This is a PHENOMENAL 5 part ballad to womanhood. The isolated worlds of hope and grief we keep swirling within ourselves. The million ways society, family, peers, even total strangers, will carve us up, commodify, objectify, object /to/, parts of us. The rage and weight of injustice we inherit from each other, and so often choose to vent and inflict pain on one another, rather than empathize and heal. The ironic need and desire for sacred, safe spaces, and community, despite the vitriol. The archaic notion of "men's work" being all those survival skills - medicine, engineering, wilderness studies - which are crucial to being self-sufficient, and branded as "witchcraft" when performed by a woman; or the belief that a woman's sexuality is like a magical power she can use to beguile a man, and therefore a weapon which must be stamped out of her control, make her naive of or ashamed of her own body, and spiteful of others.

The book only lost half a star from me because I felt like another turn of the screw was coming, and it aaaaalmost does, but then the book decides not to give as much weight to the idea as I hoped it would. The idea being this: Men cut each other down, too. Men are taught what is "manly". They are taught to "handle" their women. To mold themselves and carry themselves a certain way and to shame those who don't fit the mold... I thought the big twist was going to be that there were no poachers, only boys from the village serving their "Grace Year", learning to subjugate, objectify, corral, to excise their feelings and be "real men". I thought this was going to be Lord of the Flies, Boys versus Girls edition. I'm pleased that the story remained an entirely feminine space, it's an important story that needs to be told, and would have been undercut by equating boys and girls experiences entirely. Buuut I still feel the book COULD have gone down that road, if it had wanted to. Because otherwise, the book seems to suggest that there are only 3 decent men in the whole world, the rest have no problem being murderous monsters, and the 3 "decent" guys still have expectations that they're going to get sex as a reward for good behavior, which undercuts their "heroic" actions. Just sayin'.

That said, the love story that does unfold is very sweet! Boy and girl bond over the home they make, the skills they teach each other. Yes, there is sexual attraction, but it's not lust that forges their bond. Prejudice melts into trust, survival evolves into comfort, it's a beautiful fable for what marriage is SUPPOSED to be: Not an obligation, but a loving partnership.

Tangentially, there is a beautiful blending of pagan and Christian imagery in this book: The Garden; "taboo" knowledge about sexuality or herbology; the importance of storytelling in fostering community, purpose, strength and morality. It was wonderful and weirdly familiar, soothing, the way Nature and Faith were given equal weight.

All praise aside, though, I knocked off another half of a point because I felt the plot suffered in a few places in favor of symbolism or motif. Tierney "plays dead" or acts submissive for too long, never standing up to lead a revolution of any sort. And the book seems to end with her passing all her problems to her daughter, and maybe dying in childbirth? Bit odd to reach the end of a book and realize this is about the prophecy of The Chosen One, the mother of The Chosen One, and not about the revolution itself? A study of womanhood, but not a cry to arms. More of a whisper for hugs, maybe, and some chamomile tea, if you can spare it, pass it on? I wanted more. It's beautiful the way it is, but I was hungry for juuuust a liiiittle more.