Song of the Huntress, Lucy Holland (Redhook 978-0316321655, $19.99, 448pp, tp) March 2024.
I’ve read a lot of Greek and Roman mythology retellings recently, so it’s nice to see Celtic/ British mythology getting some love too. In Song of the Huntress, Lucy Holland (Sistersong, 2021) brings the Wild Hunt to Cornwall and Wessex in the mid-700s. This is some centuries after the Roman conquest and departure; Saxons have been on the island for generations, but there are also still native Britons (or ‘‘Wealas,’’ as the Saxons call them, a derogatory word that is the root of ‘‘Wales’’) around, often poorly treated by the Saxons and frequently fighting with them. Two of the main characters are the Saxon king and queen of Wessex, Ine and Æthelburg; the other is Herla, leader of the Wild Hunt. In the original stories, Herla is a king, and possibly synonymous with the god Woden. Holland makes her a woman, and a companion/lover of Boudica (who fought the Romans around 60 CE): she was lured to the Otherworld by Gwyn ad Nudd, and woke three centuries later. She now leads her all-women warriors as the Wild Hunt every full moon.
The story is based in historical fact: Ine and Æthelburg were real rulers, and Æthelburg really was a warrior; there was real conflict between the ethnic groups. As Holland stresses in her Historical Note, though, the emphasis is on fantasy rather than history. She has taken liberties with the dates of some events, along with adding the fantastic elements of the Wild Hunt, Gwyn ap Nudd and his Otherworldly companions, wights, and humans with a mystical connection to the land. Around these magical elements, there’s also the (still fairly new, in Britain) presence of the Christian Church: most Britons are not Christian, though and the Church is in its, ah, robust missionary phase. The bishops and priests add a complicating factor for Saxon characters who have been brought up as Christian but now face a magical threat. And then there’s also the reality that a story set in this time and place would have to go to remarkable lengths to completely avoid a nod to Arthuriana. Holland’s are subtle: Herla and her warriors sleep under Glestingburg/ Glastonbury and the Briton stronghold is at Dintagel (later called Tintagel) – both sites associated with the Arthur stories. There is a wandering scop, or poet, called Emrys (another name for Merlin), and Constantine, a long-dead Briton king, is said to only be sleeping, to be woken in time of need (as is Arthur).
Song of the Huntress involves three plot threads that twine together. There’s Æthelburg’s story: her disappointment with her marriage to Ine – today he would be recognised as asexual; she is blamed for being childless – and her actions as a successful warrior. There’s Ine: trying to be less a warrior king and more one committed to the rule of law, he unexpectedly inherits the magical connection to the land previously inherited by Britons. And then there’s Herla, finding herself again after centuries of being only an instinct-driven killer, leader of the Hunt; dealing with the loss of Boudicca, the curse placed her by Gwyn ap Nudd, and her attraction to Æthelburg. Their stories come together in the discovery that a Saxon at court is in league with the Otherworld. The Saxon is attempting to become king; for his part, Gwyn ap Nudd wants to deal with the human connection to the land that he thinks they don’t deserve. Gwyn’s motivation is the weakest element; we don’t hear much of his perspective, nor fully understand why he has a problem with the current status quo. Shadowy figures and their evil intentions are good, but Holland doesn’t quite get the balance right.
There’s a solid tradition of queering and gender-flipping mythology and history. Herla (whose character is gender-flipped) is sapphic; Ine is asexual; Æthelburg bisexual (or pan; that’s unclear) – as well as historically a warrior and therefore suspect, from a patriarchal perspective; and Emrys in nonbinary: Song of the Huntress fits right in. With fierce women warriors, complex relationships between friends and rivals and family, and a fast-paced narrative as well, this is a deeply enjoyable novel.
Alexandra Pierce reads, writes, podcasts, cooks and knits; she’s Australian and a feminist. She was a host of the Hugo Award winning podcast Galactic Suburbia for a decade; her new podcast is all about indie bookshops and is called Paper Defiance. Alex has edited two award-winning non-fiction anthologies,Letters to TiptreeandLuminscent Threads: Connections to Octavia E Butler. She reviews a wide range of books atwww.randomalex.net.
This review and more like it in the April 2024 issue of Locus.
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