It’s been a while since I really talked about a book in general and I wanted to share something a bit different today…I gave in and bought the first in a fantasy series that I’d been hesitant to buy in spite of curiosity.  Reading it, I can’t say I fell in love or anything, but it certainly captivated my curiosity enough and it was well written enough that I decided to move forward and buy the whole series.  I’m done with book one and in that story, I had questions about the concept of love between the two main characters.  Like, how do we fall in love without really knowing each other?  How can we say it’s love?  But it seemed romantic and I understood the actions of both characters as presented in the story.  It was typically fantasy-ish in the story arc and it was fun to read.  Now I’m on book two and there has been a major shift in this dynamic and it has me FLOORED.  I don’t know why this is having such an emotional impact on me.  Perhaps it’s because I would have always rooted for the initial protagonist before, believing that there were reasons for the behavior and that they would get past it and find understanding—that there was real love between them and they would find their way back to each other.  But in this case (at least where I’m at in the story now) the female lead has decided to burn down her existence in that world and take another path because she needs the freedom to be who she is.  Will this arc continue?  I have no idea, but this concept of utter acceptance and understanding of what we REALLY need and having someone understand what we need is intoxicating to a degree. 

The part that has me drawn in is the fact that the new character she is working with was portrayed as the evil/untrustworthy antagonist who liked to stir shit up.  In the first book we discover that he has his reasons for it and that he has been playing a game of his own—and in the second book we understand more in depth the extent of his actions and what it really meant to protect his people.  The way he protects his people, while it looked different than the original lead, was JUST as extensive and rooted in love.  We discover that he, perhaps, has sacrificed more than the other and he got a bad name that he was willing to bear for the sake of other people. But the magic of this new lead is that he has an inherent understanding of the needs of our female lead on a soul level, really.  He understands how her soul feels trapped in her new existence after she has become what she was to become, he understands that she needs to break free of that—and he sees the danger of the original lead stifling that in her.  Not just any danger, but the danger to her mentally—and to her spirit.  While he could very well still be using her as a tool (I have a lot more book to read to confirm this), he still acknowledges the human that remains and the need to learn to wield her power and to live in a way that suits her.  She has to live her life.

Ok, so that was a longer synopsis than I intended.  But I share this for a reason: there is an attraction to the life we are meant to have, to the freedom that comes from being who we are and being entirely accepted for who we are. Not only that, but to have those innate skills honed because they are seen as valuable, not as a liability.  There is nothing more encouraging in the world than to be told who we are isn’t a bad thing.  Not just that we aren’t doing anything wrong, but that what we have is needed—it is given purpose.  No one is proud of every action they’ve taken in their lives but there is a difference between hiding from them to the point of making ourselves sick, and learning to turn that poison into water again, knowing that what we did can’t be undone but that we can do something different moving forward.  We can use who we are and what we have become for good.  There is no longer the game of trying to fit into someone else’s vision of us to make others happy—we simply embrace what we are.  When someone is able to do that with us, when they are able to embrace us in that fashion, we feel whole.  And so many of us are broken.  A typical fantasy arc like this would involve another individual filling in the gaps for this character but I am in love with the idea that this character is making her feel like she is whole on her own—she doesn’t need fixing, she needs support and guidance.

There is a line in the story where this character calls the female lead his savior.  It could be seen as saccharine or over the top—but it is perfectly fitting in there.  We see throughout the story that even though he is portrayed as a villain or a master manipulator, he is just as much a savior as the initial lead was to our heroine.  But the beautiful part is this: he sees that SHE, too, is a savior.  The initial lead kept insisting on protecting her when she didn’t need it—she needed to partner with him and work through the demons they must learn to carry.  In life it is the same.  We can’t always be the savior for someone else and we can’t always be looking for someone to save us. I had a Cinderella complex for a long time, hoping that someone would come along and rescue me—from what I don’t know, the idea seems ridiculous to me now when I look back at my life.  So it is refreshing and encouraging to read a series where the female isn’t glorified—she is very much recognized as having flaws—and she isn’t coddled—we know that she is strong enough to handle it on her own.  So are we.  I talked about using the shit to fertilize growth the other day.  And this is a prime example of it: we don’t hide from the crap in our lives, we learn from it. We honor who we are instead of hiding in shame or caging it.  We learn to use our gifts and unleash our own magic on the world.  We are our own savior—and we learn the broken never mattered anyway.  We are still whole in our own right and the right person, the right people will see that, and never ask us to be anything different.  So even though this story is fantasy, THAT is a realty we can live in.