Toddled Dredge

Patricia Wrede frequently combines her fantasy novels with elements of detective fiction. This handily serves to move the plot along, but sometimes feels like I am reading two incomplete stories instead of one fully-developed one. I have read four of her novels now, and I always come away not quite satisfied, but thinking, “She has potential as a writer. I wonder how her next book will be.”

The Raven Ring is a novel set in a world (or country? I wasn’t quite clear on that) called Lyra, and is part of a series set in that world. This book features a woman named Eleret from an egalitarian tribe called the Cilhar. She is an accomplished fighter who must travel to a major city to retrieve the effects of her deceased mother, a warrior who died while serving as a mercenary.

Much of the book focuses on the stock fantasy conflict between a strong woman and the sexist men around her. Wrede portrays Eleret’s strength clearly and consistently within the story; I never felt she was subverting the story to her political purpose. Eleret is simply unaffectedly competent, a rare enough quality for women in fantasy literature, who usually have to make a much bigger to-do over their abilities to be taken seriously. Even surrounded by the inventions of the fantasy genre, Eleret struck a more realistic chord with me than other imaginary female warriors. She seemed more like women I actually know, and I enjoyed the book for that quality alone.

But again I found myself wondering when Wrede would write her best book. I think there is a very good one in her, but this one wasn’t it yet.