Medieval Fantasy in Popular Culture

Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon is the first novel of an anticipated trilogy. And, in a drastic change from every other fantasy series, his world features a colored majority, so much so that there are literally no white characters , a drastic departure from the hyper-white normative of the genre. Despite his clear descriptions of skin tone and very Middle Eastern setting, for whatever reason, readers, and even fans, still seem to think the characters are white. How do we know this? Take a look at the second image that pops up when you google the book's title. The artwork is clearly intended to be the main three characters of the book: Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, an aged ghoul hunter, Raseed bas Raseed, the Doctor's assistant, and Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, a "tribeswoman" who can take a holy form known as the Lionshape. This was likely produced by a fan, as it is not cover art, and we can make the assumption that people do not usually create such de...

Because the lion-shape is typically a gift only bestowed upon men, Zamia is unique and has undoubtedly faced many unknowns in her short life. However, it seems strange that Zamia was concerned about her inability to take the shape after being healed by Dawoud (see pg.131) when she later calmly explains to Adoulla that she can’t take the shape during menstruation (see pg. 278). Why would she be concerned in the first place if she knew she was on her period? And furthermore as discussed in class, it would appear Zamia had a very short period (about 3 days). Inspired by today's class discussion on Zamia's menstruation and how it relates to her ability to take the lion-shape I have decided to put my biology training to good use and come up with a hypothesis about why Zamia couldn't take the shape after Mouw Awa's attack. Please note that while this is based on human physiology principles it is simply a fictional explanation of a fictional physiological problem. First, as...