meganbmoore | Blade of Fortriu by Juliet Marillier (Reply)

Blade of Fortriu is the second book in Juliet Marillier’s The Bridei Chronicles, a fantasy trilogy about the 6^th century Pictish king, Bridei. The first book, The Dark Mirror, told the story of Bridei and his wife, Tuala. Blade of Fortriu focuses on the people surrounding Bridei. Specifically, his Gael assassin, Faolan, and Ana, a Pictish noble who has been a hostage of the court. Exiled from his own people, Faolan is utterly devoted to Bridei and nothing else, and serves as his advisory, assassin, bodyguard, messenger and negotiator. Though a hostage, Ana grew up alongside Bridei’s wife, Tuala, and is a cherished lady of the court, despite her official position. When Bridei needs to form an alliance with a Caitt chieftain, Alpin, Bridei reluctantly decides to send Ana to him as a bride to seal the alliance, with Faolan accompanying her to serve as her bodyguard and to finalize the alliance.

Faolan thinks Ana is weak, shallow and flighty, Ana thinks an assassin is only half a step above a monster. Over the course of their travels, of course, they grow to like and respect each other, and after the rest of their party is lost and a sequence of events that makes perfect sense in context but is difficult to explain without a play-by-play, they are forced to enter Alpin’s court with Faolan in the guise of a bard and Ana forced to be both negotiator and prize. Normally, it would seem the romance was set: angsty assassin in disguise protecting the beautiful lady navigating a treacherous court, being forced to marry an evil man. Angsty assassin saves beautiful lady from evil fiance and they ride off into the sunset together. Except this is Juliet Marillier, who avoids the easy romance. From the start, Faolan and Ana ending up together is an impossibility. To be together, they would have to betray Bridei, something neither character would ever do. We are, then, seemingly left with Ana marrying Alpin, soon as established as a Very Bad Fate, or the cliché of killing the evil fiance and riding off into the sunset. Marillier doesn’t care for the cliches, and prefers to at least give her characters some happiness after putting them through 50 levels of angst.

Enter Drustan, Alpin’s supposedly mad brother, whom Alpin has kept imprisoned for seven years. A kind soul, Drustan, has supposedly had mad rages since childhood. When Alpin’s pregnant wife died during Drustan’s visit, Alpin claimed Drustan killed her in one of his rages. Drustan, who had no memories of the time, could not claim otherwise, and Drustan eventually came to believe Alpin’s claims. When Ana becomes suspicious of Deord, a guard who always carries a dinner tray to a place no one should be, she meets Drustan, and a new path opens.

Though the romance is between Ana and Drustan, the story remains Ana and Faolan’s, as Ana learns her own strength and proves herself to be Alpin’s intellectual and political match, and Faolan learns to care about and trust someone besides his king, and begins to accept his past. Like all of Marillier’s books, nothing is simple, including the choices the characters have to make. It’s densely plotted, heavily reliant on history, folklore and storytelling, and has complex, well developed characters.

I do confess, though, to a bit of trepidation about the final book, which is focused solely on Faolan (according to Amazon) and his finding love. Though Ana loves Drustan, Faolan loves Ana, and while he has allowed himself to trust and care for Bridei, Ana is the first person he’s let into his heart since leaving his home. All of Marillier’s books are love stories at heart, and I find it hard to believe that Faolan could fall in love with another person quickly after losing Ana. Still, Marillier has ye to let me down, so I’ll have faith.