Ronlyn Domingue
When I was a child I once
got lost at the market because I was busy staring at a female butcher hard at
work with a heavy meat cleaver; it seemed something extraordinary to my young eyes!
Such is the world of Aoife, the mapmaker of the fantasy novel The Mapmaker’s War by Ronlyn Dominigue. In the novel, women can choose a role in life, but from a narrow selection: “wife, mother,
domestic.” Aoife breaks from convention, and from her mother’s desire to mould
a good wife, to follow her own desires and inclinations “to be good at
something other than what was expected of you.”
Aoife is not only attracted
to useful work, but she is also drawn by the need to knit people together and to explore
different customs and habits: “knowledge of the people was meant to be mapped.”
She seems to be seeking the “truth” of difference and of how acceptance of the
gifts and resources you have may bring peace and happiness in a way that
seeking after treasures cannot. The ultimate counteraction to her efforts is the
war that sits at the novel’s center and creates the mechanism by which Aoife’s eventual exile occurs.
Aoife in fact discovers
herself as a “human being who wanted peace regardless of the price,” but this
blind pursuit has consequences—among them, the loss of her children from her
first marriage. Once she accepts the world for what it is, she is able to
facilitate healing in her second marriage and give birth to an unusually gifted
child, Wei. The novel’s later section has Aoife living with the Utopian Guardians,
but even their knowledge is barren and unproductive unless shared, and Wei
becomes the instrument by which this growth can be achieved.
Reading this novel, I felt
like I was examining a Jungian analysis dream diary, or perhaps a grown up
feminist twist on The Hobbit. It was
a pleasure to read a novel of broad scope that actually contained its
exploration within a few hundred pages and didn’t balloon into the inevitable four-part
saga. Definitely a tale to enjoy on a wintry evening by the fire.
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