape is used for drama, or world building (for example: to deny the reality of widespread sexual abuse inherent in any slave-owning society would be like denying the Holocaust, in my eyes), as long as it’s not dropped into the story completely out of the blue and for no deeper social or psychological reason, like in Mercedes Lackey’s “Magic’s Price”.

I don’t get what you mean by Alec’s character development being based too much on the sexual assault that happens to him, by the way. I'm pretty sure the author didn’t see Ylinestra’s treatment of him as any great crime, so that ‘sexual awakening’ plot point wasn’t intentionally hooked up to a rape scene, and consensual sex would have worked just as well. And just the mental torture in “Stalking Darkness” would have had the same effect as the mental torture + sexual assault, IMHO. And in any case, I don’t see how that last incident affected his character much at all – all that trauma gets healed ridiculously quickly and swept under the rug, because the author apparently didn’t want to deal with two psychologically traumatized characters at once and was more interested in Seregil’s depression. (Yes, I know, not everyone develops PTSD and some are more psychologically resilient than others. But all that horror and one night of good sleep is “all he needs”, because he’s still young – seriously?! I was affected more than that by ‘just’ being publically groped by a random stranger once.) Yeah, the whole captivity experience causes Alec to confess his feelings to Seregil, but that was because he’d thought the man had been murdered in front of him, making him appreciate what it would be like losing him. It had nothing to do with the sexual assaults. I’d more say that most of the instances of sexual assault or rape threats in the first 2 books were completely unnecessary for the plot or Alec’s character development. It's there solely to vilify the Plenimarans, because rape is more viscerally condemned by the audience than any mass murder. And perhaps - if the author realised she was writing date rape, I can never decide (given that Alec does show the expected aftereffects, but on the other hand: "prim" and who intentionally characterises their otherwise Chaotic Good hero as a rape apologist?) - to foreshadow Ylinestra's villany. Though the fact that she was using some other magic on Alec when he was sleeping afterwards should have been enough for that.


But all those things I could still overlook, because at least the text makes it clear that the rapists are Evil (even Ylinestra – if sadly not with an belated insight from the heroes how they should have thrown her out of the Oreska the moment she data-raped Alec). No, what really pisses me off is stuff like the relationship between Seregil, Alec and Ilar in "Shadows Return". Ilar is at first very clearly characterized a sadistic sociopath (you can’t sexually abuse people or torture them if you’re capable of empathy), and he deliberately and repeatedly molested and beat Seregil, first for his own kicks, and then to psychologically and physically harm him. And yet, the rest of the book throws a pity party for Ilar and acts like he deserves to be forgiven, despite him never even just genuinely apologizing. And even Seregil seems to forget the sexual assault ever happened. (“I don’t know what he did while I was sleeping” – Yes, you do. He told you and did it again at least once while you were conscious. And no, you wouldn’t just magically “know” whether he’d raped you, either, even if your creator apparently bases that definition on penetration instead a lack of consent for any sexual activity. You were unconscious for days. How the fuck do you know he didn’t use his fingers or anything similarly non-injurious, or rode you in your drugged stupor? Ilar has done nothing to deserve the benefit of doubt that the hand jobs were really all he forced on you. In fact, the only reason that he didn’t, if he didn’t, is that he’s hopelessly unimaginative and unable to perform the one sexual act – his dick in somebody else’s ass – that he knows, judging by the way he talks about his castration and sex in general.) We know Seregil wasn't knowingly lying, because the empathic bond with Alec would have told Alec that and just made him angry (like when Seregil lied about his beating in "Traitor's Moon"), so why would Seregil even try. This all could be interpreted as an attempt at depicting male denial of vulnerability or denial as a defense mechanism, of course, but because there are no counter arguments in the text, it comes across as if the assault was not such a big deal after all in light of Ilar’s tragic past. Or like the argument goes: because Seregil doesn’t really mind now or has chosen to forget/ignore it, it doesn’t matter how violated he felt when he first found out, or that Ilar didn’t just not care about his consent but intentionally did it to hurt him. I literally spent the entire time between the escape and Ilar’s disappearance shouting “Yes, whatever, but he assaulted you! And he still doesn’t care whether you consent to being kissed, so he’s learned nothing! WHY IS NOBODY EVEN THINKING ABOUT THIS?!” at the book every 10 minutes, because the stink of rape apologia was so strong in the whole drift of the ‘redemption’ narrative.

And then there’s Alec, who actually has to look deeply into his heart to decide his utterly flanderized possessiveness (compared to “Traitor’s Moon” where he was much more mature about it) didn’t matter so much in the case of Seregil being forced to perform sexually to avoid further torture as a slave, and that he would forgive him in that case. What the hell?! What kind of man would consider that even close to consensual or any fault of their lover that needs to be ‘forgiven’? In what sick mind would this scenario trigger jealousy instead of righteous protectiveness? Why does Alec even have to think about his answer?! Why does Seregil think so low of his beloved that he even asks him the question in the first place?? (Well, he’s probably got reason, since Alec is now apparently so jealous and distrustful that he wants to stop Seregil from spending friends with his old friends / professional informants if they ever had a sex with him; and Alec hits him for being kissed / sexually harrassed by Ilar before even asking questions about whether he was a willing participant - not that the latter would be any excuse for partner violence. But… fuck. Those are not signs of a healthy relationship.) Blech. Victim blaming and rape apologia – charming how our darlings have turned out.

And Alec could have had so many good reasons to hate Ilar: namely everything he did to Seregil while having him under his control (whether or not Seregil admitted the sexual abuse, or the beatings - that Ilar claimed him as a personal slave is more than bad enough); or even the realization that Seregil was the ‘faie equivalent of 14-years-old (according to Alec’s assessment of another 22-year-old ‘faie) and that Ilar was about Seregil’s current age (at least 50, i.e. physically like a human around 20, since Seregil is described by Alec as looking like in his early 20s at the age of 58) when he first ‘seduced’ him. (Weirdly, Ilar was the only one who ever mentioned that this fact alone would be enough grounds to convict him, should Seregil’s clan press charges. I just hope Seregil is meant to be read as in denial about that, too, and that we’re not actually supposed to romanticize the borderline child abuse like Seregil does. (Erm… In my country it would be just barely legal, though that law exists so as to not criminalize for example 16/14-year-olds in a relationship – 20/14 would still be heavily frowned upon, even if the adult would only be convicted of statutory rape if he was in a position of social power over the teenager, i.e. as his teacher or job superior. I know that there would be nothing ‘borderline’ about it the US/UK, the audience these books are primarily aimed at.) Especially since every damn thing Ilar says about sexual matters in the book just makes it more and more obvious that he must have been an incredibly selfish, unimaginative, anatomically clueless and awful first sexual partner, even assuming he somehow acquired the sociopathy only later while he was a slave. I mean, the only kind of sex he apparently knows off even this late in his life is the yaoi-standard older-partner's-dick-in-younger-partner's-ass, while not even knowing that this is supposed to be pleasureable to the receptive partner. God, that poor, blindly-infatuated kid...) But, no, Alec’s stubborn grudge was all about the one thing Ilar genuinely couldn’t be held accountable for (though he did clearly enjoy using his attempts to ‘befriend’ Alec to psychologically torture Seregil, for all his later claims that he didn’t want to use Alec and betray him, and didn’t have a choice). No need to discuss any of his real crimes, nothing to see here. Of course Alec is being unreasonable to poor, poor Ilar, and by implied association, any of the readers who still hate him by this point.

Honestly, by the end, I couldn’t believe what I had read. Did she plan to take the sexual assault of Seregil back out when she wrote the second half of the book, but then the proof reader slept at the wheel, just like they did about so many other things in the book? (Several plot and back story details are blatantly wrong; Magyana’s forgotten exile; Korathan’s personality change and age increase; Ilar’s switch from heavily implied spy in Zengat to long-term slave in Plenimar, which made me wait throughout the whole of “Shadows Return” for a plot twist that he was just in deep cover for some more complex plan; Ulan’s retconned involvement in Seregil’s first crime and his entire revenge motivation, which makes no sense in light of the end of “Traitor’s Moon”; the nonsensical custom of castrating ‘faie slaves instead of breeding them, when we’d been told before that young ‘faie make the best necromantic sacrifices and this book itself mentions their blood as an important spell ingredient – or for that matter anyone ever being allowed to free a ‘faie slave and risking them going back to Aurenen and alert the clan council to what’s going on, thereby drawing them into the war and sealing Plenimar’s defeat; etc. etc. Seriously, the reason I gave up on the book half-way through when it first came out was that I thought it was written by a particularly incompetent ghostwriter.)

Also interesting: how the author bent over backwards to twist the setting so our male heroes would be spared penetrative rape or anything permanently damaging as a result of their captivity, but casually mentions that the single half-way significant female character in the book had been raped habitually for years by at least 2 men, just before she gets stuffed into the fridge. That’s exactly the kind of misogynist gender-bias in grimdark fantasy that I would have expected from the likes of GRR Martin, but not from a female writer.

As for Sabrahn and his worth as a crutch for character development… Personally, I think having a magical child forced on you who is conveniently already walking, doesn’t need much care, and will by necessity be written out again soon (because he’s a walking deus ex machina; and because he’s too alien to take back home) and thus won’t truly force our couple to think about the everyday responsibilities of raising a child together, don’t really constitutes meaningful character development, especially in terms of gay adoption issues or the maturity boost that comes with becoming parents. All it did in my eyes was make Seregil look uncharacteristically cruel and judgmental (that kid ingested less blood throughout the book than Seregil probably did the last time one of his lady-lovers was on her period, and he looks like a helpless angel instead of anything like the viscerally terrifying necromantic creatures Seregil has bad experiences with. Truly, a horrifying monster…), and also like a selfish asshole. (What adult gets jealous of the attention paid to a helpless child? He was acting more like a bratty 8-year-old only-child with a new sibling, not someone who is long used to the idea of his friends having their time and attention divided by fathering families, or like the man who promised he was prepared to accept the possibility of Alec getting tired of him and having other lovers, before.)