Spirit's Oath

[sawyl]

Before I leave the world of Rachel Aaron's The Legend of Eli Monpress entirely, there's just time to take in Spirit's Oath, a short, fun little prequel to the series that expands Miranda Lyonette's backstory.

Despite her youth, Miranda Lyonette has achieved a lot during her apprenticeship with the Spirit Court. But this counts for nothing when her supercilious father, whom she hasn't seen for a number of years, shows up and announces that she is to return home. Etmon Banage, the Rector and Miranda's mentor, suggests that it would be politic for her to be seen to accede to her father's wishes for a few days before returning to the Court. Obviously neither of them has ever read a Victorian gothic novel!

Arriving home, Miranda learns that she is to accompany the family to a country house party at the home of Martin Hapter. Despite forming an initially favourable opinion of Hapter, Miranda cools towards her host when she discovers that he is primarily interested in killing and begins to dislike him when he takes her to see his zoo — which includes a rare, sentient, and particularly unhappy ghosthound called Gin. Telling herself that she only needs to make it through the next few days until she can return to the Spirit Court, Miranda is appalled when her father arranges for her to marry Hapter in settlement of a debt.

But being Miranda Lyonette and being stubborn as anything, she refuses to accept the situation and publicly embarrasses Hapter and her family at what is supposed to be an engagement party that evening. Confined to her room, Miranda uses a combination of guile and her abilities as a spiritualist to free both herself and the ghosthound — who eventually agrees to become her companion — in a way that humiliates both her parents and her groom-to-be in a particularly satisfying fashion. The story ends with Miranda back under Banage's tutelage, learning, rather to her delight, that her father has chosen to expel her from the family.

Spirit's Oath is a fun little novella that adds quite a lot to Miranda's and Gin's backgrounds, whilst also filling out the character of Etmon Banage in ways that only make sense in light of the other books — it's telling that the normally stubborn Banage agrees to Simon Lyonette's request because it involves reconciling a child with their estranged family. There's also something extremely rewarding about the subversion of the standard narrative where the unsuspecting heroine is trapped in a horrible marriage or engagement by grasping relatives, only to reject the whole thing and rescue herself from peril, rather than waiting for someone to rush in and do it for her. Clearly Miranda's parents were expecting to get a wilting and pliable girl back from the Spirit Court, whereas we know from the introduction that they're actually getting someone willing to live outdoors and endure uncomfortable circumstances just for the chance to enter into an agreement with a rare wind spirit.

An enjoyable and subversive little coda to a solid series.