July 30, 2023
There’s a trend happening among some of my favorite authors from high school and college of revisiting their major works in a sequel series set in the same world. I imagine this is related to the seemingly overwhelming trend in visual media of nostalgia as cash cow, spawning innumerable sequels, remakes, and spin-offs. While I have trepidations about the root cause of this movement, I’ve been enjoying the chance to more deeply explore some of my favorite characters, worlds, and mythoi.
The Desert Prince by Peter V. Brett is the latest in this series of revisitations. Set 15 years after the events of his Demon Cycle, Brett takes the opportunity to explore themes of legacy and expectation. What happens when your parent is a hero, renowned the world over? When your mentors and relatives are kings, duchesses, and generals, and wield more power and skill than the world has seen in millennia? How do you cope with the shadow that the past casts on your future? By digging using these questions as a lens through which to view adolescence, Brett creates full, deep motivations and fears for his characters, the next generation of heroes.
The spotlight in terms of story construction is fully on the character work, sometimes to the detriment of other aspects of the book. The plot, while effective, is fairly predictable, serving mostly as no-frills vehicle for the potent emotional development of the leads. This, along with a number of minor plot holes and some clunky phrasing and sentence structure, places Brett’s work firmly below the highest tier of fantasy, but the work remains supremely enjoyable, and very accessible to readers. The book’s flaws are easy to overlook in the pursuit of an exciting, easy to engage with coming-of-age fantasy novel.
The greatest work Brett does in writing these characters is the inclusion of an intersex protagonist. In what feels like a choice designed to dig into the politics of gender in a neo-medieval society, Brett has stumbled into a sensitive, nuanced queer coming-of-age story that gives representation to a categorically under-represented group. He also makes some complicated choices regarding the characters varying degrees of acceptance and respect. This character is very high status, and comes from a world of support and community, but also secrecy and protection. The resulting relationship dynamic is one of love, but also resentment and fear. More complicated than an obviously abusive situation, but also not an easy, conflict-free environment. Brett also acknowledges the very real perils of existing outside the cultural norm, with a number of characters with more conservative values, and a great many more that simply don’t know how to conceptualize difference and therefore fear or refuse to see it, which is to me a phenomenal reflection of the real-world dynamics associated with queerness and difference more broadly.
Brett’s other great strength is his ability to build out contrasting cultures in the same world. This book in particular features two major cultural societies, but there are also a number of median groups the bridge the gap between the two ideologies. This cultural blending and gradation is a direct result of the events of the original series, and the nuanced work that Brett does to marry the two cultures together is impressive and satisfying. What gives me pause, however, is that one of these two cultures is very obviously an Arabic simulcrum. Brett is white man from upstate New York, and I’d be interested to hear more about the amount/kind of research he did in crafting this society, given how easy it can be to inaccurately or insensitively portray a real-world culture that is not one’s own.
The Desert Prince is a very good (if sometimes clumsy) time, with a deep understanding of the emotional needs and wants of its characters, and I’m excited to see how Brett chooses to move their stories forward in the sequel.
7/10
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