What I read this February
Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman. Girouard set out to trace the resurgence of chivalry in England. The book starts out well, with a description of the most popular play of 1912, "Where the Rainbow Ends." In it, a collection of school children battle the Dragon King and their aunt and uncle, who are cruel and unpatriotic. With the help of St.George and a pet lion, they defeat the villains, and "audience and cast sing the National Anthem together." Girouard points out the chivalrous origin of various other ...more Girouard set out to trace the resurgence of chivalry in England. The book starts out well, with a description of the most popular play of 1912, "Where the Rainbow Ends." In it, a collection of school children battle the Dragon King and their aunt and uncle, who are cruel and unpatriotic. With the help of St.George and a pet lion, they defeat the villains, and "audience and cast sing the National Anthem together." Girouard points out the chivalrous origin of various other ludicrous events of the time (Titanic, the Eglinton Tournament, etc). After Elizabeth I, chivalry fell out of favor, and only revived in the early nineteenth century. A national obsession with the (very idealized) medieval era began. Chivalry led to the formation of the Boy Scouts, sports as a school activity, trade as ungentlemanly, colonial rule, and especially the crazed way Great Britain entered WWI.
The thesis is interesting and the period a favorite of mine, but I had a hard time getting through this book. One problem was that Giouard flits about in time a great deal; tracing the development of knightly metaphors is made far more difficult when the writer suddenly jumps 50 years. The other problem I had was that at least half the chapters were almost catalogs of poets and pieces of art--very little analysis, but long lists of names. Overall, the book is a passable analysis of a very problematic code of conduct.
Ursula K Le Guin, Voices. The peaceful merchant city of Ansul, famous for its university and learning, was invaded a generation ago by an army. The Alds believe that anything written is an abomination, the educated populace are dark wizards, and that they will find their religion's foretold final battleground in Ansul. They pillage, rape and torture their way through the citizens, destroying every book and shrine they can find.
Seventeen years later, the Alds remain as uneasy masters in a slave-city. They still sleep in tents, dress as though they still live in the desert, and have made absolutely no attempts to understand their new subjects. An entire generation of Ansul has grown up knowing freedom and their history only as rumors. Memer is luckier than most. Everyone is hungry and overworked, but through her mother's position in the Waylord's household she has access to the last library in Ansul. She is as hungry for knowledge as she is for revenge. A chance meeting with the famous storyteller Orrec and his animal-tamer wife, Gry (the main characters from Gifts, some twenty years later) is the catalyst for an explosion of revolution and social change.
This was a great book. It feels like a YA treatment of the same issues as Laurie Marks's Fire Logic series. Clashing religions, races, cultures--invasion and enslavement--written words versus spoken. Le Guin's societies and individuals feel wholly real and independent of the reader. For every scene where a book or a speech is vital, there is another about creating a feast out of a fish and some greens. Neither form of knowledge is preferenced over the other. A miracle occurs, and Memer's friend the hostler says, "oh, look at that," and then goes back to work. Memer's by-mother is far more concerned with her daughter's upcoming wedding than the birth of a new government. Memer is both Ald and Ansul, but she's not upset about it, and it only comes up a few times (a refreshing change from the Tragic Caught-Between-Two-Worlds! trope). Bloody, dramatic vengeance is contrasted with a compromise that doesn't wholly satisfy anyone.
Le Guin is clearly still a Grand Master of Fantasy.
Michael Gecan, Going Public: An Organizer's Guide to Citizen Action. Gecan has a lot of good advice for people who want to affect their communities: make your meetings well organized, start on time, end on time. Publicly recognize people who do good work, but don't let them rest--remind them that you'll be checking up on their next project. Have face-to-face, intimate meetings; really get to know the people you're working with. Don't be afraid to de-construct organizations/committees once they've served their purpose. Before meeting politicians or the media, rehearse what you'll say and how you'll act.
Gecan shares some incredible anecdotes about his work as a professional organizer. For them, I would give this book 5 stars. But when he's not recounting old tales, he writes in a slick, unlikable marketing-ese. Also, I couldn't get too emotional about some of his victories, because they were all based on religious organizations. All the rallies, the political meetings, the post-demonstration celebrations involved prayer. Gecan has written a highly readable book about creating political change, but on a purely personal note, I'm a bit skeeved by some of it.
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterly's Lover. The whole book is a just an argument about the power of the mind and of the body upon each other.
'Real knowledge comes out of the whole corpus of the consciousness; out of your belly and your penis as much as out of your brain and mind. The mind can only analyse and rationalize. Set the mind and the reason to cock it over the rest, and all they can do is to criticize, and make a deadness. I say all they can do. It is vastly important. My God, the world needs criticizing today… criticizing to death. Therefore let's live the mental life, and glory in our spite, and strip the rotten old show. But, mind you, it's like this: while you live your life, you are in some way an organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You've severed the connexion between the apple and the tree: the organic connexion. And if you've got nothing in your life but the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple… you've fallen off the tree. And then it is a logical necessity to be spiteful, just as it's a natural necessity for a plucked apple to go bad.'
The other theme seems to be modernity, a topic DHL never tires of. He just loves nattering on about how industrialized England has killed the inner lives of its people, and how inside we're all dead nowadays, and we're too educated and thoughtful for our own good. ike many of his time, he has the crazed idea that the upcoming generation is somehow completely different from all other people ever, and this is a betrayal of nature or whatevs. It's impossible to take seriously.
"'Their spunk is gone dead. Motor-cars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck that last bit out of them. I tell you, every generation breeds a more rabbity generation, with indiarubber tubing for guts and tin legs and tin faces. Tin people! It's all a steady sort of bolshevism just killing off the human thing, and worshipping the mechanical thing. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They're all alike. The world is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt but machine-fucking!---It's all alike. Pay 'em money to cut off the world's cock. Pay money, money, money to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave 'em all little twiddling machines.'"
DHL is no good at dialog or plot, and worse at creating believable, coherant characters. He doesn't people his world--he fills it with opinions. Chapter 14 is a horrifying piece of homophobic, racist, sexist hogwash. What kept me reading was his mastery of description--there's nothing like it.
"It was really a lovely day, the first dandelions making suns, the first daisies so white. The hazel thicket was a lace-work, of half-open leaves, and the last dusty perpendicular of the catkins. Yellow celandines now were in crowds, flat open, pressed back in urgency, and the yellow glitter of themselves. It was the yellow, the powerful yellow of early summer. And primroses were broad, and full of pale abandon, thick-clustered primroses no longer shy. The lush, dark green of hyacinths was a sea, with buds rising like pale corn, while in the riding the forget-me-nots were fluffing up, and columbines were unfolding their ink-purple ruches, and there were bits of blue bird's eggshell under a bush. Everywhere the bud-knots and the leap of life!"
Can be read online here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover
Tanith Lee, The Book of the Damned. This book is actually three novellas: that of a poet who may or may not tangle him or herself up with vampire(s), that of an abused peasant girl who runs away to Paradys and becomes nun by day, bullyboy by night, and a writer who investigates the strange deaths of two beauties in a single house. In all three tales, gender is fluid, sexualities are twisted, and inexplicable shadows loom.
I would rate the stories higher, but I found the writing almost impenetrable. I still don't kn...more This book is actually three novellas: that of a poet who may or may not tangle him or herself up with vampire(s), that of an abused peasant girl who runs away to Paradys and becomes nun by day, bullyboy by night, and a writer who investigates the strange deaths of two beauties in a single house. In all three tales, gender is fluid, sexualities are twisted, and inexplicable shadows loom.
I would rate the stories higher, but I found the writing almost impenetrable. I still don't know what the first tale was about, or how it was resolved. Here's a taste of Lee's style:
"And rising and sinking in the billows of shadow, the light was cleaved to crimson, crimson through and through, a dye never to be washed out, through the wounds of a redeemer might wash away all sins and stains. Crimson, crimson, the caves, the river, flowers and fruit and crystal and blood. Crimson the benediction; the waves, crimson, that never ended and were never begun, and were never begun or ended."
Very poetic but not particularly helpful in terms of exposition.
Stella Tillyard, A Royal Affair: Geroge III and His Scandalous Siblings. Although the book is ostensibly about King George III of England and his numerous siblings, it is mostly about George and his youngest sister, Caroline Matilda. Tillyard follows their claustrophobic childhood and uneven educations, until they were separated when George took the throne and Caroline Matilda was married to the unstable King of Denmark, Christian VII. Teenaged Queen Caroline Mathilde tried to be a good queen, but her husband was going mad. She fell in love with Struensee, his ide...more Although the book is ostensibly about King George III of England and his numerous siblings, it is mostly about George and his youngest sister, Caroline Matilda. Tillyard follows their claustrophobic childhood and uneven educations, until they were separated when George took the throne and Caroline Matilda was married to the unstable King of Denmark, Christian VII. Teenaged Queen Caroline Mathilde tried to be a good queen, but her husband was going mad. She fell in love with Struensee, his idealistic doctor, and together the lovebirds ruled the King and the government. In the king's name they pushed through numerous reforms, all very good and necessary laws but very unpopular. Eventually, the king's step-mother and step-brother managed a coup, separating the queen and the doctor and ousting the humanist government. Caroline Mathilde physically struggled against her captors, but to no avail. She was locked in Kronberg slot (aka Elsinore) for months while the conspirators attempted to find proof of her adultery with Struensee. Struensee, like a dolt, confessed to everything and then, going against a lifetime of proud atheism, swore that he believed in Jesus Christ. He was brutally executed soon after. George III almost started a war to get his sister back to England, but after only a few tense months her divorce went through. The new Danish government shipped her away as quickly as they could, afraid of her influence over the king. Caroline Mathilde spent her remaining years with a large allowance from George III and no freedom. Her mail was opened, her servants chosen for her, and her visitors carefully vetted. After three years of this life, and a few desultary attempts to regain her throne, she died abruptly of scarlet fever.
Caroline's brothers, Edward, William and Henry, lead useless lives. Edward died young. William married a woman rather older, whose thwarted ambition made him miserable. Henry and his wife were rackety and seemingly happy, but certainly nothing but a drain on the treasury. And their oldest living brother, George III, was a priggish, rule-bound man who seems to have had little political insight and even less empathy. I didn't like any of the siblings, although I did pity them.
Robin McKinley, Chalice. Mirasol is a happy beekeeper in a little cottage in the Willowlands--until the Chalice and her Master die. First, her goats suddenly must be milked thrice a day and her bee hives are literally overflowing with honey. Then, the Circle tells Mirasol that *she* is the new Chalice, even though she had no apprenticeship or training, an unheard of disaster. And *then*, the new Master arrives--and he is no longer human. He has trained for seven years to become an Elemental priest of Fire, and retur...more Mirasol is a happy beekeeper in a little cottage in the Willowlands--until the Chalice and her Master die. First, her goats suddenly must be milked thrice a day and her bee hives are literally overflowing with honey. Then, the Circle tells Mirasol that *she* is the new Chalice, even though she had no apprenticeship or training, an unheard of disaster. And *then*, the new Master arrives--and he is no longer human. He has trained for seven years to become an Elemental priest of Fire, and returning to the moral realm is hard for him. Between his weakness and Mirasol's ignorance, will the Willowlands survive?
Of course they will. Unlike McKinley's other novels, there is no darkness here, and thus, little tension. The pace and writing are good--so good I could hardly put the book down--but I never doubted the outcome. Mirasol has a common-sense, good-hearted approach that I admired immediately. She is understandably increasingly worried and desperate to find a way out of disaster for the Willowlands. For her, McKinley perfectly captures the confused circling of a mind searching for a solution. Mirasol's spiraling thought processes provide a narrative energy that the antagonists of the story lack.
This is a sweet little book, but there are moments of depth to it. Mirasol is a peasant who has abruptly come to power, and her difficulty at her new class is both obvious and subtle. She cannot make herself sleep on new sheets, or reprimand the Heir even though she outranks him. Her friendships are damaged by her new power--the other peasants are uncomfortable with her. She thinks paper is a wild extravagence. I was pleased that Mirasol's diffculty being Chalice does not just lie in the magical portion of the role, but also the social/political. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for good-willed fantasy.
A quote I particularly liked:
"'We are all only mortal,' said the Master, even more slowly. 'We do only what we can do. All the Elemental priests have certain teachings in common: one of them is that everyone, every human, every bird, badger and salamander, every blade of grass and every acorn, is doing the best it can. This is the priests' definition of mortality: the circumstance of doing what one can is that of doing one's best. Only the immortals have the luxury of furlough. Doing one's best is hard work; we rely on our surroundings because we must; when our surroundings change, we stumble. If you are running as fast as you can, only a tiny roughness of the ground may make you fall.'"
Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche. Written in the 1920s but set directly before the French Revolution, this is the story of a young lawyer from the provinces, Andre-Louis. Raised and educated among the nobility, he has not the wealth, parentage, or hypocrisy needed to remain in their midst. When the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr viciously and cold-bloodedly kills Andre-Louis's best friend, a naive priest, Andre swears vengeance. The corrupt system of laws is no help, and Andre is turned from his home and profession for his trouble...more Written in the 1920s but set directly before the French Revolution, this is the story of a young lawyer from the provinces, Andre-Louis. Raised and educated among the nobility, he has not the wealth, parentage, or hypocrisy needed to remain in their midst. When the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr viciously and cold-bloodedly kills Andre-Louis's best friend, a naive priest, Andre swears vengeance. The corrupt system of laws is no help, and Andre is turned from his home and profession for his trouble-making. In extremity, he becomes in turn a rabble-rouser, an actor, a fencing-master, and finally, a politician. In each guise, he heaps another humiliation upon the Marquis, until finally 1792 is upon them, and blood must be spilt.
This is a book filled with duels, rhetoric, mob violence and lots and lots of clever dialog*. Andre is a rather more sarcastic twist on {book: The Princess Bride]'s Wesley--Aline is a much smarter version of Buttercup. Scaramouche would be a fantastic movie.
*example:
"From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague, indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of M. de Vilmorin.
"You have been deceived in that, I fear."
"Deceived?"
"Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother must have been guilty."
The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest commonplace, remained calm and faintly sneering.
A dead silence followed."
The thesis is interesting and the period a favorite of mine, but I had a hard time getting through this book. One problem was that Giouard flits about in time a great deal; tracing the development of knightly metaphors is made far more difficult when the writer suddenly jumps 50 years. The other problem I had was that at least half the chapters were almost catalogs of poets and pieces of art--very little analysis, but long lists of names. Overall, the book is a passable analysis of a very problematic code of conduct.
Ursula K Le Guin, Voices. The peaceful merchant city of Ansul, famous for its university and learning, was invaded a generation ago by an army. The Alds believe that anything written is an abomination, the educated populace are dark wizards, and that they will find their religion's foretold final battleground in Ansul. They pillage, rape and torture their way through the citizens, destroying every book and shrine they can find.
Seventeen years later, the Alds remain as uneasy masters in a slave-city. They still sleep in tents, dress as though they still live in the desert, and have made absolutely no attempts to understand their new subjects. An entire generation of Ansul has grown up knowing freedom and their history only as rumors. Memer is luckier than most. Everyone is hungry and overworked, but through her mother's position in the Waylord's household she has access to the last library in Ansul. She is as hungry for knowledge as she is for revenge. A chance meeting with the famous storyteller Orrec and his animal-tamer wife, Gry (the main characters from Gifts, some twenty years later) is the catalyst for an explosion of revolution and social change.
This was a great book. It feels like a YA treatment of the same issues as Laurie Marks's Fire Logic series. Clashing religions, races, cultures--invasion and enslavement--written words versus spoken. Le Guin's societies and individuals feel wholly real and independent of the reader. For every scene where a book or a speech is vital, there is another about creating a feast out of a fish and some greens. Neither form of knowledge is preferenced over the other. A miracle occurs, and Memer's friend the hostler says, "oh, look at that," and then goes back to work. Memer's by-mother is far more concerned with her daughter's upcoming wedding than the birth of a new government. Memer is both Ald and Ansul, but she's not upset about it, and it only comes up a few times (a refreshing change from the Tragic Caught-Between-Two-Worlds! trope). Bloody, dramatic vengeance is contrasted with a compromise that doesn't wholly satisfy anyone.
Le Guin is clearly still a Grand Master of Fantasy.
Michael Gecan, Going Public: An Organizer's Guide to Citizen Action. Gecan has a lot of good advice for people who want to affect their communities: make your meetings well organized, start on time, end on time. Publicly recognize people who do good work, but don't let them rest--remind them that you'll be checking up on their next project. Have face-to-face, intimate meetings; really get to know the people you're working with. Don't be afraid to de-construct organizations/committees once they've served their purpose. Before meeting politicians or the media, rehearse what you'll say and how you'll act.
Gecan shares some incredible anecdotes about his work as a professional organizer. For them, I would give this book 5 stars. But when he's not recounting old tales, he writes in a slick, unlikable marketing-ese. Also, I couldn't get too emotional about some of his victories, because they were all based on religious organizations. All the rallies, the political meetings, the post-demonstration celebrations involved prayer. Gecan has written a highly readable book about creating political change, but on a purely personal note, I'm a bit skeeved by some of it.
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterly's Lover. The whole book is a just an argument about the power of the mind and of the body upon each other.
'Real knowledge comes out of the whole corpus of the consciousness; out of your belly and your penis as much as out of your brain and mind. The mind can only analyse and rationalize. Set the mind and the reason to cock it over the rest, and all they can do is to criticize, and make a deadness. I say all they can do. It is vastly important. My God, the world needs criticizing today… criticizing to death. Therefore let's live the mental life, and glory in our spite, and strip the rotten old show. But, mind you, it's like this: while you live your life, you are in some way an organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You've severed the connexion between the apple and the tree: the organic connexion. And if you've got nothing in your life but the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple… you've fallen off the tree. And then it is a logical necessity to be spiteful, just as it's a natural necessity for a plucked apple to go bad.'
The other theme seems to be modernity, a topic DHL never tires of. He just loves nattering on about how industrialized England has killed the inner lives of its people, and how inside we're all dead nowadays, and we're too educated and thoughtful for our own good. ike many of his time, he has the crazed idea that the upcoming generation is somehow completely different from all other people ever, and this is a betrayal of nature or whatevs. It's impossible to take seriously.
"'Their spunk is gone dead. Motor-cars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck that last bit out of them. I tell you, every generation breeds a more rabbity generation, with indiarubber tubing for guts and tin legs and tin faces. Tin people! It's all a steady sort of bolshevism just killing off the human thing, and worshipping the mechanical thing. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They're all alike. The world is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt but machine-fucking!---It's all alike. Pay 'em money to cut off the world's cock. Pay money, money, money to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave 'em all little twiddling machines.'"
DHL is no good at dialog or plot, and worse at creating believable, coherant characters. He doesn't people his world--he fills it with opinions. Chapter 14 is a horrifying piece of homophobic, racist, sexist hogwash. What kept me reading was his mastery of description--there's nothing like it.
"It was really a lovely day, the first dandelions making suns, the first daisies so white. The hazel thicket was a lace-work, of half-open leaves, and the last dusty perpendicular of the catkins. Yellow celandines now were in crowds, flat open, pressed back in urgency, and the yellow glitter of themselves. It was the yellow, the powerful yellow of early summer. And primroses were broad, and full of pale abandon, thick-clustered primroses no longer shy. The lush, dark green of hyacinths was a sea, with buds rising like pale corn, while in the riding the forget-me-nots were fluffing up, and columbines were unfolding their ink-purple ruches, and there were bits of blue bird's eggshell under a bush. Everywhere the bud-knots and the leap of life!"
Can be read online here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover
Tanith Lee, The Book of the Damned. This book is actually three novellas: that of a poet who may or may not tangle him or herself up with vampire(s), that of an abused peasant girl who runs away to Paradys and becomes nun by day, bullyboy by night, and a writer who investigates the strange deaths of two beauties in a single house. In all three tales, gender is fluid, sexualities are twisted, and inexplicable shadows loom.
I would rate the stories higher, but I found the writing almost impenetrable. I still don't kn...more This book is actually three novellas: that of a poet who may or may not tangle him or herself up with vampire(s), that of an abused peasant girl who runs away to Paradys and becomes nun by day, bullyboy by night, and a writer who investigates the strange deaths of two beauties in a single house. In all three tales, gender is fluid, sexualities are twisted, and inexplicable shadows loom.
I would rate the stories higher, but I found the writing almost impenetrable. I still don't know what the first tale was about, or how it was resolved. Here's a taste of Lee's style:
"And rising and sinking in the billows of shadow, the light was cleaved to crimson, crimson through and through, a dye never to be washed out, through the wounds of a redeemer might wash away all sins and stains. Crimson, crimson, the caves, the river, flowers and fruit and crystal and blood. Crimson the benediction; the waves, crimson, that never ended and were never begun, and were never begun or ended."
Very poetic but not particularly helpful in terms of exposition.
Stella Tillyard, A Royal Affair: Geroge III and His Scandalous Siblings. Although the book is ostensibly about King George III of England and his numerous siblings, it is mostly about George and his youngest sister, Caroline Matilda. Tillyard follows their claustrophobic childhood and uneven educations, until they were separated when George took the throne and Caroline Matilda was married to the unstable King of Denmark, Christian VII. Teenaged Queen Caroline Mathilde tried to be a good queen, but her husband was going mad. She fell in love with Struensee, his ide...more Although the book is ostensibly about King George III of England and his numerous siblings, it is mostly about George and his youngest sister, Caroline Matilda. Tillyard follows their claustrophobic childhood and uneven educations, until they were separated when George took the throne and Caroline Matilda was married to the unstable King of Denmark, Christian VII. Teenaged Queen Caroline Mathilde tried to be a good queen, but her husband was going mad. She fell in love with Struensee, his idealistic doctor, and together the lovebirds ruled the King and the government. In the king's name they pushed through numerous reforms, all very good and necessary laws but very unpopular. Eventually, the king's step-mother and step-brother managed a coup, separating the queen and the doctor and ousting the humanist government. Caroline Mathilde physically struggled against her captors, but to no avail. She was locked in Kronberg slot (aka Elsinore) for months while the conspirators attempted to find proof of her adultery with Struensee. Struensee, like a dolt, confessed to everything and then, going against a lifetime of proud atheism, swore that he believed in Jesus Christ. He was brutally executed soon after. George III almost started a war to get his sister back to England, but after only a few tense months her divorce went through. The new Danish government shipped her away as quickly as they could, afraid of her influence over the king. Caroline Mathilde spent her remaining years with a large allowance from George III and no freedom. Her mail was opened, her servants chosen for her, and her visitors carefully vetted. After three years of this life, and a few desultary attempts to regain her throne, she died abruptly of scarlet fever.
Caroline's brothers, Edward, William and Henry, lead useless lives. Edward died young. William married a woman rather older, whose thwarted ambition made him miserable. Henry and his wife were rackety and seemingly happy, but certainly nothing but a drain on the treasury. And their oldest living brother, George III, was a priggish, rule-bound man who seems to have had little political insight and even less empathy. I didn't like any of the siblings, although I did pity them.
Robin McKinley, Chalice. Mirasol is a happy beekeeper in a little cottage in the Willowlands--until the Chalice and her Master die. First, her goats suddenly must be milked thrice a day and her bee hives are literally overflowing with honey. Then, the Circle tells Mirasol that *she* is the new Chalice, even though she had no apprenticeship or training, an unheard of disaster. And *then*, the new Master arrives--and he is no longer human. He has trained for seven years to become an Elemental priest of Fire, and retur...more Mirasol is a happy beekeeper in a little cottage in the Willowlands--until the Chalice and her Master die. First, her goats suddenly must be milked thrice a day and her bee hives are literally overflowing with honey. Then, the Circle tells Mirasol that *she* is the new Chalice, even though she had no apprenticeship or training, an unheard of disaster. And *then*, the new Master arrives--and he is no longer human. He has trained for seven years to become an Elemental priest of Fire, and returning to the moral realm is hard for him. Between his weakness and Mirasol's ignorance, will the Willowlands survive?
Of course they will. Unlike McKinley's other novels, there is no darkness here, and thus, little tension. The pace and writing are good--so good I could hardly put the book down--but I never doubted the outcome. Mirasol has a common-sense, good-hearted approach that I admired immediately. She is understandably increasingly worried and desperate to find a way out of disaster for the Willowlands. For her, McKinley perfectly captures the confused circling of a mind searching for a solution. Mirasol's spiraling thought processes provide a narrative energy that the antagonists of the story lack.
This is a sweet little book, but there are moments of depth to it. Mirasol is a peasant who has abruptly come to power, and her difficulty at her new class is both obvious and subtle. She cannot make herself sleep on new sheets, or reprimand the Heir even though she outranks him. Her friendships are damaged by her new power--the other peasants are uncomfortable with her. She thinks paper is a wild extravagence. I was pleased that Mirasol's diffculty being Chalice does not just lie in the magical portion of the role, but also the social/political. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for good-willed fantasy.
A quote I particularly liked:
"'We are all only mortal,' said the Master, even more slowly. 'We do only what we can do. All the Elemental priests have certain teachings in common: one of them is that everyone, every human, every bird, badger and salamander, every blade of grass and every acorn, is doing the best it can. This is the priests' definition of mortality: the circumstance of doing what one can is that of doing one's best. Only the immortals have the luxury of furlough. Doing one's best is hard work; we rely on our surroundings because we must; when our surroundings change, we stumble. If you are running as fast as you can, only a tiny roughness of the ground may make you fall.'"
Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche. Written in the 1920s but set directly before the French Revolution, this is the story of a young lawyer from the provinces, Andre-Louis. Raised and educated among the nobility, he has not the wealth, parentage, or hypocrisy needed to remain in their midst. When the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr viciously and cold-bloodedly kills Andre-Louis's best friend, a naive priest, Andre swears vengeance. The corrupt system of laws is no help, and Andre is turned from his home and profession for his trouble...more Written in the 1920s but set directly before the French Revolution, this is the story of a young lawyer from the provinces, Andre-Louis. Raised and educated among the nobility, he has not the wealth, parentage, or hypocrisy needed to remain in their midst. When the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr viciously and cold-bloodedly kills Andre-Louis's best friend, a naive priest, Andre swears vengeance. The corrupt system of laws is no help, and Andre is turned from his home and profession for his trouble-making. In extremity, he becomes in turn a rabble-rouser, an actor, a fencing-master, and finally, a politician. In each guise, he heaps another humiliation upon the Marquis, until finally 1792 is upon them, and blood must be spilt.
This is a book filled with duels, rhetoric, mob violence and lots and lots of clever dialog*. Andre is a rather more sarcastic twist on {book: The Princess Bride]'s Wesley--Aline is a much smarter version of Buttercup. Scaramouche would be a fantastic movie.
*example:
"From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague, indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of M. de Vilmorin.
"You have been deceived in that, I fear."
"Deceived?"
"Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother must have been guilty."
The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest commonplace, remained calm and faintly sneering.
A dead silence followed."