Racial Relations in the Axis Trilogy, or The Death of my Teenage Nostalgia

I love nostalgia as much as the next girl. It's one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place; there are so many good books from my teenage years that aren't getting enough exposure. But looking back at my old favourites, it's inevitable that I'd find flaws that I didn't see the first time round.

Most recently, I was trying to write a review for Enchanter, the second book in the Axis Trilogy, which delves heavily into the world's fictional races and their interactions. But on flicking through the book, I was confronted with troubling racial overtones that had completely flown over my head as a teenager. I couldn't continue until I'd explained what I'd found and why it was so disturbing. Consider this a form of catharsis so I can go back and finish my review.

*Please note that there will be SPOILERS below, so skip if you want to remain unspoiled for the Axis and Wayfarer trilogies*

To give some context, there are three major races in Tencendor; the Avar, whose mysterious origins are never revealed, and the Icarii and Acharites who share a common ancestor. Each are ethnically distinct with their own customs and culture. The Acharites are unequivocally the worst sinners regarding racial injustice, having attempted genocide and driven their neighbours out of Tencendor. However, the Icarii and Avar are not completely innocent either, with the Icarii in particular having some troubled views on inter-racial unions.

Icarii and Acharite pairings are not common but not outright forbidden. Rivkah and Stardrifter's marriage caused "more than a few raised eyebrows" but was accepted.It's difficult to say if mixed parentage is usually cause for shame among Icarri, as although characters like Azhure and Axis never have to deal with any stigma for it, they occupy such exalted positions in Icarri society that it's unlikely anyone would be brave enough to say it to their faces.

Fanart of an Icarii by Illirik

More illuminating is the Icarii belief that "in every case of mixed parentage, the Icarii blood has proven the stronger". While StarDrifter speaks approvingly of the "vitality" of human blood, Icarii also believe that it must lie in "subjection" to Icarii blood and that all mixed heritage children will have purely Icarii characteristics. This has unfortunate similarities to the one-drop rule that was once prominent in the US, wherein the degree of mixed ancestry determined a person's racial classification regardless of how they identified themselves or what community they partook in.

Even worse is StarDrifter's casual admission that "in ages past Icarii birdmen simply took the babies of Human-Icarii unions and never spared a thought for the women they bedded". If you know anything about Australian history, this has extremely uncomfortable parallels with the Stolen Generations, wherein half-caste Aboriginal children were stolen from their mothers and raised 'white'. This wasn't a pleasant realisation for me; suddenly Azhure's anxiety about Caelum being taken from her was less an attempt to inject unnecessary drama and more a horrifically real-world fear.

However, I will admit that the narrative does not support this particular reading. Even Axis, who is a thoroughly unlikable person, condemns the practice of stealing children, and you know if even Axis is against it, it must be vile. The Icarii belief in dominant blood is played straight during the Axis trilogy, but is arguably subverted in the Wayfarer Redemption, where tapping into their Acharite heritage is the key to salvation.

What is truly impossible to overlook is how the narrative treats Gorgrael and Avar-Icarii unions.

Ironically, although the Avar are close allies to the Icarii (much closer than the Acharites) unions between them are completely taboo. There are no marriages and sexual encounters are only permitted on a specific religious holiday "when both people relaxed sufficiently to carry interracial relations to extremes never practised throughout the rest of the year". The one positive Avar-Icarii union we ever see is between Shra and Isfrael, whom Zenith muses had changed so much "it was as if his Sunsoar link was gone".

Children of these unions are explicitly prohibited, under the belief that they would be "abomination". Gorgrael's mother actually left her people because she "would not have been allowed" to carry her child to term. And the narrative supports this view because sure enough when Gorgrael is... born (don't ask, just don't) the naysayers are proven completely correct. He's hideous and irredeemably evil.

Fanart of Gorgrael from MissWiggle 

To make this even more explicit, an Avar man called Brode has an epiphany that Gorgrael's evil is due to his Avar heritage. Not because he was raised by monsters in the wilderness, or he wanted revenge for his rejection, or he was brainwashed by Wolfstar, the one supportive humanoid presence in his life. None of these valid and justifiable reasons. Gorgrael was evil because the Avar are inherently violent. Here is the passage:

"The Avar were people of innate violence...His Icarii blood may have given him the means to access the power to achieve his ends, but it was his Avar blood that had created the need to destroy in the first place."

The implication being that the only reason that the Avar aren't a race of sadistic, blood-thirsty murderers is because they don't have the means to do so. Apparently if they could get their hands on real power like the Icarii, they'd be the same monsters that the Acharites always accused them of being. This is pretty awful in and of itself, but if you take into consideration the other characteristics of the Avar like their connection to nature and ambiguously brown appearance (being described as "dark" or having "smooth olive skin" in contrast to the Icarii's "fine pale skin") it gets exponentially worse. It's very easy to read them as an expy of real Indigenous people, which makes these implications all the more disturbing.

I certainly don't believe this was intentional on Sara Douglass' part. If she were still around today, she'd probably be horrified and insulted if I implied as much. However, the text leaves itself open to a very uncomfortable interpretation, which I'd have liked to see subverted the same way the Icarii superiority was in the Wayfarer Redemption. If nothing else, I suppose it's a lesson on how carefully you have to watch what you're writing and what could be taken away from it.

Hopefully now that I've gotten this written down, I can go back and finish that review for Enchanter without these uncomfortable ideas hanging over my head. And maybe put some flowers on the tombstone of my teenage nostalgia because that's not going to be coming back any time soon.