Character from Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
Noble girl sent to the Otataral mines by her own sister, broken by suffering into Sha'ik Reborn — the Paran family's deepest wound and the series' harshest study of what cruelty manufactures.
Felisin is the character the reader wants to save and cannot. Tavore sent her to the Otataral mines — whether as sacrifice, strategy, or something else — and the mines did what mines do: they ground her down. She survived through prostitution, drugs, and a hatred of her sister that became the only warm thing left inside her. When she became Sha'ik Reborn, the holy leader of the Seven Cities rebellion, it was not liberation but a different cage. She is Erikson's most unflinching examination of how suffering does not ennoble — it destroys, and what grows from the wreckage is rarely what the sufferer deserved.
Once beautiful in the pampered way of Malazan nobility. The mines stripped that away — left her gaunt, scarred, prematurely aged, with eyes that hold nothing but resentment and the particular hardness of someone who survived by selling pieces of herself.
Also known as: Felisin, Felisin Paran, Sha'ik Reborn, Sha'ik