Name: The Story of Silence
ISBN: 9780008352707

Alex Myers

A knightly fairy tale of royalty and dragons, of midwives with secrets and dashing strangers in dark inns. Taking the original French legend as his starting point, The Story of Silence is a rich, multilayered new story for today’s world – sure to delight fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale.

The Story of Silence

Elke Maasbommel

A knightly fairy tale of royalty and dragons, of midwives with secrets and dashing strangers in dark inns. Taking the original French legend as his starting point, The Story of Silence is a rich, multilayered new story for today's world - sure to delight fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale. There was once, long ago, a foolish king who decreed that women should not, and would not, inherit. Thus when a girl-child was born to Lord Cador - Merlin-enchanted fighter of dragons and Earl of Cornwall - he secreted her away: to be raised a boy so that the family land and honour would remain intact. That child's name was Silence. Silence must find their own place in a medieval world that is determined to place the many restrictions of gender and class upon them. With dreams of knighthood and a lonely heart to answer, Silence sets out to define themselves. Soon their silence will be ended. What follows is a knightly fairy tale of royalty and dragons, of midwives with secrets and dashing strangers in dark inns. Taking the original French legend as his starting point, The Story of Silence is a rich, multilayered new story for today's world - sure to delight fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale.

[The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.]

CN: false rape accusations, misogyny, sexism, animal death

What I liked:
• I loved the characters! Especially Silence, but also the side characters – and there were a lot of them.
• The settings were amazing! I loved Silences descriptions of Ringmar and all the other places they visit.
• The concept of turning a medieval poem into a queer historical fantasy novel is so interesting!
• It was very validating to read about a trans person in a historical setting. We have always existed!
• The reading experience was so different from what I usually read! The novel tells us Silence’s whole life story, so of course it didn’t fit the classical three act story structure and there wasn’t much tension, but I actually liked that.
• The trans representation was great and very different from the other “trans books” I have read. I also loved the discussions about “Nature vs. Nurture”.

What I didn’t like:
• The chapters were too long.
• The story was very slow-paced, and I think some of the backstories and details weren’t necessary for the story.
• While I loved that Silence identifies as non-binary at the end, I didn’t really like their explanation for that. Throughout the whole novel Silence never mentions that they identify partly as a girl, but at the end they come to the conclusion that “they can’t deny they were born as a girl” and therefore have to identify as both boy and girl. Just because someone is assigned female at birth doesn’t mean that they have to identify as a girl, not even partly.

Manon van Heumen

I felt like this one only picked up pace during the past 50 pages. For the rest it was a bit mainstream and bland, not really capturing my attention.

The Story of Silence

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