THE MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS, who knew from "beguines"?

THE MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS
ALINE KINER (tr. Susan Emanuel)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A captivating story of love, jealousy and faith, set amid a community of independent women in medieval Paris — the perfect summer read for fans of historical fiction

This thrilling, sensual evocation of medieval Paris sold over 100,000 copies in France and offers a fascinating insight into the world of the beguines — communities of women who lived independently of men and successfully managed their own affairs all the way back in the Middle Ages.

A heretical text, a vengeful husband, a forbidden love...

It's 1310 and Paris is alive with talk of the trial of the Templars. Religious repression is on the rise, and the smoke of execution pyres blackens the sky above the city. But sheltered behind the walls of Paris's great beguinage, a community of women are still free to work, study and live their lives away from the domination of men.

When a wild, red-haired child clothed in rags arrives at the beguinage gate one morning, with a sinister Franciscan monk on her tail, she sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter the peace of this little world-plunging it into grave danger...

This rich historical drama makes a great summer read for fans of Hamnet, The Lost Apothecary, The Wolf Den, and The Yellow Bird Sings.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I read "beguine" in the book's description and immediately began humming. This is not, obviously, the beguine meant by the late Author Aline. I had not heard of this particular religious movement prior to encountering the story told here. I strongly wish these people had left descendants of the soul in the larger religious landscape. The world would be a better place had they done so.

Be that as it may, the setting and the background are of such interest to me largely because the characters were...out of focus...to me. I got more of an atmosphere, an ethos, than the sense of getting to know real people. At first this felt slightly distancing, removing me from the immediacy of the unfolding conflict with The Church℠ that monolithic squasher of all liberty.

Then it hit me...of course! That's part of the point! A beguine, in this sense, is a community united in serving a purpose, answering a calling, that transcends monadism. By taking the unstated risk of diffusing the emotional connection readers make to individuals, Author Aline pointed up the real purpose of a beguine, to think and act as a member of a collective. It also sets a background whose textures are suggestive of a reality we in this century can only grasp at never fully grasp...the world is so very different now.

It also works to make the terrible central conflict with the Franciscan over the wild little redhead the more stark. In a sense it's the technique of Steven Spielberg's use of the one girl in a vivid red coat as the one colorful image in Schindler's List. It carries so much more impact, freighted with all the meaning you, the viewer, can conjure and thus heap on it.

I can't quite offer a full five stars. For all I found a key to comprehending Author Aline's purpose in making the collective the focus, it still made my reading experience...less intense, more of a read than a ride when it could have been both. I think anyone who liked Hamnet would like this story as well. The women in this beguine reminded me a bit of Agnes's world in that read, the not-quite-complete depersonalization.

A fascinating introduction to a world I'd never encountered. Recommended reading.

QUEEN MACBETH, feminist thriller set in medieval Scotland starring a reimagined Lady Macbeth

QUEEN MACBETH
VAL McDERMID
Atlantic Monthly Press
$22.00 hardcover, available tomorrow

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Shakespeare fed us the myth of the Macbeths as murderous conspirators. But now Val McDermid drags the truth out of the shadows, exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history. Expect the unexpected . . .

A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions—a healer, a weaver and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her—because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth.

As the net closes in, we discover a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. At the heart of it is one strong, charismatic woman, who survived loss and jeopardy to outwit the endless plotting of a string of ruthless and power-hungry men. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm a man. An old, white one.

I'm sorry to disappoint those who now expect me to whine about "ruining Shakespeare" and "making up feminism ahistorically" and suchlike nonsense, but I myownself think this novella is telling not only a cracking good story, but bringing a long-ignored reality to light. Women, modern, medieval, or ancient, were and are not passive, pointless victims or tiresome termagants. They are, were, and always have been people with agency, possessed of skills and ideas that motivate and support changing their world.

Every story that supports this reality, presents it without a dingy scum of patriarchal judgment of those women for exercising their power, gets my enthusiastic support. Queen Macbeth is no exception.

Riffing on the great stories of history and mythology is currently very much à la mode. The trend picked up steam most recently after The Song of Achilles appeared early in the teens. It was never exactly ignored, after all...John Erskine wrote Arthurian retelling Tristan and Isolde: Restoring Palamede in 1932; Thorne Smith wrote modern satires with horny, drunken Greek Gods until his death in 1934; Tolkien remixed Anglo-Saxon epic poetry to some modest success in the 1950s. The urge to put one's own stamp onto the greatest stories of the culture is never absent. Imagine all the lost Iliads wrought by bards before writing was reinvented! (Side note: why has Jodi Taylor not sent the disaster magnets back to record some of those?) The great plays of Athens's Golden Age retold the myths, too, and that was six hundred years before the common era is reckoned to have begun.

So a Scottish crime writer revisiting Lady Macbeth's truly awful characterization at Shakespeare's hands is unsurprising. Make that Scot an outspoken feminist lesbian and, well, go figure that she would find this retelling irresistible. I wish I'd loved it instead of simply, and inevitably, admiring it. Using her widely lauded storytelling chops to re-center the Bechdel-test failing character as a powerful ruler in her own right is delightful; the way she contextualizes her choice in her Author's note made me almost giddy with anticipation.

Then came reality swinging her mace of office.

Choosing to use Scottish words...well, okay, you're Scottish, the story's Scottish, but the huge majority of the world's readers have never seen, and don't care to see, those words. Climbing the hill with a Glossary is fine; putting said glossary at the end of an ebook is a worse idea than in a tree book. In the ebook, a hyperlink to the entry with that word is possible; links that take you there and back are possible; neither was made. I did not use the glossary once during the read and lost not only fine nuance but faith that I was being considered as a guest in this world. It feels very much like the divisive, arrogant attitude regrettably common...in every sense of the word...in internet discourse about cultural identity: "I don't owe you an explanation of my culture/language/art/thing under discussion!"

Then you do nor care if I, or any "outsider," understand you? Okay. Then you'll mostly get ignored.

Author McDermid and/or publisher(s) just put a hard limit on how many people will slug it out with unhelpfully untranslated Scottishness. The tree book might be a better choice than an ebook for those who can't or won't simply skip past wotds they don't know.

Pity, that; Gruoch as reimagined is a kickass character. Her struggles matter.

THE ARMORED SAINT, being an almost-5 star appreciation of a writer's unexpected gifts

THE ARMORED SAINT
MYKE COLE (The Sacred Throne #1)
Tor.com Publishing
$17.99 hardcover, available today!

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: In a world where any act of magic could open a portal to hell, the Order insures that no wizard will live to summon devils, and will kill as many innocent people as they must to prevent that greater horror. After witnessing a horrendous slaughter, the village girl Heloise opposes the Order, and risks bringing their wrath down on herself, her family, and her village.

THE PUBLISHER SENT ME AN ARC...THANKS FOLKS

My Review: I have a confession to make right off the bat: I didn't request this book. My Tor.com Publishing contact, knowing I am big on books with queer representation, figured I'd like this and sent it along. I looked at it in some surprise because it's by Myke Cole, The Shadow Ops-superhero-y military SF guy. If you've paid me the smallest bit of attention before now, you know I detest superhero-y crap and am only enjoying milSF from a gay-male PoV these days. I was a history major. I've had my fill of battlefield stuff for its own sake. Talk to ME, the elderly queer gent, not the strategist/armchair general, or I got better uses for my eyeblinks.

Author Cole, I am profoundly sorry I pigeonholed your work. I was wrong to do so and I'm glad to learn the error of my intolerant ways in so pleasant a fashion.

This fantasy world is deeply satisfying. It's oppressively ruled by a military/religious Order, but run in time-honored community-based democratic ways. Being staunchly anti-religion, that setup is one I'll buy into immediately. I'm not insensible to its relevance to the current state of affairs in our current US, our very own Russian satellite state, either, though that is not to ascribe my beliefs to Author Cole. I am not acquainted with him and make no representation that what *I* take away from his work is what he intended that I take away from it. That disclaimer being made, moving on.

The basis of this story is simple: How does a person, raised in a world that does not jibe with the True North on their inborn moral compass, survive and live and love in it? Can that happen without a struggle, a fight, a battle, or even an outright war? (MAJOR SPOILER: Nope.) What does it take to be authentically yourself in a world that dislikes you for being who you are?

Heloise Factor demonstrates her nature as a skeptic and a misfit from page one of the book, so I'm not really spoilering anything. Heloise confronts the arrogant cruelty of the adult world from page one and is saved from the terrible consequences awaiting the powerless for protesting abuse of power by the skin of her teeth. It's a terrific way to understand the worldview of Heloise's society and get the general course the book will take from here on in. Heloise intuitively understands the Buddha's injunction: "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who says it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense."

Her father was lying, not just to her, but to himself. Worst of all, he expected her to repeat the lies, to act as though up was down of her own free will. It was a stupid, wicked way to live, and the smoke still smudging the darkening sky showed her how it ended.

Beautifully said, perfectly true, and in the context of a young person just coming into her rightful place in the world, immensely powerful. It *is* a stupid, wicked way to live and it behooves us as citizens of a world that squashes our inner selves daily to remember that "First, do no harm" is not just Hippocrates talking to doctors but the accumulated wisdom of the ages speaking loud and clear to each and every one of us.

One of the squashings of personal truth has always been sexuality. Female sexuality has come in for the most squashing in modern times. The very existence of female sexuality, of women's right to control their own bodies and use them as they see fit, is taking center stage in the culture wars at last. Part of that demand for control includes the right of a woman to be in an intimate relationship with another woman. This sets religious nuts aflame, as we all know. Heloise's society is as homophobic as our own. Luckily for Heloise, like we would want for any child ready to burst into adult sexual flower, she gets good, solid, commonsensical guidance:

No. It is a person you love. Not a name. Not a she or a he. A person in all their shining glory. There is a thing in us, Heloise. A seed. It makes us who we are. It is our core. That is the thing we love. It alone exists. It alone is holy. It has no home, no name. It is neither male nor female. It is greater than that.

How I wish someone had said similar words to me when I was first mooning about, utterly in love with Davy Jones of the Monkees! I assure you that my longings were understood and VERY MUCH NOT supported by my "family." Heloise's society is down on her womanhood and her same-sex sexuality. Author Cole has added to her burden of seeing through the veil of lies she's been force-fed. Now what else can go wrong in the woman-child's life?

Oh my heck.

Obviously I want you to buy and read the book, so I can't get too detailed or else why bother? Suffice it to say that Author Cole is a mean, mean man who has no smallest shred of kindness to extend to Heloise. Which is what the reading of fiction is for, right? The ancient Hellenic society that invented drama and comedy did so for this very purpose, after all, and called it catharsis. The deep cleansing of experiencing intense emotions from a safe, removed place is the source of story addiction, I am certain. What could possibly be more indicative of this than the long survival of the Mahabharata, the Iliad, the Bible? Humans are built to need story to survive. Our very consciousness could be a by-product of the mind creating explanatory narratives.

So Heloise is out of sync with her culture's narrative, and from the get-go she has a visceral experience of what happens to those who flout the keepers of the narrative's rules. And then sees her honored and beloved father support the master (!) narrative, even though it means condemning another to almost certain death, so the Greater Good will be served. And *still* she refuses to conform, to knuckle under and do what is expected instead of what is Right. That's what makes her journey one we should all follow, at the very least between the boards of a book. I hope people with probably-lesbian young (grand-)daughters will buy this book and give it to them, as well as any and all adolescents wrestling with the certainty that they're just different somehow. (Sneak in a read yourself, you'll like it too.)

The minuses of the book are fairly few: There aren't adult female models for Heloise to emulate so one wonders how she got the idea a mere girl could do what she sets out to do; the Standard Fantasy Trope of Capitalizing Things To Make Them Different is in evidence; the ghastly scourge of Adolescent Exceptionalism (see what I did there? heh) is abundantly present. In fact, if the entire point of the book wasn't so exactly in line with my own inner agenda, Heloise's headstrong foolishness in taking on the entire adult world's power structure would make me roll my eyes and consign the book to the recycle pile (which, I hasten to add, does not mean the trash but the catch-and-release world of BookMooch).

As it is, I think Heloise's theme was sung in 1979 by McGuinn, Clark and Hillman. She deserved so much more than she got from her world, as do so very many children. It's long past time adults recognized this and got on the change bandwagon. Here in the US, we need to make our children safe from death while they're at school, at home, at church (if they're forced to go there), the movie theater, the mall....

This sounds like one of my five-star reviews...where's that last tenth of a star? I took it away because I am gut-churningly jealous of how young and handsome Author Cole is. Petty of me, I know, but there it is.