Anathema

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of rape, child abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, gender discrimination, antigay bias, substance use, and cursing.

“She forced herself to set her eyes upon the dark and corrupt soul, where he stood alongside her eldest son and husband, watching her every step from the edge of the vein. The man she’d come to know as the most dangerous mage in all of Aethyria. One of few who’d mastered the ability to control the otherwise chaotic sablefyre and discovered a means to harness its deadly and divine power. He’d once been the king’s highest Magelord, a member of the exalted Magestroli, disgracefully dismissed on accusations of demutomancy—a dark form of magic decreed illegal by the king.”

Cadavros’s introduction in the Prologue sets up the specific subgenre of the fantasy genre to which Anathema belongs. “Dark and corrupt soul,” “chaotic sablefyre,” and “demutomancy […] decreed illegal” all serve to highlight the dangers surrounding magic in Aethyria. By opening the novel with a dark mage like Cadavros, Lake frames the novel as dark fantasy, in which magic is less whimsical and more explosive.

“Unwed girls without a father to protect their claim suffered one of two fates. They were either promptly forced into marriage. Or sent to serve the church as one of the Red Veils—clergy women ordered to worship obediently until death. Even if I’d wanted to be married, and I certainly didn’t, the whole parish looked upon me as a pariah, so the odds of a respectable suitor were slim.”

In Foxglove, women’s choices are limited, oppressing Maevyth by forcing her into one of two forms of submission. This passage explains why Maevyth’s independent mindset is problematic to her life in Foxglove, as she sees neither option as appealing nor even manageable. However, it is clear from her focus on marriage here that submitting to a man is preferable to submitting to the religious hierarchy, establishing the theme of The Price and Power of Social Exclusion.

“It would’ve been principle for Governor Grimsby. He once had two men, lovers, hunted down and humiliated, tying them naked to a post in the town square, before he’d banished them to the woods. Two insolent women escaping marriage, what he considered to be a holy union of souls, would enrage the man. It would inspire a holy crusade after the two of us.”

This passage highlights how both sexual and gender identities lead to discrimination and violence in Foxglove. Maevyth’s understanding of the governor is that he will punish people more to maintain social order than to truly adhere to religious values. The fact that the two lovers were “humiliated […] in the town square” shows that punishments for defying the status quo are used to enforce compliance among the villagers.