Review for Girl, Serpent, Thorn: Finally, Fantasy Depth!

Like everyone else, my early teen years were categorized by dramas in the Fantasy genre. I had a “Team Edward” shirt when I was thirteen and wore the key to Erebor around my neck day and night in high school, along with the Mockingjay symbol (though The Hunger Games is certainly more dystopian than Fantasy). I also had Harry Potter pillows and maps to Middle Earth and Westeros all around my room for much longer than I care to admit. Essentially, I was the Tumblr fangirl who wouldn’t shut up about how Katniss should’ve chosen her damn self and how I aspired to be like Hermione Granger in every way (though I much prefer to think of myself as a Samwise Gamgee these days).

However, for the past year or so, I kind of dropped off the Fantasy train. Perhaps it was the disappointment of J.K. Rowling being a TERF, or Tolkien only including three women to his characters, but most likely because I grew tired of male Fantasy authors flooding the market with such heavy male gazes. It’s not for me! I’m all for gorgeous women, believe me, but it just became remarkably exhausting to constantly read about “voluptuous breasts” over and over again. Then one day, amidst endless Tik Tok scrolls, I found a recommendation for Melissa Bashardoust’s Girl, Serpent, Thorn based solely on the fact that “it’s gay and it slaps.” Sign me up, baby.

Immediately I could tell that this Fantasy novel was going to be different than any other I’ve read before, as I have never seen Persian mythology and culture woven into mainstream Fantasy novels. The story takes place in mythical Atashar as Soraya, the main character and sister to the shah, copes with a curse that was placed on her by divs (evil demon-types) that makes her skin untouchable. In other words, as vibrant green poison runs through her veins, Soraya lives with the knowledge that the moment her skin touches anyone else, they will die. As a result, to protect the reputation of the royal family, Soraya remains hidden with only her garden for company. That is until her family returns to their Spring palace with a new member of the guard, a captured div, and a possible way out of her curse.

Everything from the pace of the story, the details of colour, the potency of symbols, and the gaze that gave me all sorts of bisexual panic, is remarkable and refreshing. Bashardoust’s tenderness for her characters is evident and makes the reader consistently float in wonder of how Soraya is going to achieve the happy ending she wants and deserves. Further, though the story itself is nicely written, what I enjoyed most about it were the layers that are intricately placed into each situation, keeping the mind alive in anticipation of the consequences for each action taken. Undoubtedly, Soraya is one of the best protagonists I’ve seen in Fantasy, but all the secondary characters are just as alluring and full to make those layers even more enticing. Bashardoust made me wonder, as many novels seem to these days, about the lines between hero and villain, friend and enemy, love and hatred. She weaves softness into characters that previously would not have been afforded such care in Fantasy novels of decades past and it's touching to read.

Without risking any spoilers, I would say that I genuinely appreciated the work that this novel does in exposing different kinds of relationships. Bashardoust subtly implies the truth of how heterosexual relationships in fiction often seem to be about control: who has it and how they use it. The Sapphic storyline in this novel uses the same principle to begin with but eases into a tenderness between two women that instead pushes the narrative of letting control go. It was beautiful to read. And though I love a good slow burn, I would echo the comments of many perturbed Goodreads users and say that, yeah. I yearned for more gay. That was the only feeling other than excitement I had leaving the novel, but that could certainly just be because I’ve looked at the same four walls for the past five months.

All in all, please read this book. I have so much more to say about it, but I always feel I run the risk of writing too much for a simple review. Regardless, it’s so good and is certainly doing the work I’ve been waiting for of changing the Fantasy genre into one of depth and purpose.