Pagan Bookworm

Firethorn by Sarah Micklem
Scribner, 2004
400 pages

I picked up Firethorn at my local public library on a whim while looking for some good fiction. It was the review quote by one of my favourite authors Robin McKinley that sealed the deal. I took it home and once I opened the pages of this novel I couldn’t stop reading it. Sarah Micklem’s world is engrossing and absorbing, it felt as real as my own. Firethorn is the first of three in a series. The second book Wildfire is due to be released July 2009. It will be very hard to wait for the third book!

Firethorn follows the story of Luck, a young orphaned servant girl who’s mistress has just passed away and now she fears for her fate as her new master, Sir Pava,  is cruel  and rapes her. She runs into the Kingswood to escape, living off her knowledge of wild foods and herbal medicines. She lives in the forest for over a year, hiding from humanity. In the winter in a delirious state brought on by hunger, she eats the poisonous berries of the firethorn tree, but does not die and is instead forged anew by Ardor, the god of smithing and fire. When she awakens alive, she takes the new name of Firethorn and returns to the world of humans, the village she grew up in, and integrates herself back into their daily lives, staying far away from her former master. War is coming and warriors have come to the village to collect Sir Pava for the battles ahead. It is Carnal Night, when people are free to act on their desires. One of the warriors finds Firethorn in the farmers’ fields and once the two lock eyes, both of the lovers’ fates are changed forever.

Firethorn is the story of a witch, a canny woman, a greenwoman. She heals with plants and her touch, she tells fortunes with the finger bones of dead loved ones, she follows the God Ardor and the other Gods relating to him. But overall this is a story of love between a man and woman and the power plays that happen with such a relationship. Both Firethorn and her warrior are of firey natures making their relationship troublesome and yet both cannot live without the other. The magic and the pagan religion within the pages of the story are brilliantly wrought and richly imagined. From a love binding spell using a “womandrake” to the uses of hairs and nail clippings, to Firethorn’s use of entheogens to heal and travel to the otherworld and outside her body – this tale is full of magic and witchcraft – enough to sate any witch reading Firethorn’s story. This is a dirty, gritty, horrific, sensual,  beautiful, and emotional tale. ♥