The Unwanted
by Jeffrey Ricker
Bold Strokes Book
978-1626390485
312 pages, paperback, $11.95
Jamie Thomas is your typical gay, American teenager: short, awkward, and tormented by bully Billy Stratton, he just wants to survive high school for another year and a half before escaping Athens, MO. Typical, that is, if typical means that your presumed long-dead mother turns out to be alive—and a member of a mythical tribe of immortal Greek warrior women. Abandoned by his mother as an infant on his father's doorstep, she returns sixteen years later to ask his help: a curse has been laid on her tribe, so that they bear only male children. Although immortal, Amazons can be killed, and if they fail to produce female children, they will eventually die out. According to a prophecy from their Oracle, the only hope for the Amazons lies in one of these abandoned male offspring—specifically, Jamie.
Such is the premise behind this fast-paced novel, full of plot twists and unexpected turns. Readers of Ricker's first novel, Detours, will already be aware of Ricker's penchant for blending genres, and the same holds true in The Unwanted, which incorporates elements of myth, fantasy, drama, and even romance. The mythical and the modern worlds are juxtaposed throughout, both in “man's world” where a pegasus and a cerebus make appearances and in the Amazon home city of Penthesiliopolis, where some of the Amazons wear jeans and have access to computers and modern security systems. Ricker's novel contains several narrative strands: the quest to save the cursed Amazons, the attempt of a rogue Amazon to build a female army and conquer “man's world,” and the developing relationship between Jamie and Billy, who, it turns out, is another of the Unwanted. He deftly weaves these separate stories together, which come together in a very classical way at the end.
By far the most daring subplot that Ricker develops throughout the larger narrative is the change in relationship between Jamie and Billy. Initially adversaries (the novel begins with Billy beating up Jamie at school), by the time the final battle arrives at Penthesiliopolis, they are lovers. Here Ricker has the greatest chance of a misstep, thereby threatening the reader's willing suspension of disbelief, but to his credit he presents their evolving relationship in a straightforward, believable manner.
The Unwanted is not a typical coming-of-age novel (see above RE: mythical mothers); neither is it a standard Greek myth. Several Greek deities appear, but the Greek preoccupation with one's predetermined destiny (especially avoiding it) is not apparent: when he discovers that his life is governed by an obscure prophecy, Jamie does not try to evade it, even when the goddess Athena tells him the price of fulfilling it is death (his? Billy's? The god Ares? His mother's? Or the entire tribe of Amazons?). Instead of being a meditation on the futility of trying to avoid one's fate, or the effects of hubris (another favorite classical theme), the novel explores such themes as fulfilling one's duty, being true to oneself, the cost of lies, and redemption.
That being said, readers familiar with the Greek myths will enjoy this re-imagining of them in our world, as will anyone who enjoys a well-crafted story.
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Keith Glaeske is a medievalist and collector of speculative fiction currently living in Washington, DC. His articles about medieval literature have been published in Medieval Perspectives, Traditio, and Ériu.