A Mortal Bane by Roberta Gellis
Nov. 16th, 2009 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreA former noblewoman who killed her husband, Magdalene la Bartarde is now the madam of the Old Priory Guesthouse, a small brothel under the care of the Bishop of Winchester. (Winchester subscribes to the medieval notion that without prostitutes, men will be ruled by lust and start raping good women.) Her cook is almost deaf, and of the three prostitutes under her care, one is mute, one is blind, and the other is a “simple” girl who almost always craves sex. When a messenger who visits the priory is found dead the next morning, she knows that she and her women will be blamed, and sets out to learn who killed him, working with Bellamy of Itchen, one of Winchester’s men who is assigned to the case.
Gellis does a good job of showing the brothel as being the kindest fate Magdalene’s women could realistically have without idealizing it, but while I’m fine with Sabina and Letice (blind and mute, respectively) and think they know exactly what they’re doing, I cringed every time Ella, the simple girl had a “friend,” as I’m not sure she understood her life beyond the fact that it let her have the sex she wanted without getting beaten or hurt and keeping her warm and fed. Knowing the reality of women like Ella with her social status and the lives of medieval prostitutes in general, I know this really is likely the safest and happiest life she could have, but the instinctive reaction is still there.
Magdalene is pretty interesting, and while I wasn’t very fond of her longtime protector, William, I’m very curious about her past. Bellamy has potential, but most of the book focused on how society and the church viewed prostitutes, even prostitutes with powerful protection. Somehow, it managed to be realistic there without being depressing, or make me hate every man in the book. That said, I wish we’d seen any women beyond Magdalene and her women, as all the other characters were men, and it’d be nice to see the female perspective of the world be a bit more diverse.
Gellis does a good job of showing the brothel as being the kindest fate Magdalene’s women could realistically have without idealizing it, but while I’m fine with Sabina and Letice (blind and mute, respectively) and think they know exactly what they’re doing, I cringed every time Ella, the simple girl had a “friend,” as I’m not sure she understood her life beyond the fact that it let her have the sex she wanted without getting beaten or hurt and keeping her warm and fed. Knowing the reality of women like Ella with her social status and the lives of medieval prostitutes in general, I know this really is likely the safest and happiest life she could have, but the instinctive reaction is still there.
Magdalene is pretty interesting, and while I wasn’t very fond of her longtime protector, William, I’m very curious about her past. Bellamy has potential, but most of the book focused on how society and the church viewed prostitutes, even prostitutes with powerful protection. Somehow, it managed to be realistic there without being depressing, or make me hate every man in the book. That said, I wish we’d seen any women beyond Magdalene and her women, as all the other characters were men, and it’d be nice to see the female perspective of the world be a bit more diverse.