Green

Green (Green Universe, #1)by Jay Lake

 She was born in poverty, in a dusty village under the equatorial sun. She does not remember her mother, she does not remember her own name—her earliest clear memory is of the day her father sold her to the tall pale man. In the Court of the Pomegranate Tree, where she was taught the ways of a courtesan…and the skills of an assassin…she was named Emerald, the precious jewel of the Undying Duke’s collection of beauties.She calls herself Green.The world she inhabits is one of political power and magic, where Gods meddle in the affairs of mortals. At the center of it is the immortal Duke’s city of Copper Downs, which controls all the trade on the Storm Sea. Green has made many enemies, and some secret friends, and she has become a very dangerous woman indeed.Acclaimed author Jay Lake has created a remarkable character inGreen, and evokes a remarkable world in this novel. Green and her struggle to survive and find her own past will live in the reader’s mind for a long time after closing the book. (goodreads.com)

I don't even remember  how this book got on my radar. I know I'd marked it as a wish-list item on Goodreads a long time ago. Then a friend of my husband's said that she had a copy of the book and lent it to me saying, "you don't have to give it back". Now this friend and I share a very similar taste in literature and the fact that she only gave this book 1 star on GR made me wary. In fact, there are so many negative reviews of this book I was worried about starting it. I picked it up a week ago, still wanting to read Everything Fantasy and gave it a try.I read a bunch of the reviews to see why people didn't like it and what I read made me worried. Beatings, 12-year old lesbian orgies, and so on. Um... what exactly was I about to read? So far I'd gotten about 40 pages in and I didn't see anything wrong. Ok, so Green is sold by her father at the age of 3 and she's raised in another country and she receives countless beatings by the Mistresses who are training her (to be the Perfect Woman). It was sort of horrifying but I didn't have a problem with the way anything was written. If anything, I found Green's narration to be slow at times, but there was a very comforting feeling to it and I was lulled by the words on the page.Also, the way Green recounts her dialogues with these women, had me forgetting numerous times that she was only 3 and 4 years old at the start of the novel. Her speech was far older making her age rather unbelievable.As far as the 12-year old, lesbian orgies... Green is about 13-14 when she lives in, what I came to think of as a sort of Nunnary, or Monastery for women. There are one-sentence references to her exploring her sexual side and yes, it's all with women. There are hints that occasionally the girls would do things, but I didn't find anything graphic or all that disturbing. What bothered me more was the relationship that came towards the end with a non-human sort of character, but it didn't freak me out. Since Green knew nothing other that being beaten in terms of "affection", it wasn't a surprise that her sexual desires tended to be of the S&M flavour. It wasn't a huge topic in the story though, it was just the occasional reference thrown into the narrative and it was easy to just skip over if it bugged you.I'm probably not explaining this well, but my point is that the issues that I read about in the negative reviews weren't the Big Points in the story.Personally, I loved the flow of the story and Green herself. She's not a perfect character, she's not even a nice one a lot of the times, but she's strong and a survivor. She clings so deeply to her first beliefs as a small child and she tries to always keep a part of her and her little-known past with her as she's being molded to be owned by others. She will NOT be owned.Unlike many other fantasy stories, the quest that Green embarks on is not the kind where she has to go and retrieve some magical object to save the world. Green's quest is to find herself and to just survive in the world. She tries to go back to the home she barely remembers and when she doesn't find the answers she thought she'd find there, she continues on to find her place in the world. The quest is her survival in the world. I liked that a lot about the story. I also love that she clings to the image of Endurance, the ox from her father's farm at times of suffering. Endurance is so important to her that he becomes a sort of saviour in the end.Maybe because I was expecting less from Green than I ended up getting, but this book was a great read. Great enough that I really want to pick up the sequel. If it's written the same was as the first book, I know I will enjoy it.It helped that the hard cover edition that I was lent was the best smelling book I have ever had. It smelled devine. Yes, I am a big lover of bookish-smelling books. This one was fantastic. Books are always better when they smell good. ;)I will indeed be keeping this book and not giving it away. I will pick up Endurance, the sequel, even though I have too many books to read already. I seem to be in the minority for liking this book, but somehow that makes it even more special. I can see why people didn't enjoy it, and sometimes the pacing is a little slow, but ultimately, I found peace while reading this book. It was calming, I can't explain why, it just was.Green Universe

1. Green
2. Endurance
3. Kalimpura - 2013 January