Hex: Darkland Tales

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También se han querido meter muchas situaciones a modo de ejemplo en alguno de los discursos de Iris que hacen que sientas que la historia no es más que una excusa y queda un poco forzado. There's not a storm on this earth didn't come from a woman - it's what happens when they dip our souls! And will those of us who live comfortably come to the support of those being thrown deeper and deeper into poverty?

And pregnancy and child-birth, once simply considered a natural function, became a job that women did for ‘ their husband-bosses’. This is the second in the (so far) very impressive Darkland Tales series from Polygon, for which modern Scottish authors offer retelling of the country’s history and legend. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. Why not give an amnesty to every Covenanter, Royalist, Jacobite or, indeed, Thomas Aikenhead, hanged for blasphemy which might well have been some silly undergraduate humour? This is a book that follows two witches across time, Geillis and Iris set in a prison sell below the floors of Edinburgh in 1591.

It works well and Iris is also said to be Geillis’ ‘ familiar’, a clever device she may well have used from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy from 1995-2000. In other words, Hex cannot be tasked with historical verisimilitude because it is meant to be set in a world of talking crows and astral projection and the ready insubstantiality of the postmodern aesthetic. The year is 1910 and she has been sent to a tenement building in Edinburgh by her recently deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée.

Fascism seemed a way out because of its simple appeals but, of course, it led to even greater authoritarianism. Maybe the windows are closed but it still seems unlikely that, in the summer heat, the stench of her body could be bottled up tight inside. She is visited and comforted by Iris, Spirit/Angel/Supernatural being who begins her lament on the treatment of women then and now. Like Rizzio, Hex takes a dark story from Scotland’s history and reshapes it for a modern readership. This book is based on a really interesting concept - of historic Scottish tales retold or readdressed - and a female focused story that I thought would grip me.Creating a fearful panic in society can aid the entrenchment of power and the witchcraft frenzy could also be used to settle old scores, enrich individuals at the expense of others and keep women subordinate to men. In really poor neighbourhoods, or in areas of prostitution, you’d think that some women’s murders appear acceptable, even, to some, and they are certainly far less questioned than others. Intelligent women threaten men, powerful women threaten them even more and the female ‘ body has been for women in capitalist society what the factory has been for male waged labour… the primary ground of their exploitation and resistance. As the hours pass and dawn approaches, Geillis recounts the circumstances of her arrest, brutal torture, confession and trial, while Iris offers support, solace - and the tantalising prospect of escape. Set on the eve of a young woman’s execution in 16th century Scotland, this is a look at how fear and hearsay were used as tools of oppression.