asianamlitfans | A Review of Tosca Lee’s Firstborn (Howard Books, 2017).

A Review of Tosca Lee’s Firstborn (Howard Books, 2017).

By Stephen Hong Sohn

So, this installment looks to be the conclusion to Tosca Lee’s series that began with The Progeny, which focused on the descendants of the Countess of Bathory, who is purportedly known to be one of the most prolific serial killers in all recorded history, but Lee is always up for re-imagining big time villains. She’s already done this kind of work in Iscariot and Demon: A Memoir; here, we’re treated to her re-envisioning of Bathory through her oppressed descendants, who are being tracked down and killed by Hunters. On the one side, you have Bathory’s progeny, like our narrator, Audra Ellison. On the other, you have Bathory’s sworn enemies, who are called the Scion. Led by the mysterious figure only known as the Historian, these families are an alternative genealogy that employ Hunters to wipe out the progeny one by one.

Of course, Audra is so-totally not up for being killed, which is why this novel even exists. The end of the first novel ended on a huge cliffhanger, which I will not spoil for you. In any case, this particular novel obviously begins with where the last one left, without actually resolving that cliffhanger. The bigger problem is that Audra’s husband, Luka, has been kidnapped, and Audra must find a way to get to him before he is killed. Fortunately, Audra’s quite powerful and because she is a direct descendant of Bathory, she is marked as the firstborn, someone with extraordinary capabilities that specifically manifest by her ability to persuade people to believe anything that she wants. With help from other progeny, like Jester, the technical expert; Claudia, an older friend; and Piotrek, who is Claudia’s sibling-protector, they are able to rescue Luka and focus on the larger task at hand: to take down the Historian and all the Scions, the associated Hunters, and the entire system that’s been created to kill off Bathory’s descendants. Yes, my friends, there’s a lot for Audra to do.

Lee’s well up to the task of generating the right kind of momentum for this plot-reliant novel. Occasionally, we’re having to mediate the romantic subplot between Luka and Audra, which carries much of the emotional weight of the novel, but I tended to find these sections obstructive and found myself impatient to find out how Audra was going to manage to take down the Historian with so many obstacles ahead of her. The balance between the personal dynamics and the Big Bad seems to be general dilemma of the paranormal romance writer, and I’ll never be the reader that will be easily swayed by the necessity of the romantic element as part of the formula. In any case, I certainly enjoyed reading this novel, but I did wonder about its political dynamic especially in comparison to Lee’s other works. Here, part of Lee’s point, as it seemed to be in Sheba: Rise of Queen, is to show how misogynistic discourses might have played an influence in how we construct myths behind supposedly evil women. This perspective is not to say that Lee is somehow recovering the Countess as some hero, but her fiction always blooms in the space of what is unsaid and offers us imaginative glimpses into these historical lacuna.

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Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu