Tess of the Road

I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program; it arrived on 20 February 2018.

Disclaimer: I'm not in the target age range for the book, but I am an adult who also enjoys YA and realizes that I'm reading it from a different perspective. I also didn't realize it was connected to other books, so I'll be lacking backstory knowledge but will do my best to judge it on its own merits.

Trigger warnings (YMMV): corporal punishment of a child (in flashbacks), elder abuse, teenage alcoholism, slut-shaming, sex slavery (implied), dubious consent (flashback/recollection), rape (implied). If you have any questions in this regard, just ask.

First off, the cover. Yeah, yeah, I know we're not supposed to judge books by them, but show more the art is gorgeous. Maybe the scene portrayed doesn't happen precisely, but I took it as symbolic of Tess's struggle against the looming world. The title isn't exactly gripping, but it fits. In terms of comparisons, TESS OF THE ROAD reminds me a bit of Cashore's GRACELING, but with hints of Pratchett's DISCWORLD humour (not to mention the no-nonsense women who Get Things Done).

My quibbles are few, so I'll cover them first. This is probably a rare instance of where I wish a fantasy novel DID have a map, because it would have been nice to get a clearer sense of Tess's journey. Also, being unfamiliar with the world and the other books in it, I would have liked a bit more description of the quigutl as well. Some of the flashbacks felt oddly placed, as if the author knew she needed to include some information but wasn't sure how to make it quite relevant. The biggest quibble for me is the lack of resistance to Tess's disguise. Simply cutting her hair and dressing like a boy wouldn't have been enough to fool everyone, yet she doesn't have many problems passing as a boy; when her disguise is revealed, I thought at least ONE of those encounters would be dangerous, but it felt like most people shrugged it off. Perhaps it's commonplace in a world where women have few options, but it still stood out to me.

Other than those few things, though, I loved it. I imagine I'm going to have a book hangover for a few days, because I connected with Tess in a way I haven't connected with a protagonist for quite a while. It's always nice to get a female adventurer, a quest from a perspective other than "intrepid young man". She's brash and not always likable, but she's dynamic, growing chapter by chapter. There was decent diversity among the characters, and while the novel covers a lot of social justice ground, it rarely feels preachy or shoehorned in. Tess regularly had her preconceived notions (e.g., beliefs about nuns, prostitutes, etc.) put to the test, and she learns from every encounter she has, even if it takes a while for the knowledge to sink in. Actions have consequences, and good deeds aren't always rewarded (or appreciated), and while Tess gets help from many people along the way (peers, adults, quigutl, etc.), ultimately she is the one who saves herself.

The world feels enchantingly full: characters don't just exist as plot points for Tess's journey. When she parts ways with someone, it doesn't feel like their story is ending or becoming irrelevant; that person is merely going on a different path than hers, and there are many secondary characters (Boss Gen, Mother Philomela, Big Arnando, etc.) who could fill a novel in their own right. I imagine some people feel Josquin is too good to be true, and perhaps he is, but I found his presence to be one of the most emotional in the book.

I haven't read SERAPHINA or SHADOW SCALE, but now I definitely want to. Late in the book, a character says "But this is my road. I'm so happy you came and traveled with me" (497). I'm so glad I had the chance to travel with Tess. show less

When this story begins, the titular character has already suffered the demise of all her hopes and dreams. Tess is only seventeen, but she has lost her first love, lost her virginity, and lost the illegitimate child her ill-fated union produced. She is now at the heart of a cover up, as her entire family's survival depends upon her secret never being revealed. She has committed all her ability to seeing her twin sister gets advantageously married so that her younger brothers can be educated.

After the calamitous events of her sister's wedding day, Tess is wrung out with grief and rejection. Now that her sister is married, she can see very little future for herself. Likely she will be shipped off to a nunnery where her parents can count show more on her being successfully contained for the rest of her days. But in a moment of hopeless rebellion, she puts on men's clothing and sets out on the road to find her own adventure.

Soon she meets up with a long-lost friend, a dragonkin whose life she saved long ago. Together, they decide to pursue one of the world serpents - long thought to be a legend by humans. On this journey, Tess will learn many things about the nature of the world and will finally have a chance to come to know herself.

I don't often like YA novels, but this is a very well constructed and compelling story about a very flawed protagonist who the reader still pulls for even as she makes increasingly disastrous choices. show less

I won't lie: I went straight into this book expecting it to be just like the other two books that Hartman wrote in this same universe. I was ready for this to be a fantasy quest with all the fine and fascinating twists upon tropes, with all the same sense of brightness-amid-the-grime, all the same hope and delight.

This is a much different book than I expected. Much harder, much grimmer in places, and I would even go so far as to say triggery, as it deals with consent and sexual assault and gender and trauma in ways that are deeply personal. It was, at times, difficult to read because the richness this time is more about emotions than world. It's set in the world we all know, if we've read Seraphina and Shadow Scale, but follows show more Seraphina's younger half-sister, Tess, who takes to the titular road early on, running away from herself as well as her family.

Hartman, by now, has a tradition of young and unreliable narrators and does not, this time, reveal the truth about Tess so quickly as she did about Seraphina in the first volume. As a result, it's even harder to settle into Tess' narration -- it's hard to like Tess, as a reader, because Tess doesn't like herself. But, you might guess, that emotional state has to change and it's that kind of journey that the novel takes us on. In the end, it's just as brilliant as Hartman's other work -- and more brutal and human than one might expect from an author billed as a YA fantasy writer. Don't underestimate Rachel Hartman or her genre, though. In the end, this is extraordinary stuff. show less

Hartman turns her focus to one of Seraphina’s younger half-sisters, Tess—the designated bad girl of the family. Raised in a religiously repressive household, Tess rebels, with incredibly negative consequences that leave her resentful and trapped, drinking too much and looking forward to nothing but a life of looking after her good twin’s children in another repressive house. After some spectacular indiscretions, Tess runs away, reconnects with a childhood friend, and finds herself on the road, pun intended. I liked this one better than the previous books, which I thought were good, but this one was good in a way made for me—it’s about how your parents fuck you up, often without meaning to; about how sexism warps people from show more the inside out; about how you can leave but you take your problems with you unless you confront them; about how a person can be a wonderful friend, mentor, comrade to some people and also a disastrous parent to others. It’s also witty and compassionate. More fantasy elements, but very much reminded me of Frances Hardinge. show less

Tess of the Road is about one of Seraphina’s younger half-sisters. It’s different from Seraphina’s story in terms of plot and tone. Darker, more intensely focused on the personal. And whoa, is this a thoughtful and powerful story! Tess has always been getting into trouble; she’s disgraced herself and her family, even if they’ve managed to keep that secret, and once she’s helped her twin sister to secure a suitable marriage, she knows her own options will be limited -- governess or convent.

But after she drinks too much and causes a scene at her sister’s wedding, she walks away everything, and just keeps walking. On the road, she is reunited with a childhood friend, a quigutl (“small, flightless subspecies of dragon”), show more and together they set out with the goal of finding the mythical World Serpents.

But Tess’s journey is predominately one about making sense of herself and her world. Of her past. Of her pain. Of her shame and guilt and bitterness and grief. Of her beliefs and philosophy. Of her relationship with her sisters. Of her quigutl friend and quigutl culture. Of her own worth.

Tess of the Road is heartbreaking yet affirming. It is compelling, nuanced and poignant. And, in spite of the heartache in Tess’s past and her depressingly-negative self image, it’s positive and hopeful.

The structure is partly responsible for that. We don’t find out the details about Tess’s past until she stops to dwell on them - but each time Tess revisits one of her painful memories, she’s in a better place. She’s healing. There were a few moments when I wanted things to be easier -- neater, tidier -- for Tess, but in hindsight, that would have been less realistic and undermined the story’s impact.

Tess closed her eyes against the painful sunshine, deeply weary. Cosmically weary. She’d run away from home, and now she wanted to run away from running away, but it was no use. Tess (born bad) was always with her, wherever she went.

(It’s fascinating to get a different perspective on Seraphina and their family. I found it distressing that Tess had suffered heartachein that family -- even though she has an older sister who is warm-hearted and unconventional.
But Tess and Seraphina are subjected to quite different pressures and expectations from their family. Growing up, Tess had the companionship of her twin and their mother encouraged them to view Seraphina as different, while Seraphina was preoccupied with managing, and keeping secret, her half-dragon-ness. That didn’t encourage sisterly closeness and understanding. By the time Tess was a teenager, Seraphina had left home -- and was learning that you can’t always swoop in and solve others’ problems, no matter how much you may wish to.) show less

Tess of the Road is the first installment of a new duology set in the world of Seraphina, the doughty half-dragon, half-human heroine of Hartman’s earlier duology.

Tess Dombegh and her fraternal twin Jeanne are step-sisters of Seraphina. They have always lived up to (or down to) the descriptions given to the three of them: Seraphina: the smart one; Jeanne: the pretty one; and Tess: “The One Who’s Always Been Trouble.”

We first learn about Tess as a small girl and what life is like with her parents. Her father had been disgraced after the exposure of his earlier liaison - marriage to a dragon in human form was illegal. Her mother remains bitter over it and has retreated into religious rigidity to cope.

Her vinegary mother tells the show more twins:

“Girls, remember: this mortal, material world will let you down. Husbands, love, life - everything and everyone will disappoint you eventually. Only one thing never fails. Do you know what that is? Heaven.”

She gives constant lectures on the evils of lust and desire, and on what the roles of women should be - i.e., very restricted. She harps on the sins of the flesh, and on Tess’s perceived sins in particular, all the more blatant since apparently Tess bore a child out of wedlock. (We only learn the details gradually as the story progresses.). Tess has grown up believing she was “singularly and spectacularly flawed, subject to sins a normal girl should never have been prone to.”

When Tess is 16, and Jeanne receives a marriage offer, she is faced with only two options: to live with Jeanne as nursemaid for her children at the home of Jeanne’s new husband and his horrific family, or to enter a convent. Tess doesn’t look forward to either. She longs to have adventures like her childhood hero, the fictional pirate Dozerius.

Tess takes increasingly to drinking, but after one disastrous episode that led to a run-in with Jeanne’s new family, she decided to take off, disguised as a male. At first she is accompanied only by the inner censorious voice of her mother, but eventually she is reunited with her childhood friend Pathka. Pathka is a quigutl, a small species related to dragons.

Pathka asks Tess to help her find Anathuthia, the World Serpent, “the one beneath our continent, the one who will restore us to ourselves.” It was important to Pathka, her oldest friend, that Tess accept, and so she did.

The two have many adventures, indeed, like Dozerius, although Tess gets a new outlook on her old hero as they travel along their road. Tess wants to bite him, which is a concept among quigutl that enables someone who is angry and hurt to find forgiveness. But there is another she wants to bite too: “‘What do you do, Pathka,’” Tess half whispered, ‘if the person you most desperately need to bite is yourself?’” Pathka explains to Tess how it is done, and it’s really not so far from a human concept.

Tess also learns some life lessons from a nun she meets on the road, Mother Philomela. The nun tells her that both guilt and love can carry a person a long way, but your own two feet can take you farther than either of them:

“We’re all on this road, metaphorically. . . ."

She also tells Tess that the religious strictures under which she was raised are just wrong. “The body is innocent,” she insists. And children are not born evil. But unfortunately, as she explains:

". . . goodness withers when it is continuously ground underfoot. We fulfill our parents’ direst prophecies, then curl around our own pain until we can’t see beyond ourselves. You want to walk on? Walk out of that shadow. Walk, girl. . . . Walk on, yes, but don’t walk past people who need you. Uncurl yourself, so you can see them and respond.”

In other words, the past is never really past, unless you can learn to bite it and move on.

Tess has a decision to make, about how she can finally be the hero of her own story, and whether guilt or love will hold her back.

Evaluation: This captivating story offers both a metaphorical and literal portrayal of the road to healing. And I loved meeting another worthy young female heroine who will make a great role model for girls. I can't wait for the next book! show less

What an incredible read. If English classes actually read modern YA stuff, this book would be at the top of the list.

The writing was beautiful and the story was powerful. Tess really came alive and seemed like a real person who actually existed in our world. She made decisions and had things decided for her that had devastating consequences on her life, leading to alcoholism, depression, thoughts and attempts at suicide. She struggled with so much, but she managed to make it through everything without minimizing what happened to her (hats off to the author for this!)

I fell in love with this story and genuinely think that everyone should give this a read.