The Tamir Triad by Lynn Flewelling

From The Week of September 10, 2012 As much as we define ourselves by the fidelity of our friends, the magnitude of our wealth, the customs of our culture and the values of our families, identity dictates who we are. For long before the trappings of civilization influence us, identity demands that we pursue the passions that burn in our hearts. Everything, from how we cope with fear to how we manage our expectations, is filtered through our self-regard. For the pain of acting against how we think of ourselves is too much to bear. We must be the person we feel inside or else we are lost to shame and humiliation, to lies and deceptions. Ms. Flewelling vividly demonstrates this truth in her trilogy which is as bold in conception as it is brave in execution.

A kingdom of warriors and wizards, queens and knights, Skala is a realm in conflict. Defined by an ancient pact with its divine patron, the Lightbringer, who promised to protect it from rack and ruin so long as the realm was lead by a queen of the blood, Skala has long been a land in which men and women were equally free to pursue their own destinies. But after centuries of female rule, a king has elevated himself to the throne, usurping the place of his own sister in order to claim for himself the might of Skala. This duplicitous turn of events not only drives the king's faithful sister mad, it has exposed the land to all manner of blood plagues and foreign armies, both of which threaten to decimate the realm. Skala has broken faith with a god. And such beings are rarely known for their forgiveness or mercy.

In The Bone Doll's Twin, the trilogy's opening volume, we are witness to a terrible secret. Mad princess Ariani, deposed by her brother, labors to give birth to twins. A boy and a girl, this ought to be a joyous event for Skala, but Ariani's misfortune deepens when the boy fails to survive the night, leaving only the girlchild as living proof of her blood and her agony. Worse yet, her brother, the king, has cruelly decreed, as a part of a wider crackdown on women participating in matters outside the hearth, that female offspring of the royal blood are to have their lives ended in order to secure his position on the throne. Should the king learn that Ariani's surviving child is a girl, he is sure to insist she be killed.

Fatefully, wizards attending Ariani save the girlchild's life by mystically disguising her, using the essence of her dead brother to impose upon her the appearance of a boy. Thus, to all but a secret few, Tobin, child of Ariani, is a prince, free to grow up unencumbered by the king's scorn and suspicion. Not even Tobin himself is aware of his true identity, not until he has become a young, promising companion of the crown prince Korin, son of the usurper king, and then it is far too late to go back. For Tobin is now a warrior, a young man of station and power. To reject that life for one of a girl, even if it is to heal her realm, is a bridge too far. But then she has not reckoned on the will of the gods.

In The Hidden Warrior, the trilogy's second instalment, Skala's deterioration reaches critical mass. Attacked by its rival, Plenimar, who employ necromancers to steel their assaults, its capital is burning and its king is flailing. The gods have withdrawn their favor from the beleaguered realm, plunging its people into chaos and war. Their only hope now resides in prince Tobin who must reveal his true identity as the sole female heir to the throne. For if she were to sit the throne, reborn as queen Tamir, she could mend the pact with the gods and bring peace back to her land. But then, how can she declare herself to the world when she cannot even accept her own identity?

In The Oracle's Queen, the trilogy's final entry, the war between Skala and Plenimar reaches fever pitch. What's left of Skala's nobility has rallied to Tobin's banner. And yet, a once faithful friend, crown prince Korin, lurks in a damp but important fortress, nursing his wounded pride. For Tobin, or Tamir -- he does not know which story to believe -- has usurped his place, an event which causes the affection Korin once had for Tobin to be devoured by anger and enmity. These dark emotions open the door to the manipulations of a powerful wizard who has so far cynically served the royal family. Civil war hangs like an ugly haze on Skala's cloudy horizon. It is a realm battered and beaten, but the desire for power is too strong for the selfish to let the land rest. Power must be had. And war seems the only way.

As confrontational as it is laborious, The Tamir Triad is a breath of original air in a fantasy genre paralyzed by derivations. While her world and its magics rarely deviate from the norm, Ms. Flewelling's bold choice to take on the painful dilemmas thrown up by gender confusion affixes to her familiar hull an unapologetic masthead that leads the reader into uncharted waters. Unsurprisingly then, sad prince Tobin animates this entire series. Reminiscent of children compelled by their parents to assume a gender that does not suit them, he labors to please his parents, little knowing that they have bestowed upon him an identity he didn't choose and a destiny he didn't ask for. It is left to him to not only discover that he's been living a lie, but to forge a path out of that lie to some kind of identity he can live with, some manner of self-representation that will allow him to marry together the two people nature and nurture have forced him to become.

However, as much as Tobin elevates this trilogy out of the ordinary, Ms. Flewelling's greatest accomplishment here is the darkly aggressive manner in which she raises these questions of identity. This sgrim, challenging and even brutal series is not one easily swallowed by young adults. For Tobin is not ushered into girlhood by puppies and faeries. In her case, accepting herself is also accepting the uneasy mantle of absolute, monarchical power, power which can, and is, easily abused. In this, the author steers clear of making any sort of feminist declarations. In fact, Tobin's journey reads much more as as the acceptance of the cares and responsibilities of adulthood than it does as any sort of parable for the superiority of womankind. This, combined with an unwillingness to pull any punches, lends the trilogy a wonderful, Gothic energy.

But for all that is praiseworthy about The Tamir Triad, there are missteps here. Ms. Flewelling's roster of supporting actors leave a lot to be desired. Though they have clearly been given a great deal of thought, too many of them fall into the simplistic polarities of good and evil, heroic and villainous. In particular, there is insufficient explanation for why the story's antagonists insist on defying the protagonists. Greed and the thrill of manipulation are apparent, yes, but there is almost no sense of the kind of self-preservation that would ordinarily cause such villains to reform their strategies and live to fight another day. Instead, their relentless assaults serve little purpose but to force the heroes to strike them down. Moreover, large swaths of the three novels are taken up with meticulous reconstructions of medieval life which, though appealing initially, wears upon the reader, fattening up an already lengthy epic.

Nonetheless, while the work may be flawed, the degree to which Ms. Flewelling willingly engages with a difficult and even torturous issue transforms the trilogy from a stone into a diamond. And though it may be rough around the edges, the degree to which it shines leaves the reader unconcerned with its blemishes. (4/5 Stars)