Firethorn [Hardcover]

Sarah Micklem (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2004

"Firethorn," the first volume in an epic trilogy, is a stunning debut. Sarah Micklem has introduced an unforgettable heroine into the fantasy pantheon. Loving, reckless, and indomitable, Firethorn travels through an imaginary world as real as history and as marvelous as legend.

Firethorn flees a life of drudgery to live alone in the forest, relying on her knowledge of herb lore to survive. She returns transformed, indebted to the god who saved her life, and blessed -- or cursed -- with uncanny abilities and a nagging sense of destiny. After a few nights of dalliance with Sire Galan, a high-caste warrior on his way to join the king's army, Firethorn seizes the chance to go with him, only to find she has exchanged one form of servitude for another.

The army readies for war in the vast encampment of the Marchfield, where men prey on each other and women dare go nowhere alone. Among the lowborn harlots and the highborn dames of the camp, Firethorn learns to use her gifts as a healer, venturing into realms of dream and shadow.

Desire drew Firethorn and Sire Galan together, but love binds them -- a love that has no place in the arrangement between a warrior and his sheath. When Galan makes a wager with disastrous consequences, Firethorn uses her gifts to intervene in his fate and learns just how hard it can be to tell honor from dishonor, justice from vengeance.

Sarah Micklem has written an extraordinary tale -- at once magical and earthbound, beautiful and violent. She immerses readers in a remarkably imagined world where gods are meddlesome, the highborn uphold their privileges with casual brutality, and a woman's only recourse may be the strength she finds within.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A mysterious foundling with unique red hair and strange god-given powers, Firethorn is condemned to life as a powerless servant--or so she believes, until one of King Thyrse's noblemen becomes her lover. But, as she accompanies Sire Galan to war, Firethorn discovers she may have traded one form of bondage for another. A soldier's mistress--even a high-born soldier's mistress--is despised as a "sheath," or camp follower. Also, Firethorn's nasty ex-overlord, Sire Pava, has joined the king's army, and she has made a new enemy in her lover's cousin and closest friend, the sadistic Sire Rodela. However, she and Galan share a fiery love that will surely overcome the opposition of both their personal enemies and their kingdom's enemies. Then Sire Galan makes a strange, heart-shattering wager that may not only ruin his honor, but get them both killed.

Bloody, insightful, emotionally wrenching, and beautifully written, Firethorn is the impressive first volume of an epic fantasy trilogy. It's also an astonishingly assured debut novel that foretells Sarah Micklem's place among authors like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jacqueline Carey, Terry Goodkind, and Rosemary Sutcliff at the top rank of high fantasists. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

Micklem's majestic and powerful debut, the first volume of a fantasy trilogy, introduces a compelling heroine with a strong, original voice. A sweeping adventure saga as mystical as it is raw, the novel is also a biting commentary on violence and its effect on relationships defined by a caste system. Luck, a lowborn mudfolk orphan, changes her name to Firethorn in honor of the hallucinogenic berries she ingests in the Kingswood after a life-altering rape by a Blood, the highborn warrior she's worked for as a drudge. Now "god-bothered," she discovers that her already uncanny gifts, such as seeing in the dark, have intensified, as has her desire to escape. During UpsideDown Days, the season when "Low is high and high is low, and people seize chances they've been waiting for all year," the flame-haired Firethorn couples with another Blood, Sire Galan, and impulsively accepts his offer to serve as his sheath and bedmate. Later, her fortitude will be severely tested in the often brutally sexist world of the warrior. Enriched but not defined by the influences of many cultures (Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, etc.) and authors as diverse as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mary Renault, Jean Auel, Margaret Atwood and, yes, even Tolkein, this hypnotic tale of passion and survival will resonate with sophisticated readers of both sexes.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1St Edition edition (May 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743247949
• ISBN-13: 978-0743247948
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,736,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah Micklem tried the usual assortment of jobs before discovering that graphic design was an enjoyable way to make a living. While working as a magazine art director, she began to daydream about a character called Firethorn, whom she imagined as a woman living alone in the woods. About a decade later, Micklem published her first novel, Firethorn, which made Amazon's 2004 list of Top 10 Editors' Picks in Science Fiction & Fantasy. Wildfire, the sequel, came out in 2009. The third book of the trilogy is in the works. Micklem's short stories have been appeared in Triquarterly, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and the anthology Sex in the System. She works as a designer for Girl Scouts of the USA in New York City. For more information, visit firethorn.info.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally- a bit of realism, January 5, 2006

By 

RM Piper - See all my reviews

This review is from: Firethorn (Hardcover)

I keep reading complaints about this book. It's too gritty. It's too brutal. Etc. What it is is realistic. This is a book set in a fictional world that is based on our own medieval history. Women were not exactly kept on pedestals during that period. They certainly had no rights. And then there is a complaint about the excessive sex. Again- women in medieval times? Sex, cooking, cleaning, child rearing were about it for them. She was a camp follower. What do you think they did? Even today you'll find the same thing if you get too close to a military base.

This book was well written. You may not like the content (perhaps if you don't you can try a historical romance instead) but it is definitely a good book. I've been waiting for quite a while for the second installment, and begin to wonder if all those negative remarks from sensitive readers have put an end to a series I had hoped to continue reading.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4.5 stars for a very entertaining book, February 15, 2005

By 

Timothy Young "Wasatch Tim" (Ogden, Utah United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Firethorn (Hardcover)

It's hard to believe this is a first novel. I was thoroughly entertained. Micklem's writing seemed nearly as good to me as that of Gearge R. R. Martin or Robin Hobb. She has created a believable world in which her story takes place, rich with various forms of magic that are interwoven with a pantheon of gods, some jealous, others benevolent.

The story's main character, Firethorn, lives as an orphan in a life dictated by the social norms of the caste society in which she lives. She's lucky enough to be taken in as a handmaid to a generous noblewoman. But her luck runs out when her Dame dies and she flees her tormentuous new master, Sire Pava, living alone in the nearby Kingswood for a year. Her time spent in the forest results in her recieving some god given powers such as unnatural healing abilities and night vision. She returns to her village to discover that Sire Pava is joining the nearby Lord and his knights to go off to war for the King. One of the knights, Sire Galan, takes a liking to her and, seeing no better alternative, she agrees to be his 'sheath'- his mistress during wartime.

This book feels at times mystic, at others adventurous. The story focuses heavily on the developing reltionship between Firethorn and her new master as well as on the elements of the loooming war with a neighboring kingdom. At one point Micklem experiments with an interesting narrative perspective in which we're given a description of battle as Firethorn sees it through the eyes of her lover while he's engaged in the melee.
Micklem's medieval-ish dialogue is thoroughly convincing without being cumbersome. Her descriptions of battle are equally convincing and the accompanying action sequences
entertaining.

To me it felt like neither the war with its accompanying battle scenes nor the magic and mysticism were the main focus of Micklem's story. Rather, these elements make an entertaining backdrop for the development of the relationships between Firethorn and those she comes in contact with. Firethorn runs a gamut of emotions as she is treated unjustly time and again all the while developing a strong love for Sire Galan.

If you like character driven fantasy that's written intelligently and on an adult level then I think you'll like this book.
4.5 stars since 5 star ratings are reserved for only the greatest books.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing, June 28, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Firethorn (Hardcover)

Micklem writes beautifully about the ugly little secret that lies hidden within most fantasy novels: that the unequal distribution of power which occurs between men and women, different social classes, the physically attractive and the disfigured or merely average-looking, does not usually lead to an outbreak of nobless oblige. Nor does it lead to automatic exploitation. What "Firethorn" does is acknowledge that love is rarely pure, that it is easier to hurt those we love than those we hate, that if you have power it is easy to treat those who don't have power as if they are not quite human. I don't want to assign a writer's gender more importance than it is due, but I truly think this is a book that could only have been written by a woman. This is an excellent debut, and I look forward eagerly to reading more of Micklem's work.