Between Two Fires, Christopher Buehlman (2012)

 Finished: 25/2/25

Between Two Fires was another birthday present (like my last two entries), and I enjoyed it. This was a horror book, and I was excited to go back to my roots: I was really into horror books and media as a teenager before I got into Victorian Era literature. There's also a huge Christian theme in Between Two Fires; even though it's set in the medieval period, I felt like the approach to the main messages of Christianity were very modern while still being believable for characters living through the black plague to have. I feel like I don't have to so much to say about this book because my critiques are very light, but in turn, I feel like there was a lack of a deeper meaning and message.

Getting into the analysis: I'm going to start off with my critique of the plotline and the story. Some of the most transformative books I've read have this overall vibe of "this can be felt but not shown," which is why the story being told is a book and not a show or video game. Mark Z Danielewski is really good at doing this. While reading Between Two Fires, I felt like it could've easily be made into visual media. -This is not entirely a bad thing, to me, it just means that the way of storytelling wasn't transformative, it used a tried-and-true method. 

Between Two Fires reminded me a lot of The Last of Us and A Plague Tale: Innocence. Both of which are popular video games that I played and really enjoyed. In these video games, and Between Two Fires, the story is told by someone who has complicated morals because of the way their environment has changed (in this case Thomas), and their task is to protect someone younger and very special (in this case Delphine), so their younger companion can be some sort of savior. Along the way, the protector develops a close bond with the younger companion and their morals get less messy. It's sort of the classic "hero's journey," but told from the hero's bodyguard.

Delphine's character reminded me a lot of what I know about Joan d'Arc and Harriet Tubman. Both of these women, and Delphine, had these religious visions leading them to some greater purpose. It was easy for people to call them "crazy," but they were on a mission to help and save people. Now, they're looked at as strong and influential historical figures, which is a somewhat rare position for someone who claims to hear messages "from beyond." 

I liked Christopher Buehlman's description of the angles that Delphine saw. The beauty of androgyny is becoming more common place these days, but it's nice to see it written out. I feel like stereotypes based on "beauty" always fall into the two categories of "hyper feminine" and "hyper masculine." -That you have to have some certain unambiguous body type to be desirable; yet along with that people will assume negative things about you, like you're "egotistical" or "shallow." Androgyny is way more fluid and I don't see any stereotypes about beautiful androgenous people, maybe other than they're queer. I think part of what is so attractive about androgyny, at least to me, is the mysterious aspect of it. Not being sure what "box" to place the androgynous person in makes you more curious, and them more mysterious.

Now on to what I always talk about: feminism. The beginning of the book scared me a little because right in the first chapter, there's already someone who wants to rape Delphine. Luckily Thomas kills him, but even the mention of it made me question reading the rest of this book. Like I said in the introduction for this report, I used to be a really big fan of the horror genre. My high school library had a selection of Stephen King books and I checked out most of them during my freshman year. However, as my brain developed a little more, I realized that Stephen King had a tendency to put little girls and preteens in his stories in sexual situations. It made me really uncomfortable, but not in the way horror books are supposed to make the reader uncomfortable. I think the appeal of horror is that it's puts you in the position of thinking "this isn't real, but what if it was?" -It shifts your reality in an exciting way that allows you to be transported. Whereas the sexualization of young girls and sexual violence is all too real. In Stephen King's novels sexual violence is presented as "this is awful and disgusting, so I'm going to put this in my novel because it's a horror novel."

However, I think that the way sexualization and sexual violence was brought up and shown in Between Two Fires was done the right way, if there can be a right way. I always bring up The Bluest Eye as a good example of how to present sexual violence in literature. I still can't quite put my finger on why The Bluest Eye does it so well, but I think it's because there's more of a focus on the horror of the trauma and punishment that happens after the sexual violence, than the sexual violence itself. I think that puts the spotlight more on the survivor than the perpetrator, and can send a message of healing and perseverance.

To end my feminism segment: I felt like the way Delphine was physically described was really accurate to how it looks/feels to be a young, teenage girl. I didn't pick up on any sexual undertones, which I was very happy about! I feel like it's somewhat rare for male authors to achieve that. 

Reading about the black death, it brought up a lot of memories of living during the height of the covid-19 pandemic. Of course the black death was way more catastrophic, but the mass death and feelings of hopelessness were reminiscent of 2020-2022-ish. It was so life altering to feel like everything is crashing and burning: like the world will never be able to move on. My family and I got covid a couple months before the first vaccines were being rolled out, and I remember being so nervous about our health. I think that was the only time I didn't take advantage of being sick/feeling ill to let myself rest and not worry about anything. -I kept convincing myself that I was okay and things weren't that bad. Luckily, my whole family and I (of course) lived through the whole ordeal, but I don't know if many of us would've made it through the black death. The black death is this huge part of European history, and I think that the coronavirus will have a similar standing in world history in the years to come.

To end this report, I want to ask an opened ended question that I've been thinking about for a while, and I don't think there's a "right" answer. It's related to what I was talking about earlier, with the lack of "transformativeness;" my question is: do horror books need to have a deeper meaning? So much of classic literature, and books in school curriculums, have subtext and symbolism and/or carry this critique of something topical at the time. From my perspective, it feels like all books should be that way, but I felt like Between Two Fires, like other horror novels, lack that. It's not entirely a bad thing, sometimes it's nice to have a lighter book that's more "what you see is what you get," but then the book also lacks impact. I really like having something to think about and try to figure out, and I think most readers do too, but maybe deeper messages aren't vital for that type of enjoyment? I don't know.

This report took me way too long to write even though this is one of the shorter ones. Life update: I'm busy again. I'm hoping that in a month and a half I'll be able to get back on the book train, -the sooner the better. Anyways, thanks for reading!