JJA Harwood

Originally posted on Just Geeking by.

Content warnings:
There are scenes of violence, mass kidnapping, serious injury, blood, gore and death (on and off page). The book is set just after the First World War and in a period of a worldwide pandemic (the Spanish Influenza). The war is not discussed in detail, but it is referred to especially in relation to loss and injuries sustained by veteran soldiers. The Spanish flu is discussed frequently with the fear of illness and death always on people’s minds.

This book contains scenes of paranoia, particularly towards women and relating to their mental health. There is a scene where a woman is ostracised by her village and sent to a mental institution against her will.

It’s the year 1919, and Moira Jean and her friends are helping their village prepare the land for harvest, praying that it will be a good one that will see them all through the winter. Preparing land that could be taken from them at any moment if the landowners decide that they’re selling it or doing something else with it. In the year following the end of the First World War everyone is struggling. The Spanish Influenza has run rampant throughout the world, adding more suffering and taking lives that had been spared in the war.

Life doesn’t just feel unfair for Moira Jean, it feels lifeless, her dreams shattered, her future empty, null and void. The chance to party to in the woods with some stolen alcohol with her friends is a brief blissful escape from the toll of every day life and her painful memories. One night something joins them when they dance, a powerful force that brings with it new dancers that don’t look quite right in the flickering flames. Moira Jean isn’t quite sure what she’s seeing, and she’s drunk a lot by that point, so she thinks nothing of it.

Until she wakes up the next day and her friends are gone. They’ve been gone for months, off to other cities to work and no one believes her when she says they were here yesterday helping with the harvest.

Embarking on a quest to find her friends, Moira Jean finds herself entering a bargain with a powerful fae. The creatures of myth and legend are real it seems, and her only ally is the strange woman in the village that everyone avoids. With her help Moira starts to learn about the fae while trying to keep up with the work around the village as her community feels the loss of those they don’t even remember being there.

The Thorns Remain quite rightly should be a very dull book because Moira Jean’s life is dull. It’s the dreary life of a young woman in 1919. If you’re expecting pretty dresses and balls, then this isn’t the book for you. What stops it from being monotonous is Harwood’s writing. From the first few scenes I was captivated by Moira Jean and village life. This is helped by the fact that the book starts with a flash forward, and then we get the full story. As we go through each scene we’re waiting for the story to catch up, to see how we get to the part we’ve already been given a glimpse of.

While Moira Jean works to get her friends back her actions do not go unnoticed by some members of the village. Completely unaware of what is happening, they become suspicious of Moira Jean, going as far as to accuse her of crimes and question her sanity even as she’s doing everything to help them. The way Harwood interweaves the fae with village life only emphasises the harsh reality of it and just how tempting it would be to give in and accept what they’re offering.

Harwood deals with a lot of hard hitting subjects in The Thorns Remain, such as grief, mental health and disabilities. One of Moira Jean’s friends returned from the war with the loss of one eye, and another has an injured foot as a result of polio and uses a crutch to walk. By setting her novel in the period of the Spanish flu, Harwood is able to explore all the feelings surrounding a pandemic without encroaching on too recent feelings related to COVID-19. The backdrop of a wee highland village cut off from the world is both miles away from and yet similar enough to what we all felt during the lockdown that the reader can connect with the villagers while keeping a safe distance emotionally. As a result The Thorns Remain is a multi-layered emotionally charged novel.

I wasn’t sure how this one would turn out, and it ended up being an enjoyable read with interesting characters. It is quite a slow read though, which I personally didn’t find to be a bad thing. There was plenty happening to keep me engaged, to keep me interested in where the story was going. I’ve seen a review list the diversity of this book as low, and I’m not sure how they came to that conclusion. If you’re viewing diversity only in terms of race then yes, diversity is not just low, it’s non-existent. However, the book is set in a small and out of the way village in the Scottish highlands, emphasis on small and out of the way. With that in mind the lack of racial diversity is historically accurate. There is a lot of disability representation as mentioned and there is also LGBTQIA representation (gay, lesbian, bisexual and gender-fluid).

The result is a well-rounded novel. Harwood’s take on the fae has lots of connections to Scottish folklore, and this combined with the historical Scottish setting makes The Thorns Remain a fabulously unique read.

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… (mere)

3.5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The figure extended a graceful hand. 'Join the dance.'

It's 1919 and while the War has ended, the danger and threat of the Spanish Flu still lingers. Moira Jean's little village in Scotland keeps dwindling as boys and men were lost to the war and others to the lure of more opportunities in the cities. Moira Jean and her six friends toil as tenets to a rich family that hasn't even visited their estate in years and always with the threat of eviction hovering. When they decide to let off some steam in the woods, drinking and carrying on, a new danger reveals itself. Now Moira Jean must deal against The Dreamer, trying to get her friends back and keep herself and the rest of the village safe.

'Careful, Moira Jean. You are safe if you are ignorant. Do not stray too close to that which you do not understand.'

The Thorns Remains was a magical realism and fantasy story that brought back all the reasons why people line their windows and doorways with iron. I loved how all the different kinds of fae folk were added in, kelpie, brownies, changelings, glaistig, etc and The Lord of Land Under the Hill, a.ka. The Dreamer, didn't sparkle so much as be painful to look upon because of his beauty that bordered on and could shift to grotesque.

Dying from the flu as he was trying to make his way back home, Angus, Moira Jean's fiance, has her weighed down with grief and wearing his Victory Medal. A medal that has just enough iron in it to keep her from completely falling under The Dreamer's spell when he starts the music up, after he catches her and her friends in the woods. Moira Jean sees the creatures for what they are, antlers coming out of eye sockets, vines coming out of mouths, and refuses to keep dancing and follow everyone to The Dreamer's halls. She wakes up in the morning at home with an awful hangover and no one in the village missing the six friends as they're under a spell thinking their kids are just somewhere else. This leaves Moira Jean to return to the woods and make deals with The Dreamer to get her friends back.

'Of course we are equals,' he said, his voice low, 'but that does not make you any less mine.'

The Dreamer is just intrigued enough with Moira Jean to bargain with her and the story starts to get a Tam Lin essence to it, until Moira Jean reads the actual story to The Dreamer and then we spin a different direction. Moira Jean bargains one of her letters from Angus to The Dreamer for one of her friend's return and we see The Dreamer be fascinated with human emotion. The story then has The Dreamer acting as if he is starting to feel love for Moira Jean and this could have easily spun into a romance but I loved the direction this took with instead having Moira Jean eventually recognizing all the ways The Dreamer had been manipulating her and how it was selfish, obsession, and controlling and not love The Dreamer was feeling for her.

Brudonnock was alive with unseen things, and she could see them all.

While I enjoyed how we got to know the townspeople and Moira Jean's relationship with her mother, so we could get a feel for the community Moira Jean was living in, this story was four hundred pages and a good chunk of her working, doing chores (so much laundry washing!) could have been edited out, it dragged the middle and beginning second half down so much. There is a deadline to the bargains Moira Jean is making with The Dreamer, Beltane, and that is six weeks away. Instead of a steady pace of her trying to come up with ways to get her friends back, the pace slows and feels meandering as she has to do chores. I don't think streamlining this would have cut out any feelings and instead would have vastly improved the pace and therefore story.

She stepped into the Land Under the Hill.

The latter second half speeds up as Moira Jean stands up to the The Dreamer and his warnings of a “tithe” and The Queen come to fruition. We get fascinating fantasy scenes in The Dreamer's world and danger from The Queen. This was told in five parts, no chapters, with a writing style that pulled me into the story and if Moira Jean had focused a little more on getting her friends back with less scenes showing her doing her chores, the return to fae being something to fear would have this a favorite read of the year, but I still did enjoy the places this went.

He wanted her afraid, uncertain – it was how he'd always wanted her. But she had finished giving him what he wanted.

The exploring of Moira Jean's grief, touching on how culture can be stripped from a people (Mrs. Iverach), economic opportunities, and how all love isn't good love were themes all explored in this magical realism world. The ending could easily be the last we see of Moira Jean but I can't help thinking that her last glance at the dock could lead to a sequel and I'd definitely sign up for more from the woman with iron in her soul.… (mere)

Finally read this one. A historical fantasy set in the aftermath of the Great War, Moira Jean Kinross lives with her widowed mother in a small estate village in Scotland. Mrs Kinross is the village nurse, and has her hands full with the Spanish Flu. Moira and her friends inadvertantly awake one of the Fair Folk who takes Moira’s friends to dance underhill, and Moira must find a way to rescue them before Beltane comes and the tithe must be paid.

The story has echoes of Tam Lin and The Twelve Dancing Princesses, but is very much darker in tone. Although set post-WWI, I actually didn’t get much sense of the period; in some ways the story could have been set much earlier without much difference.

I liked it.… (mere)