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Reviewed by:
  • The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles by Daniel Heath Justice
  • David D. Oberhelman (bio)
Daniel Heath Justice. The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-8263-5012-1. 616pp.

The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles, an omnibus volume of Daniel Heath Justice’s previously published novels Kynship (2005), Wyrwood (2006), and Dreyd (2007), is a compelling tale that successfully melds the narrative and mythic conventions of the high fantasy genre with the traditions and history of the Indigenous peoples in the Americas, particularly their violent encounters with Europeans. Justice effectively adapts a genre most often associated with Northern European legends by drawing upon American Indian spirituality and customs, creating a world and peoples that are at once familiar and alien, an alternate history of North America in the 1700s as the British colonies advanced westward and displaced the native inhabitants. Readers will easily discern [End Page 118] elements resembling those of high fantasists such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, who fashion and populate their own invented universes. Justice aligns himself with later exemplars of that tradition such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip Pullman, and Robert Jordan by extending the basic high fantasy theme of the cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil into other earthly arenas such as cultural, ethnic, religious, social, and political inquiry. Justice’s trilogy thus bridges the gap between Native American literature and popular genre fiction, demonstrating how Indigenous fantasy can provide new insights into the unfortunate clash of civilizations that took place on this continent.

Central to Justice’s vision in the series is the concept of a primeval natural world, the Eld Green, home of the aboriginal Folk, which was invaded by the Humans (the European counterparts) and ultimately reduced to a confined pocket known as the Everland in which the seven nations of the Folk reside. This “Melded World” juxtaposes the iron-wielding industrial realm of the Humans and the Everland that derives its energy from the sacred Eternity Tree and the force of wyr, the life-source derived from the language and memories of the Folk within their divine territory. Here Justice invokes the iconic imagery of Tolkien—the Eternity Tree recalls the two light-bringing trees of The Silmarillion Tolkien derived from the Norse Yggdrasil or tree of life—and blends it with the spirituality of the American Indians to produce a new mythos that is at once culturally specific and redolent of many other faiths and belief systems. The chronicles hinge upon the efforts of Human Dreyd priests and their master Lojar Vald of Eromar, the province bordering the Everland, to complete the melding of the land and eradicate the Folk by removing them to a place where their wyr can be appropriated. The sad chapters in American Indian history such as the broken treaties and even the Trail of Tears, a key episode for Justice as a Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation, are elevated to legendary status with The Way of Thorn and Thunder, and Justice thereby adapts the tropes of high fantasy to provide a new perspective on the conquest and oppressions of Native peoples by outsiders.

Justice also succeeds in making his series an eloquent account of the condition of women in American Indian history and culture. Tarsa, the Wielder or manipulator of the wyr energy from the Kyn Nation, is the heroine of the saga who undertakes a quest to save her people in a pattern like that of the hero’s journey outlined by Joseph Campbell. [End Page 119] She embodies the spiritual capacity and will to survive that characterize the Folk in this series. Quill, the wyr-wielding Dolltender of the Tetawa Nation, and Denarra, the Strangeling of mixed Folk and Human parentage who struggles to live by any means she can in the Human’s world, are the two other significant women in the narrative. They reflect different aspects of women’s historical experience and ground the fantastic story in the harsh realities and prejudices facing indigenous women among the Europeans of the eighteenth century. The...

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