Story on the Brain

            In this young adult novel, Shannon Hale tells the classic princess in a tower story first by setting it in a version of medieval Mongolia, and then by inverting everything about it. The princess, Saren, is a beautiful but terrified, traumatized, and probably mentally ill daughter of gentry, completely unable even to comb her own hair. The real star of the story is Dashti, a “mucker” girl, a nomadic herder who was put out of her clan along with her mother when times got tough, who then after her mother died, gave up her freedom to get a place working for the gentry, Saren’s father. In other words, the story is about one character who has everything except capability, and one who has nothing but capability. The two get bricked into a tower together for seven years by Saren’s father when Saren refuses to marry a nightmarish and animalistic lord, Lord Khasar, having formed an attachment to another lord, Khan Tegus, whom she ...

             This is the final novel in a shorter series set within Pratchett’s larger Discworld fantasy series. These novels focus on a young witch named Tiffany Aching who starts out as a child, just discovering her magical power, and end with Tiffany finally taking full control of her power and owning her place in the world.             I wanted to study this novel despite its weaknesses because Tiffany’s story is built on houses. Her story really begins with the death of her grandmother, a shepherd and unacknowledged witch who lived up on the downs in a shepherd’s hut. Granny Aching’s hut is burned after her death, leaving only the axles and wheels and a pot-belled iron stove. For her education, Tiffany leaves her parents’ home and goes to study with other witches, living in their houses and working for them. But this novel begins with Tiffany’s mentor, Granny Weather...

            What a gorgeous novel! But structurally, it was a bowl of pudding. Worse, the novel starts with a completely unnecessary rape scene. Honestly, we don’t see the murder and dismemberment and we are plenty horrified by that, so why do we need to see the rape? We absolutely don’t. People need to stop writing gratuitous rape scenes, I am serious. Cut it out! The point of Susie’s character is that she’s dead, not that she was raped. In fact, her grieving family *has no idea that she was raped,* nobody ever knows, nobody ever finds her body--so why is that even part of the story? Writers really need to get a grip on this and only write rape when it’s actually part of the story. Jeebus. Reader rage!             The only thing that ever ties back to the rape is the unintentionally horrifying scene near the end when Susie somehow comes down from heaven and takes over the b...