When Aoleyn loses her parents, she is left to fend for herself among a tribe of vicious barbarians. Bound by rigid traditions, she dreams of escaping to the world beyond her mountain home.
The only hope for achieving the kind of freedom she searches for is to learn how to wield the mysterious power used by the tribe’s coven known as the Song of Usgar. Thankfully, Aoleyn may be the strongest witch to have ever lived, but magic comes at price. Not only has her abilities caught the eye of the brutish warlord that leads the tribe, but the demon of the mountain hunts all who wield the Coven’s power, and Aoleyn’s talent has made her a beacon in the night.
Review:
Before I say anything else, this book is one MASSIVE trigger warning. There are many instances of sexual abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence, child abuse, and it's pretty graphic in every scene that it happens. I feel that I need to include this trigger warning because scenes with these traumatic events happen often; so often, that I'm not sure who I would ever recommend this one to. Furthermore, there are so many triggers that I'm absolutely certain that I've forgotten to include one or two here. With that out of the way, onward to my review.
Child of a Mad God is a book that mainly follows two characters: Aoleyn, a girl who grows up in a male-dominated tribal society with more power than any witch or warrior before her, despite having no power to enact change among her people. The second POV is Talmage, a frontiersman who has come to love the lakemen villagers who often fall prey to Aoleyn's clan and spends his time journeying between them and back to more populated areas further away where he can trade the pearls he gets from the villages. Inititally, I wasn't sure where Talmadge fit into the story, and I didn't necessary become engaged with him until later on in the book, but I absolutely adored exploring the lands below the mountain since Aoleyn is relatively stuck at the top of it and doesn't really get around much—if at all—beneath. There are plenty of monsters that I would prefer to observe at a distance, something which Talmadge is rarely successful at despite possessing a magical object that allows him to see far distances.
This is an emotionally messy book; on one hand, I want to rate it low because I feel that it is absolutely possible to depict a patriarchal society without having so much rape and abuse. I also feel it's a bit reductive to other tribal groups to reduce them to two types: rapist human traffickers and inefficient prey. Inefficient because there seems to be no way to prevent, protect or defend against attacks. It seemed as though Aoleyn and Seonagh are the only two Usgar who feel any lasting empathy for anyone, and the enslaved women are virtually hapless for the rest of their lives and unable to fight back or escape or do anything at all. I just find it difficult to imagine an entire group of people who are happy with the status quo implicitly. It's just unlikely in my opinion. Possible, maybe. I just kept getting so frustrated that Aoleyn is the only one who apparently sees anything wrong with how they treat other humans but she doesn't do anything because it puts herself at risk, to the point where it was only in the final few chapters that she DID and I honestly have no idea why. The only time she made any move against the flow was as a child and then she is just too scared to be the target of that cruelty in her adulthood that she just...stops and waits no matter how terrible things get to the people that she does care about. No matter how awful people are to her friend and his mother, especially.
All of that aside, I did enjoy this book. I liked that Aoleyn is stubborn and curious and she does go against the agenda in her own small ways. I hope in the next installment she is more willing to be proactive though, because I want her to show her teeth. The world building is strong and so beautiful. I swear several times I could feel the snow and the wind and smell the fires along with the characters. This was my first read by Salvatore and, despite the trigger happy scenes, I did enjoy it and I'll be continuing on in this series and looking forward to reading more from him.
