A Treason of Thorns has beautiful writing and an excitingly original concept. Sadly, the quality of the pace and the characters doesn’t match the quality of the concept, and the book raises questions that are not fully answered. This has a romance in it, although it’s more of a fantasy that includes a romance than a romance novel, per se. The dominant relationship is not that between people but rather that between a person and a house, and that relationship is a codependent one. TW for abuse.

I’ll let the publisher’s blurb explain the plot:

Violet Sterling has spent the last seven years in exile, longing to return to Burleigh House. One of the six great houses of England, Burleigh’s magic always kept the countryside well. And as a child, this magic kept Violet happy, draping her in flowers while she slept, fashioning secret hiding places for her, and lighting fires on the coldest nights to keep her warm.

Everything shattered, though, when her father committed high treason trying to free Burleigh from the king’s oppressive control. He was killed, and Vi was forced into hiding.

When she’s given a chance to go back, she discovers Burleigh has run wild with grief. Vines and briars are crumbling the walls. Magic that once enriched the surrounding countryside has turned dark and deadly, twisting lush blooms into thorns, poisoning livestock and destroying crops. Burleigh’s very soul is crying out in pain.

Vi would do anything to help, and soon she finds herself walking the same deadly path as her father all those years before. Vi must decide how far she’s willing to go to save her house—before her house destroys everything she’s ever known.

Vi’s father was Burleigh’s caretaker, and Vi (the narrator) is also bound to care for the house. A caretaker with a key can siphon off House magic for the benefit of the House and the countryside without incurring harm. A caretaker without a key can only siphon off the magic at great cost to themselves. If the magic isn’t regularly siphoned off, a House gets sick and “fails.”

After the father’s death, Vi becomes Burleigh’s caretaker, but the king refuses to give her the key that would allow her to work safely. She is under added pressure because the king is prepared to destroy Burleigh entirely if she cannot restore it to health. A House can be burned to the ground, or it can fail – which is what happens if it can’t release enough of its magic through a caretaker at regular intervals. When the House fails, the countryside around it is devastated. Vi wants to find a third option and free the house from its bond to the kingdom.

From the time she was born, her father taught her that “A good caretaker puts her House before king. Before country. Before family. Before her own life.”

Vi grows up with Wyn, a child whom her father brings home to be a friend for her (more on that later). When they are children, Wyn asks:

“And what about a good House?” he asks after a long silence. I frown as he plucks and ivy leaf and tears it to shreds. “ What does a good House do? Shouldn’t you get something in return?”

I run a finger across the ivy, soothing the place where Wyn marred it, and the leaves turn to my touch like flowers toward sun. “I don’t expect anything. A good House puts itself first, because the well-being of the countryside is bound up in the health of its house. And so a good House chooses its Caretaker wisely, and doesn’t spare them when trouble comes.”

This conversation, held in the first few pages of the book, forms the crux of the conflict. How far should Vi go to protect her House? Taught to choose the House over all others, will she go through with sacrificing friends and family when forced to make the choice?

In prosaic terms, this is a horrifying haunted house story about how people are groomed for abusive relationships and how the cycle of abuse is carried through generations. Burleigh is bound against its will to serve the kingdom, and is very painfully poisoned by pent up magic unless a caretaker siphons it off. Burleigh is forced to sacrifice itself for the kingdom. Vi is groomed from infancy to sacrifice herself to Burleigh, which expresses its feelings of rage, pain, and pent up magic by hurting her and others. Meanwhile, Wyn, a child who was brought home by Vi’s father to serve as her one child friend, is groomed from childhood to sacrifice himself for Vi.

Scenes of magical, psychological, and physical violence from Burleigh towards Vi and Wyn are mentally and physically and magically graphic. Major TW for abuse especially if, like me, you are prone to reading magical events as metaphors for more mundane events. I struggled with how to interpret these relationships. Is Burleigh helpless and is Vi a heroine for trying to help it? How much of Burleigh’s actions are involuntary, and does it matter? Does Vi owe Burleigh help because Burleigh is oppressed, even if it means Vi’s own death at Burleigh’s metaphorical hands?

As troubling as this concept is, I loved it for its originality. The idea of the Great Houses and their history was interesting and carried the concept of genius loci (roughly, the idea that a place has its own spirit) to new levels. Everyone in the countryside views Burleigh with both veneration and fear, because if the House falls, the countryside falls. I also loved the imagery, which is stunning. A nice touch is that Vi’s foster parents are Sephardic Jews, which I mention because the default in this type of fantasy tends to Christian and the inclusion adds addtional texture to the book.

Alas it pains me to say that the characters are not created with the same richness as the world. Vi is perfect and super special and all of the other characters revolve around her to a degree that seems both excessive and cliche. Wyn exists to suffer and to be a love interest which makes Vi’s choices regarding Burleigh more difficult. Does Wyn have any interests of his own? Is it not extremely strange that since he was a young child he has eschewed his bed to sleep in Vi’s cupboard? Does Vi have any other interests at all? Why is everyone obsessed with her? It’s frustrating to see such flat characters in a book with such a rich concept.

The other problem is pacing. In order to free Burleigh, Vi has to find the heartstone. So she looks, and other people look, and they explain to each other that they can’t find it, and Vi sits around and waits while everyone looks some more. Once Vi decides to find the stone the plot just stops and it’s all flashbacks (admittedly, very creepy flashbacks) and agonizing over decisions and relationships.

This book raises a lot of questions. Is Burleigh like an abused person who lashes out at others because of the abuse they endured themselves? Or is Burleigh more like an injured animal that can’t fully control its actions? Should Vi choose the house or Wyn or herself or a combination? I feel like the question of whether Vi should choose Burleigh’s well-being over her own is not fully answered, and that worries me. This book specifically calls out how messed up Vi’s relationship to the House is, yet it still equates suffering with love (Vi and her father suffer for Burleigh, Wyn suffers for Vi). That’s a terrible message to give people even if the degree of the dysfunction is called out.

One can also look at this as a story about how a person with privilege (Vi, in this case) should assist those who are marginalized and exploited (Burleigh). However, for me, the childhood grooming undercut this idea. Perhaps it just hit my personal triggers too hard, but I couldn’t see Vi as a liberator or an ally, only as a victim of emotional and physical abuse who was manipulated from birth to accept the abuse. Even as a story of allyship it’s troubling, because the House has no autonomy and relies completely on Vi to save it.

I want to give this book a high grade because of the imagery and the concept, and I want to give it a low grade for the Mary Sue-ness and the slow plot and my frustration with the theme of self-sacrifice. I averaged it out to a C. Some of you will adore this book, some will find it inspiring, some will find it toxic. It all depends on how you read the relationship between Burleigh and Vi. One things for sure, though – the concept is original and that’s always a cool thing to see.