Beneath the Gods’ Tree
Series: Standalone
Author: S. Kaeth
Genre: Fantasy
Book Description:
Amanah knows all-too-well the dangers of catching the attention of the upper class of Arruk. Using her position as a guard to steal secrets of healing and help other lower class people means she works hard to remain unnoticed.
Fellow guard Taunos is boisterous, laughing, larger than life–and always around. He attracts attention as easily as breathing, which makes being associated with him dangerous. Better to stay far away, regardless of her attraction to him and his easy calm.
But when Amanah inadvertently insults a magistrate, she must flee the city to avoid his vengeance. She takes a last-minute job escorting a pair of noblemen to another town–a job Taunos is also hired for.
Along the way, she’s forced to reveal her stolen healing skills to keep the small group alive, and finds more support from Taunos than she ever would have dreamed. His confident charm becomes hard to ignore as he sees her as no one else has, even when she’s doing her best to be invisible.
But opening herself to romance might be as dangerous as the wildlife and bandits they face in the wilderness, and pursuing her dreams of becoming a healer could attract the ire of those in power.
Review:
Beneath the Gods’ Tree stood out to me as one of the romance/love stories I’ve enjoyed or related to most. There’s a lot more to the plot than a romance, but what always stands out to me first is the characters and their relationships. I should mention that while it’s primarily the romance that stood out to me as refreshingly-well done, it’s by no means the only relationship in the book, and there’s also a very good sibling dynamic between Amanah and her brother.
All the major characters felt real and human, and the relationships between the four of them – Amanah, her brother Emin, Taunos, and Gurseh – each felt individual. I enjoyed Amanah’s quiet strength, determination, and vulnerability, and I enjoyed Taunos’ matching strength, kindness, and respect for others. Both of them are very compassionate, and also free, wild spirits, though their past experiences cause that to express in very different ways. I really liked the way their relationship developed, and how they came to be partners, a team, equals. The romance is based in a synergy between their personalities, and a mutual friendship and partnership with a platonic quality, instead of consuming sexual impulses.
This makes it one of my favorite character-driven stories with a romance as one of the primary relationships, and I’ll get back to talking about that, but first I want to mention a few things that I think were badly done. While in general the characters are consistent, true to their personalities (even if those personalities have inconsistencies), and the characterization is not broken for scenes or for plot, there is a scene very early in the book that I have some major problems with for a couple reasons.
Amanah is havi from the wilderness, a class generally mistreated, abused, and denied justice by the city nobles. A sentimental bag, containing a high value item, was stolen from her, and she’s trying to get justice. These people often decide matters by competitions, and they’re to race horses. Her opponent is given a horse drugged for speed; she’s given a horse that’s beaten down and on its last leg, and shouldn’t be raced at all.
If Amanah were indifferent to horses, I wouldn’t have necessarily seen a problem with it, but she’s supposed to know and like the creatures, and it’s been established that she’s a very compassionate human being. So why under Jattanu (a major god) is she willing to run the poor animal into the ground and its likely death? I would think that she would have some compassion and be unwilling to participate in the abuse of a creature even more helpless and unable to stand up for itself than she and her people are. Instead of asking it to give everything it has and die for her ….
There’s a scene where a character drags a poisonous snake by its tail “step by cautious step.” No explanation is given for why this character is able to do something that I would strongly advise you not to try unless you have a death wish: snakes are strong and fast. They will have no trouble curling back on themselves and biting you.
Back to the relationships. I really liked the way that it develops, showing the characters’ approach to love, and building my understanding of their character as well as the relationship. It develops slowly, as they get to know and trust each other in a reasonable way. Amanah is wary at first, as Taunos comes from a very different background, and she’s been tricked and betrayed before. She doesn’t know what to make of his kindness and care, but also the fact he seems carefree and gets along with powerful people who hurt others. She doesn’t know what to make of his rage at the way she gets treated and his responses that aren’t trapped by the chains of her society.
At the same time, he’s clearly in love with her, admiring her for who she is and many traits she has in common with him, and wanting to support her when she’s hurt – but also almost painfully respectful of her need for distance.
I have a hard time finding male/female romance/love stories where the characters both feel really human and real, where the story is fundamentally a character novel, but also where they’re partners and equals, and you can feel the connection between them. This one did that wonderfully. I really enjoyed Taunos, and Amanah is probably one of my favorite female characters. Both of them are strong, but compassionate; free, independent spirits, but willing to rely and depend on each other in a way they won’t or can’t trust anyone else. They’re friends. No gender roles or stereotypes impede on their relationship, and no over-done sexual cravings push it out of the bounds where I can relate (there is some sexual touching, but it isn’t the main focus or the foundation of the story). You can feel that even if there was no potential for a romantic relationship ever, there’d still be that bond of deep mutual respect and a kind of platonic friendship between their souls. So, in my opinion, it’s one of the best romance stories I’ve read.
Perhaps, it’s also so great because the romance happens in the setting of life, as Amanah struggles with prejudice and oppression, with finding her dreams crushed – but also the fact she’s not good at giving up, but kind of has given up in some ways, but also doesn’t want to ever give up. All sorts of other things are happening – there’s some sort of impending war, there’s some sort of political thing that seems to involve some traitors going on, there are nobles causing trouble. Nobles who sometimes did feel flat and over-done, preposterously so, but then again, we are seeing them through Amanah’s eyes and I can’t expect her to see them better, and some people can be preposterously obtuse and arrogant and intentionally blind, so I’m not saying it’s unrealistic.
It’s in the context of this, and dealing with the troubles caused by all of this, that Amanah and Taunos’ relationship develops, that they discuss the difference between wanting to “save” her (something she doesn’t want in a partnership) and wanting to “help” her, and work things out. In this context that they get to know and admire each other, and become partners, a team who helps people. In this context that they deal with the fact they both desperately care about the other, both naturally place themselves in harm’s way to take care of others and admire the other for this, and both need the other to respect and leave them free to be themselves.
In general, I really liked the characters, and I thought the way their relationship was handled, and the way it developed, touched on interesting inter-personal issues, in a synergy with the rest of the book. I loved this romantic partnership between two strong, caring human characters, both of them with weaknesses and vulnerabilities that don’t detract from their strength or compassion.
However, it’s hard to get the foul taste of how Amanah treats the horse in the beginning of the book out of my mind, though I find I don’t mind it as much as I might. It’s so hard to believe it of the Amanah I see in the rest of the book that I feel like that part of the story was just written wrong, and what really happened is something else. And apart from that, I think it’s a very good story in many ways.
Enthralled By Love 