Red Sonja: Consumed by Gail Simone
It must be tough to write about a legend. Both within her own world and ours, Red Sonja is a name to be reckoned with, and Gail Simone more than does her justice in her debut novel.
The She-Devil with a Sword, Sonja is one of the greatest heroes of her age, a woman who goes toe-to-toe with any enemy, no matter how terrible or undefeatable. And when her victory comes, she is the first to quaff some ale and take to bed the prettiest people she can find. There is a reason she is known as the She-Devil, amongst other, more terrifying epithets that run before her, allowing the wiser people in her path to know that they would do well not to trifle with her. Do not try to contain Red Sonja, and do not attempt to bar her way.
This story follows Sonja as she enjoys her life as a thief, aiming to steal a precious gold armband known as the Asp from the beautiful queen that she has taken to her bed, and possibly to love. She finds herself pursued by her spurned lover, hunted by a hired assassin, and an unwelcome visitor in lands who despise her own people, the Hyrkanians. With only her loyal steed, Sunder, she takes charge of her own life, lives by her own rules, and takes who and what she wants. No one has a hold over Red Sonja, and that’s the way she likes it.
However, not even Sonja can escape her past, no matter how far she may go. Her homeland is under attack by terrible creatures that travel through the earth, bursting forth when you least expect it, and pulling you down to join their ranks of undead horrors. For reasons of their own, these terrible beings wish nothing but complete destruction of the Hyrkanians, and fully expect that there is nothing the Hyrkanians can possibly do to stop them.
And they would be right, of course, if Sonja was not compelled by necessity and honor to step in and shut them down.
Of the various genres of fantasy that I read, I don’t often step into the world of Swords and Sandals. Historically, Red Sonja occupies the literary landscape opened up by Conan the Barbarian, traveling through a world that is magical, but in a way that is more or less beyond our hero. Magic is subtle and terrible, used by people who have pushed past the veil of what should be known, and it is usually up to people like Sonja to stop whatever unnatural horrors have been unleashed.
Red Sonja in this book is human in a way that so many fantasy heroes are not – she drinks a lot, takes both men and women to bed when she wants to, fights dirty and fights to win, gets hurt, regrets, and dreads becoming the legend that she already is. She is not a Chosen One or a Fate-Touched or whatever other thing you might expect from Fantasy. She’s a woman who Gets Things Done.
This humanity clearly comes from Simone’s love of the character. She’s been writing Sonja in the comics for a long time, and talks about her with great joy and love when discussions come up online, and knows the forces that push and pull at the character, creating conflict that can be explored in countless ways.
Sonja’s backstory is certainly tragic. Having lost her family and her village when she was a child, she was forced to survive on her own and use the skills she had been taught in order to just not die. She grew up without a people to rely on, and, like anyone in that situation, found herself doing her best not to be in situations where she had to rely on people.
However, as so many stories have told us, relying on people is the way to get things done, and that’s just as true here. Sonja has to make peace with enemies, allow friends to help and, most importantly, allow herself to do what must be done in order to stop the horrifying entities that are threatening her people. And this is where her humanity shines. She struggles greatly with letting others get close to her, convinced both that she doesn’t need them, and even if she did need them, they’d just get hurt. Simone does a great job of illustrating this conflict within Sonja and giving her the room to really figure out how she’s going to relate to other people.
It might be tempting not to explore what this book is about, thematically, because it’s not the kind of book that usually gets explored that way. Stories about fantastic warriors, strange zombie mole-people, cursed jewelry usually doesn’t get the kind of close literary attention that other, more “serious” books do. But to ignore the meaning in a book like this is to do it a grave disservice.
Among her many great qualities as a writer, Gail Simone is fantastic at finding the emotional core of a character. Just as she has done with characters like Wonder Woman and Batgirl and yes, even Deadpool, Simone knows the emotional core of Red Sonja.
For all of her bravery and bravado, and despite a reputation that runs before her like a shadow at sunset, Red Sonja feels unworthy of love and connection. She knows the danger that her life brings and has made the decision that she can’t involve others in that, and I suppose that makes a kind of pragmatic sense.
But for all that, Sonja loves. She loves her people and her ideals and her home despite herself, and for all that it doesn’t make pragmatic sense she can’t stop loving people.
And now we know Sonja’s tragedy. For all her fantastic setting and tragic backstory, it’s that push and pull of relationships and closeness that brings her to life and speaks to all of us. For while very few readers of Red Sonja have commanded their warhorse to put its hooves through a man’s skull while the invincible armies of undead vengeance wreak havoc in their city, we have all been pulled and torn between the twin forces of wanting to be loved and not wanting to be hurt.
That is what allows Gail Simone to bring Red Sonja fully to life, and what makes this story such a good read.
“The great truth of Red Sonja, in her own hidden heart, was that leaving the people she loved was the best gift she could give them, she was certain.”
Gail Simone on Wikipedia
Red Sonja on Wikipedia
Red Sonja: Consumed on Goodreads
The Labyrinth Library 