Hart's Hope

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Haunting!
Review: So a few weeks ago I picked up this book at the Salvation Army. It was called "Hart's Hope" and had a funky cover and a nearly nonsensical description, so I had to have it, of course. And it was by Orson Scott Card, who I've heard of.
So like the first thing I noticed was that the book is told in these almost biblical sections, and is narrated like a letter from one character to another. And wow, was this the most gritty, graphic fantasy i've ever read.
This guy decides to take a mission from god to depose an evil King and make himself King. He takes the capital,and kills the King in front of his 12 year old daughter.Then he decides that to seal his position as king, he forcibly marries the 12 year old daughter, marches her through the town tied up and naked, then puts her on the giant alter of the town's god and publicly rapes her, then expresses his disgust for her attempts to cause her to be unforgotten by him. At that point it was expected that after his ceremonial rape of a child, he would then kill her, but as an act of "mercy", he does not despite dire warnings from his advisors. The story is about what becomes of the child, the unspeakable things she does to get power over everyone including her tormenter and the Gods themselves, and whether her revenge on her tormentor is justified. In the book, she is represented as the villian, and the King(the child-raper) is played as a long-suffering hero. In a calculated way-it all leads up to a delightfully ambiguous ending, that leaves the question of who is the real villain after all, and whether "neccesary evils" are really neccesary at all.
It really reminded me of the work of one of my favorite authors, Tanith Lee, in the themes and imagery it worked with. Kind of with the themes of Dark Gods, Pagan Gods, Imprisoned Gods, rape and its warping effects,Nature as a direct influence in people's lives, and the question : Are those who are broken as children really responsible for their actions?
This book had me thinking about those questions for a long time after I finished the book.

Rating:
Summary: Wow. Must read
Review: This is not your standard fantasy work. (nothing wrong with dragons and elves, but you won't find them here) The story is amazing. The book is written in the style of a long letter to one of the important, but little seen characters of the book. The question throughout the book is who is writing the letter, as the writer seems to be one of the characters described. Card pulls no punches in his prose. Very graphic at times.