In the Mainstream: Huntress

What would it be like to live in a world in which gay and lesbian relationships are treated as normal and we can choose partners of either gender without prejudice? Malinda Lo asked this question of readers in her acclaimed debut novel, Ash, and does it again in her powerful heroine’s journey tale, Huntress.

Huntress returns to the world Lo created in Ash, but several hundred years earlier as she tells of how the position of Huntress was established. Seventeen-year-old Taisin, the star student at the exclusive Academy is selected for a mission to establish peace between the human kingdom and the kingdom of the Xi. She in turn chooses the athletic and well-born Kaede, who despite her physical prowess and social position is considered one of the Academy’s less gifted students, to accompany her because she has fallen in love with Kaede. Along with the two girls travel the king’s son, Con, sent to negotiate the treaty, and three guards. The guards fall prey to evil creatures along the way, and Kaede, with the help of Taisin, must infiltrate the fortress of the half-human, half-Xi Elowen before greedy, resentful Elowen destroys the entire world.

Though told from a third person omniscient point of view, this vivid, gripping novel mainly focuses on Kaede and Taisin and the relationship between the two as they agonize over the quest and chafe against the roles that have been determined for them. As a seer, Taisin will have to choose celibacy, while Kaede is uncomfortable with the demands of her powerful father, who wants to marry her to someone she doesn’t love in order to consolidate his political position. However, the fact that her father wants her to marry a man and she is in love with Taisin is not the issue. Opposite-sex unions and same-sex unions are treated equally in Lo’s fantasy world. Absolute gender equality characterizes other aspects of the novel, as women occupy powerful positions as much as men and like men can be both heroes and villains.

Fantasy allows readers to speculate on alternative ways of organizing our societies and creating relationships with each other. In her world of Huntress and Ash, Lo asks us to imagine a society in which sexual orientation and gender are not considered “out of the mainstream,” as they do not determine our destiny and we are free to love and create a family with whomever we want.

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