The Crooked Letter
I’ve read this as part of my great Read Everything I Own but Haven’t Read Yet pledge, which I’m hoping to make serious inroads into this year. We’ll see…
I got this a number of years ago as part of a show bag at a Swancon. I had read some Williams before, but not much. Since then I have read large chunks of his SF, but – until now – none of his fantasy except for the Troubletwisters books with Garth Nix. (It’s actually been a while since I read much fantasy at all, which is curious to realise.)
Slight spoilers!
Williams clearly has a thing for twins. In this, the twins are mirrors of one another, down to one of them having his heart on the righthand side of his chest. Their names are Seth and Hadrian – and I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed with the name choice, given that both lend themselves to some nice tricksy name-association, just not with each other. Moving on… Seth and Hadrian are on holidays in Europe. They end up travelling with a girl, Ellis, and then everything gets weird when one of them is stabbed. That’s not the weird part, though – the weird part is the non-stabbed one waking up and realising that the world is very, very different from when he last had his eyes open. And then things just get worse. For both of the twins.
There are some really nice elements to this story. Overall I thought the twins’ relationship was a well-developed one, nearly perfectly balanced between love and… not hatred, but perhaps despair at being tied to this same person in so many ways for so long. Occasionally I got a bit bored by the whinging, but perhaps that’s teenagers for you. The cherry-picking of mythology and characters from all over the world was a nice touch – it certainly avoided being eurocentric, which is always nice to see, and plays into a bit of a Jungian idea of the great subconscious with these commons themes that can (maybe) be seen. And I especially loved that Hadrian’s adventures mostly took place in a city – THE city, the great underlying city, what every city dreams of being. While I do love me some epic horse-riding and camping out, grand fantasy played out on city streets also has a lot of appeal.*
There are, though, some aspects that grated. Hadrian’s absolute insistence on finding Ellis – and that people are willing to help – strained credibility: HELLO, everyone ELSE appears to be dead, so how exactly are you planning on finding one probably-dead girl in the great uber-city? I was hoping right from the start that Ellis was going to turn out to be more than just a girl, and that all of the non-humans knew it, since that would excuse it to some extent. The first was correct but not the second, so my annoyance with that plot element still exists. Sometimes the mashing of multiple mythologies did not gel for me, and the explanation of the Three Realms really didn’t work for me. I can’t explain why; I don’t think it’s my faith getting in the way, since it rarely does with this sort of fantasy (that is, the sort that’s clearly playing with pagan ideas, rather than Crystal Dragon Jesus types).
I did finish it, which means I did enjoy it even if I didn’t adore it. I own the second Books of the Cataclysm, The Blood Debt. While it’s not next on my list, I will definitely be reading it at some point… and from there I’ll see whether I get around to the other trilogy that this is actually a prequel to, the Books of the Change.
You can get The Crooked Letter from Fishpond.
*Hmm. Do I need to read Lord of the Rings again sometime? I’m getting an itch…
Midnight and Moonshine
This book. Oh, this book.
It took me a few months to read this collection, this mosaic novel. This is no reflection on the quality of the book. Well, actually it is, but not the way you might think. See, I’d read a story, and then I’d be forced to close the book, sigh, and stare into space in order to wallow in the beauty of the prose. And then I’d have to go read something else, because (like with me and Gwyneth Jones’ Bold as Love series) sometimes too much beauty is painful and you need a break.
First off, look at that cover. Is she not glorious? are the colours not soothing and enticing? Created by the awesome Kathleen Jennings (who chronicles the saga of its production on her blog), I would absolutely have this on my wall. LOVE.
Angela Slatter and Lisa L Hannett created the contents. Writers who collaborate are even more of a mystery to me than authors who work alone, and to produce this sort of magic has to be just that – occult somehow. And they haven’t been content to just a straightforward story. Instead, as suggested above, this could be seen as a collection or a mosaic novel. A collection because it is made up of short stories that can basically stand by themselves. You could take one and put it in an anthology and it would still work ok. However – and here’s a metaphor I’m very pleased with – that’s like taking a candle out of a chandelier. Yes, it still sheds light. But when you put it with its fellow candles and they’re ringed with crystal, the whole effect is so much more just a few candles in one place. These thirteen stories, read together and in sequence (and wrapped in that art), are far more than the sum of their parts. Together, they create a history of an entire people: their origins, their interactions with humanity, their crises and triumphs, and the ongoing impact of a few families and their heirlooms. Thus, a mosaic novel – there is continuity, but it’s thematic and genetic; there’s only one character appears in or influences lots of the stories. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Edward Rutherford (London, Sarum) and James A Michener (The Source) following multiple generations in one place in order to fictively illustrate local history. Slatter and Hannett do just that… with magic. And Norse gods. Same amount of revenge though.
The premise, as set out in “Seeds,” is of Odin’s raven Munin (memory, here called Mymnir) surviving Ragnarok and setting out for Vinland (thought to be somewhere on the north-eastern corner of North America) with a few followers. Once she gets there, she creates an enclave and peoples it with servants, and sets out to rule it I guess like she learned from the Aesir she’s observed for however many centuries. Of course this does not go entirely well either for her or for her people. There’s love and betrayal, selflessness and vindictiveness; people get beaten up, rescued, married off, wooed… and some people even manage to make their own destinies. My estimate is that the stories take place over roughly a millennium, but that’s based entirely on the fact that that’s about how long ago it’s posited that Vikings did historically head off for Vinland and settle for a short span. The early stories take place in a sort of timeless, medieval-ish zone; from memory there are no dates in the first seven stories, and it feels like that sort of myth/fantasy where time itself is important but recording it is less so. Then, with “Midnight,” suddenly the external world exists and thrusts itself onto this dreamy place. From then on, time is relentless, and within 5 or 6 stories it’s the modern world. This development works mostly because although the stories do stand alone, there is continuity within families. Sometimes the names give them away, sometimes it’s an heirloom appearing, occasionally a reference to a past event. This often means that rather than having to struggle for a new emotional connection every time, the reader can build on the investment already made in the character’s family, from an earlier story. It’s the same reason Rutherford and Michener’s works can be successful.
And on top of all of this, the sheer beauty of the prose. I do not have the words to explain how delightful the words in this book are. It just all works.
Did I mention it’s an Australian production? Produced by Ticonderoga, in Perth.
You can get Midnight and Moonshine over at Fishpond. (Although it does ship from a US supplier.)
The Dream Archipelago
This collection of stories is characterised by non-completion. By ellipses, gaps, loss of memory, tantalising hints of more, general incompleteness. In the stories themselves, in the people, in the world.
This turned out not to be the book I thought I was reading. Having adored The Islanders, I thought I was getting an earlier novel set in the same place. Uh, no. This is a set of short stories (including a couple of novellas): some set in the Dream Archipelago, some just referencing it. So I was quite discontent when I read the first ‘chapter’ – The Equatorial Moment – and accepted it as setting the premise for the book… and then realised that The Negation was quite separate, although with strong links. Don’t worry; I got over my disappointment.
“The Equatorial Moment” is not a story. It’s a vignette, explaining the very odd thing about this world: that there is a time vortex, which means it’s the same time everywhere on the world at the same time. It also means that flying somewhere is a rather difficult business. It also sets up that this world is experiencing a war, which – far more than issues to do with time – informs the entirety of this collection. “The Trace of Him” is also a vignette, of a lover and a funeral, that doesn’t really seem to fit the rest of the collection. It’s set in the Dream Archipelago, but that’s all.
Some of these stories are directly about the war, and its impact on soldiers and civilians. “The Negation” is framed around a draftee and his experiences, but also around an author whose art might be subverted by the war. (Its connection to the Dream Archipelago is tenuous – the novel that the soldier loves is set there.) This story was the first taste of incompleteness that flavours the rest, as Priest suggests and hints but does not fulfil. It’s marvellous. “Whores,” too, examines soldiers and civilians, through a different lens. This time the soldier has been granted leave due to sickness which manifests as synaesthesia; the civilians are women who have become whores because of the exigencies of war. This aspect, that the women are not simply whores but that they became such for real, usually economic reasons, and that they might also have other concerns, was a delight. Too often whores (and slaves) just exist in the same way that horses or dogs do, with no reference to what came before. So that worked. And there’s a tantalising question over whether the soldier in these two stories is the same man or not. The last story in the collection, “The Discharge,” also brings together art and war and ellipses. It’s the fullest exploration of the war that’s been affecting this world for a ridiculous amount of time, and makes it clear that ridiculous is exactly what it is. But then the narrator ends up in the Dream Archipelago, and starts exploring art… a type of art that has a genuinely visceral impact on its viewer by messing with the hypothalamus. And the story takes on a whole other layer and attacks a whole other idea. It’s maddening and glorious and a bit creepy.
You know that thing where you’re reading along, and you’ve been assuming something about the race, gender, location or attitude of a character and then something happens and you have to go back and read everything again to see whether you were stupid and made a mistake, or whether the author has been deliberately messing with you? That was “The Miraculous Cairn” for me. And I’m pretty sure the answer is the latter. It’s set half on the mainland and half on an island; half in the present and half in the past; and it’s a horror story. One of those slow, creeping horror stories that might not be a horror story but probably is. Gave me the shivers, anyway, and is the exemplar of non-completion. It has nothing to do with the war. Neither does “The Cremation,” which is set more fully in the Archipelago and whose horror aspects stem directly from that fear of not knowing the local traditions and attitudes and behaviours. It works all too well. Also largely separate from the war is “The Watched,” whose horrific nature really only comes through in the last few pages. Before that, it definitely has its creepy elements but they’re not the focus (although on reflection perhaps that ought to have made it more creepy…). The tantalising gaps in this story are the sort of thing that in another author’s hands would just indicate a lack of imagination, or pages where they’ve simply deleted “MUST ADD MORE INFO HERE”. Instead, the reader is left just as much in the dark as Ordier about the society of the Qataari, his object of frustrated fascination. What makes the novella really work is that this fascination, while at the heart of the story, is not its sole preoccupation. Ordier – living in the Dream Archipelago but not a native, having left the mainland and his war-related work – lives a relatively ordinary life with a girlfriend whose job is demanding and disappointing, and we get many pages of relatively ordinary life along with Ordier’s growing obsession. This adds to the creepiness but it’s not just there as filler; actually I would have been happy reading about Ordier and Jenessa and their experiences, they’re so intriguing. Which is why it works as a novella.
Are they SF? Is this fantasy? No. The collection is set on a different world, yes; but there’s no exceptional technology – it would be easy to read much of it as set in a generic olde worlde rural setting until you get references to planes, grenade launchers and microwaves. There’s also no magic; the time vortex just exists, and except for stuffing around with air travel doesn’t actually impact on life. The people are human, with nothing special about them. This is just… a world. But I would still argue that it counts as speculative fiction, because I am contrary like that.
This is not the sort of collection I can imagine reading again. The stories are demanding, they’re frustrating, and I think they may only work once. But that once was pretty glorious.
Galactic Suburbia 92
In which we get the band back together again, just before we go on our summer holidays!
Culture Consumed:
Alisa: Doctor Who; The Fall; Orange is the New Black, Black Mirror Season 1
Tansy: Adventures in Space and Time; Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, Apex Issue 55
Alex: Snuff, Terry Pratchett; Thor: the Dark World; Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Pet subject: The Year in Review
Alisa: PhD, Conflux, Nancy Kress’ After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Twelfth Planet Press (Trucksong, A Trifle Dead, Twelve Planets, Shirley Jackson/WFA), made a SF fan
Tansy: Hawkeye; The Almighty Johnsons; A Song of Ice & Fire; reading with Raeli (Edward Eager & Diana Wynne Jones); Doctor Who
Alex: Saga; Doctor Who; Naomi Novik’s Temeraire; re-reading; Lizzie Bennet Diaries.
This is our last episode of the year, because we’re going on a summer hiatus… but we will back in 2014!
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Snuff
Way back when I was doing my undergrad degree, I did a subject called Popular Fiction. I was excited to be reading popular fiction and calling it work for uni! I was less excited when I got to the first tutorial to discover that, of about 20 of us, I think only 2 or 3 admitted to actually reading popular fiction regularly… everyone else said they were doing the subject “to know what other people read” (I paraphrase).* This made me a bit bullheaded. So did the lecturer insisting on differentiating between the reading/appreciating of literature, versus the consumption of popular fiction. This one still makes me angry, although I do wonder now how much the younger me missed nuances here; the lecturer was definitely cluey enough to understand Austen and Shakespeare as originating in the popular sphere. So perhaps I overreacted and/or misunderstood some aspect.
Anyway, over time I have come to terms with the fact that yes, actually, I am a consumer of popular culture, and that is OK. It does not make that culture bad, it does not mean that I am no appreciating it properly, etc etc. Basically I have grown up, and grown into my skin. So I am quite happy to say that hell yes I consume Terry Pratchett books. I devour them: I read them quickly, in concentrated blocks of time; they don’t require me to stop and worry over words or sentences that don’t make sense. That said, I tend to treat Literature (when I have to read it) in much the same way. At the very same time, though, as Anita Sarkeesian rightly insists, just because you enjoy a product of popular culture doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be critically analysed (again, I paraphrase).
This is the long way round to saying “I read Snuff! It was awesome!”
… and dealt with some big issues in clever ways, as you would expect. (There are some spoilers below.)
Pratchett has dealt with racism, via speciesism, before: human reactions to werewolves, vampires, dwarves, trolls, zombies, etc etc – these have all been coded as racial. And, from memory, generally done well (I could be wrong there; it’s been a while). In Snuff Pratchett makes this the central issue, because the main problem revolves around goblins and whether they ought to be treated as sentient, sapient, creatures. For a long time they have been regarded as vermin, and many people have treated them in ways matching that perception. But now Sam Vimes and family are off for a Holiday, and there are Hints that all is not well in the bucolic surrounds he finds himself in. Not least the difficulty of understanding crockett, and having to confront horses.
I’ve had to think carefully about the way Pratchett portrays the goblins. One of the crescendo moments is a goblin, Tears of the Mushroom, playing the harp for a huge crowd in Ankh-Morpok. That is, a member of a subjected race, wearing ‘civilised’ clothes, goes to the heart of civilisation and plays an instrument that is coded as approaching the zenith of musical accomplishment, and there impresses the (civilised) bigwigs. This could all be seen as uncomfortably close to recreating the classic idea of the western civilising mission.
… Except. Except that the goblins have already been shown, very clearly, to have their own culture and don’t need ‘civilising’. They have a rich language, evidenced clearly by their names (Tears of the Mushroom!); they make art (some of which is so precious that humans who regard the goblins as little better than animals will steal it); they care for one another and about justice. They are wretches in that they are wretched – through no fault of their own. And Tears of the Mushroom plays her own composition, and is in no way dismayed by the audience before her. By the time Tears of the Mushroom plays, the reader should be so convinced about the sentience and sapience of the goblins that any of the characters doubting it should cause serious eye-rolling. Many of the human characters are also convinced early on, which is also intended to convince the audience, just in case you missed all of the other very obvious signs.
Thus what Pratchett is doing is showing, to some extent, an example of the old westernising/civilising mission – there’s no doubt that’s what Miss Beadle is doing, whatever her intentions – and then… not entirely sending it up, but certainly undermining it, and definitely showing that is is quite unnecessary for the sake of the goblins themselves. Although maybe it’s necessary for the acknowledged-as-civilised, to make them realise what they are doing to this race.
There are other issues under examination here too. The place of landed gentry and inherited titles (written after all by Sir Pratchett), with a lovely sneaky homage to Jane Austen; and how a copper manages to love both his work and his family. Pratchett has delved into Sam Vimes’ head a few times in the recent books and I think his ideas about policing etc are utterly intriguing. I especially loved here the abstracted notion of the Street as something that stays with people like Vimes, and helps him to be who he is.
I love the Discworld. I think the books are, as a whole, getting better. I wish I thought there were many more to come.
*I was also less excited about having a Jackie Collins novel on the booklist. In three years of English at uni, this is one of the few books I just did not read.**
** One of the others was Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle.***
*** I also didn’t finish James Joyce’s Ulysses. Peh; bad taste in the mouth.
Tooth and Claw
Tooth and Claw is, by its own admission, a modern attempt at writing a Victorian novel. As it opens, the patriarch is dying, and the family have gathered. Soon enough there is a squabble over the inheritance: there’s not much wealth left, and the eldest two children are already established, so the younger three are meant to get the lion’s share to help them out. But the brother-in-law decides he disagrees with the interpretation of the will, and takes more than what the younger son, in particular, thinks is fair. He then begins court proceedings to deal with it. (The blurb on my copy calls this a search for “greedy remuneration,” but I thoroughly disagree with this interpretation.)
The family is gently-born, but with little wealth and a fairly small estate this isn’t overly much use. The younger son is struggling to make his way in the corporate world, and could use all the help he can get. His older brother is established as a parson in a good living, with a fairly generous benefactress, a wife, and some children; the older sister is married, with children and expecting more. The situation is of course most desperate for the two younger sisters. Without significant dowries, attracting suitable (and nice) husbands is going to be more difficult than pleasant… and it’s made more difficult for the older one when an unwanted suitor very nearly ruins her completely.
The story revolves mostly around the three younger siblings, although the older brother gets an occasional look-in. The sisters are parcelled off to their older siblings with hopes of finding suitors or at least not being too much in the way; the younger son goes back to his city life, and the things he’d rather his family not talk about.
… all right, all right. Those in the know are amused and eye-roll-y by this stage, everyone else is confused.
Everything I’ve written so far is true. But all of the characters? They’re dragons.
Yes. Dragons. Scales, claws, eating raw meat, flying, concerned about polishing their scales, sleeping on gold, breathing fire if they’re lucky, dragons. And it works. Walton takes some of the ideas of the Victorian novel and makes them real; her take on the blushing bride is brilliant. Her vision of menial dragons is perhaps the most shocking aspect – that their wings are tied down, such that they can never fly. This is a wonderful visual of the reality of life for many ‘in service’.
Also, dragons eat each other.
This is a great, fun story. It’s light-hearted overall with a serious social message (a few, really; perhaps closer to Gaskell than Austen?). The characters are approachable, the plot plays out nicely – it’s a delight to read.
Galactic Suburbia 91
In which Alisa has a baby, and Alex & Tansy put a bow on it. Not the baby. The podcast!
Birth Announcement: Welcome to Mackenzie Charlotte & all our love and best wishes to the recovering and delighted new parents, Alisa and Chris.
World Fantasy Awards
British Fantasy Awards
Culture Consumed:
Alex: Feminist Frequency’s Tropes vs Women in Video Games; Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie; Menial: Skilled Labor in SF, Kelly Jennings and Shay Darrach
Tansy: Nanowrimo! Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell; Horrible Histories; Wife in Space by Neil Perryman, The Time Machine (Destiny of the Doctor), 1963: Fanfare of the Common Men, The Space Race, The Assassination Games; Night of the Doctor
INK BLACK MAGIC BY TANSY RAYNER ROBERTS available now from Fablecroft, Amazon & bookshops who order it in.
GOODREADS GIVEAWAY FOR INK BLACK MAGIC
Doctor Who Women on the Radio including Tansy
Pet subject: SFF for children (they cross genres more easily than adults, basically)
Alex: Victor Kelleher (especially Taronga); Playing Beatie Bow, Ruth Park; Riddle of the Trumpalar, Judy Bernard-Waite; The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Tansy: Diana Wynne Jones; Robyn Klein (Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left); Which Witch, Eva Ibbotson; Margaret Mahy, Aliens in the Family and all her books about pirates; Ruth Chew; Five Children and It, E. Nesbit; Edward Eagar (Half Magic and Seven Day Magic – stories for kids who love to read and know how to manage a magical adventure!); comics like Gunnerkrigg Court, Zita the Space Girl, Betty & Veronica spin-offs. The Case of the Origami Yoda bridging fantasy and reality!
Also Possum Magic, Magic Pudding, and other Australian picture-book classics! From England, Charlie and Lola by Lauren Child and various books such as Fairy Shopping by Sally Gardner are appreciated for their gorgeous collage art as much as the stories.
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Galactic Suburbia 90!
Listen to us via iTunes or over at Galactic Suburbia!
In which we present The Subgenre Report. Is the concept of subgenres meaningful to readers and writers, or just a marketing trick?
Which subgenres are OMG so hot right now, and which genre is doing subgenres better than spec fic?
In other news, Alisa hurls herself into crowdfunding with the baby clock ticking down to midnight…
Grimdark as a Young Man’s Genre? (do read the comments, seriously, that’s where all the crunchy discussion/challenge is)
The Rise and Fall of Grimpink
Culture Consumed:
Alisa: Continuum S1, crimeScene convention, plug for Kaleidoscope, Coode St Podcast ep 162 with Rachel Swirsky; Report from Planet Midnight, Nalo Hopkinson
Tansy: BBC Radio Neverwhere; Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, The Almighty Johnsons
Alex: Agents of SHIELD; Star Wars: The Paradise Snare, AC Crispin; Ragnarok, AS Byatt
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Galactic Suburbia 89
In which we recommend books to buy as presents, books we love, books we made, and basically BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS. You can get us from iTunes or at Galactic Suburbia.
Alisa’s picks: 2012; Trucksong; A Trifle Dead; Rosaleen Love’s Twelve Planets collection; the entire Twelve Planets suite (get them while they look the same! especially Love & Romanpunk)
Alex’s picks: Temeraire by Naomi Novik; Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman; Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal; Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin; House of Suns by Alistair Reynolds
Tansy’s picks: Glitter and Mayhem; Chicks Unravel Time; The Wife in Space; The Worst Witch books by Jill Murphy; Creature Court trilogy (Power and Majesty)
Culture Consumed:
Alex: Reap the Wild Wind, Julie Czerneda; Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
Tansy: Flying Higher eds by Michael Damian Thomas & Shira Lipkin [download free from Smashwords], Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time 1-4, Supurbia by Grace Randolph, Elizabeth Sladen the Autobiography, The She-Hulk Diaries by Marta Acosta
Alisa: Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal
BLATANT PLUG: Songs For Europe, two short plays about Eurovision & war by John Richards of Splendid Chaps & Lee Zachariah of the Bazura Project on this week only as part of the Melbourne Fringe.
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Alanna 4: Lioness Rampant
SPOILERS
Once again, let’s talk about that cover. It’s way too dark, for a start. Alanna is still not in armour, even though she becomes the king’s champion. The horse is still the wrong colour. The red glow makes sense, I guess, but… yeh. This really doesn’t work for me. The title basically works; it’s better than In the Hand of the Goddess at least.
And again: junior section of the library, people! Weird!
At last, a proper quest. I was beginning to wonder whether it would happen! We had two books of boarding school, one book of… I dunno how to characterise the third, actually. And then here, a quest. Not your average quest, of course, but a quest nonetheless. In fact, a road trip! Alanna learns of a Fabulous Jewel and decides that hey, this is exactly the sort of thing she should be adventuring after as a knight errant. Along the way she meets – and Takes Up With – one of the few men genuinely her match in fighting, Liam; plus a refugee princess, who she eventually matches with Jonathan to take that little problem off her hands; and when she gets back to her home, she helps to bring down a plot against Jonathan (now king), with the back-from-the-dead Roger at its heart. Plus she finally ends up with George, who’s been holding out so faithfully.
The quest angle was interesting, not least because it takes up less than half of the book. The Dominion Jewel does end up being fundamental to Jonathan keeping ahold of his kingdom (literally), but the trip is definitely more about the travel than the destination. Alanna’s relationship with Liam is perhaps the most fascinating of all her loves. For a start, Liam is terrified by her use of magic – so she knows right from the start that they won’t be a long term item (although I am mighty, might sad that he died). His knowing more about some aspects of fighting lends an interesting tone to their relationship, since it takes on a teacher/student aspect – it’s not overdone, though. Her frustration at his occasional desire to protect her comes through well, and not usually as an ‘I’m the strong man’ attitude but more of a ‘I love you so I want to protect you’ thing – which is quite reasonable, from his perspective, if frustrating from hers. And then finally we get female relationships, with Alanna relating to the princess Thayet and her bodyguard, Buri, on a fairly level playing field: Thayet actually outranks her, as no woman she has interacted with daily ever has; Buri is pretty nearly as good a warrior as her. And they manage to have occasionally spiky but generally very good friendships, based on mutual trust and equality. Hooray!
Oh, and she gets the jewel, by nearly defeating and then amusing an elemental being. Awesome. Off home then.
Alanna’s relationships with Jonathan and George have complicated, as they ought. Jonathan is willing to be chivalrous, but really knows that their marriage wouldn’t be awesome; plus, he’s smitten by Thayet, as Alanna was planning. Plus, being married to your Champion would just be awkward. George keeps on being the faithful one, and eventually that pays off. Awww.
Clothes play a rather interesting role in this story. I like that Alanna has a complicated relationship with clothes. It makes sense. I love that she is allowed to mash somewhat-feminine clothes with her status as a knight when she is presented to the court. Liam’s poor reaction to her being in a dress, because that doesn’t suit the box into which he wants to place her, is a wonderful exploration of identity and expectations. The resolute determination of showing that she can be feminine – and like feminine things – and that this does not detract from her status or fighting abilities is magnificent.
There are some things that are rushed, here, as they have been throughout. Alanna’s relationship with her brother Thom, in particular, is never fleshed out enough for my liking; Thom as a character is too distant and unrealised. We just have to accept that he’s become proud because of his power, but that he gets tricked by Delia into resurrecting Roger.. and then he finally gives in and is willing to accept help from his former teacher whom he previously seemed to despise. It’s all a bit of a mess, really, which is unfortunate because I think the twins’ relationship could have been a much more intriguing aspect of the story than it was allowed to be.
I am unconvinced by the conclusion, too. I am happy enough with her ending up with George, although it is just oh-so-convenient that he’s noble now (not to mention pardoned), so there’s no issue of her marrying below herself. However, the idea that she would immediately agree to have children after a year or two of marriage struck rather an off note for me. She’s just made him amend his suggestion that she settle down to going off roaming with him, and now she’s confirmed to near-immediate motherhood? Given the rather pointed bits about her knowing nothing about children – although she does learn – this just seems out of character. And it was an unfortunate way to end, too; I don’t really see why there had to be a discussion of children along with the discussion of marriage.
Overall, I am pleased to have read this quartet; I read the last three in about 24 hours. I may at some stage seek out the next set of books set in Tortall, but I’m (really) in no hurry. Pierce was doing some interesting things, here, but I’m too old and well-read to be as completely overwhelmed as I might have been in my teens. Still, I’d have no hesitation in shoving them down anyone else’s throat.
You can get Lioness Rampant from Fishpond.
Randomly Yours, Alex 