(no subject)
After reading Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books, I figured I should actually go back to the beginning and read some of her fantasy novels. I have now read the Darwath trilogy! (The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, The Armies of Daylight.) The Darwath Trilogy is GRIMDARK otherworld fantasy, in which grad student Gil and biker gang member Rudy get pulled through into another world where Lovecraftian monsters have just pretty much destroyed civilization and everyone needs to trek through blizzards and huddle into a giant fortress and constantly fight off things with tentacles to survive; there is lots of atmospheric description of freezing chill and overwhelming creepy foulness and so forth, as well as postapocalyptic politics. It took me a while to get into the first one, mostly because -
- okay, I have to take a digression here, which is, I am sorry, J.K. Rowling, but you have RUINED me for twinkly-eyed elderly wizard mentors. I am fairly sure I used to like twinkly-eyed elderly wizard mentors fine! Or at least I did not have the instinctive reaction to them that I have now, which goes something like, "Ha! I can see right through you! You may be a fabulous wizard but you're probably a terrible administrator, aren't you? I bet you enjoy playing God, saying irritatingly mysterious things and occasionally smiling sadly instead of doing anything useful! WHY ARE YOU TWINKLING INSTEAD OF PROVIDING REASONABLE ANSWERS, IT'S NOT CUTE." Thanks, Dumbledore.
- so anyway, I had a hard time warming to Ingold the wizard, a fairly central character, because unfortunately Barbara Hambly described him as twinkling in his first scene with Gil and a great cry of distrust rose up in my heart. But by the second book, when Ingold went off with Rudy on a long quest and started to get cranky and depressed and showed no signs of twinkling at all, I liked him much better!
The second book I also liked better because Gil just gets consecutively awesomer as the books go on. In the first book, she's a cool intellectual who pops through and turns out to be awesome with a sword, and I liked her okay but people going to mysterious otherworlds and turning out to be awesome with weaponry by great coincidence is not a new concept. But in the second and third books, Gil gets bored and starts putting her actual research skills to use as well as her badassery, and basically SAVES THE WORLD WITH DISSERTATING as well as occasionally killing people, and it's amazing. She is fantastic. I also like Rudy's-girlfriend-the-queen, because again having the stranger pop through and fall in love with a high-up lady is not particularly new, but Minalde actually has a character arc about growing into her government role, and in the second book she and Gil form an odd-couple friendship, and that's also pretty awesome. (My actual favorite characters, though, are neither of these, but Kara the untrained mage and her AWESOMELY CRANKY MOTHER. I want the fic about Kara and Tomac's epic mostly-offscreen romance while her mother rampages around cursing everyone out. I want it SO BADLY.)
Caveats: I suspect Hambly would be a lot better about this now, but there are unfortunate real-world implications all over the place with both the White Raiders, a Dangerous Tribal Group who both fill the role of and are I think explicitly compared to (in Rudy's mind, at least) the kind of savage-and-superstitious-Indian stereotype you would see in a Western, and the southern land of Alketch, which takes on the role of the Corrupt and Decadent Oriental Empire Complete With Slavery and Oppression To Women. There are a couple of vaguely friendly White Raiders; there are no noble Alketchians. Also, there is what might be ableism fail with Elkor and how he becomes vaguely-evil-via-mental-trauma-and-PTSD and then gets savagely burned, apparently just so that there can be an outward signal of the fact that he is warped. It's very Phantom of the Opera.
On a differet note, I have no idea how I feel about Gil/Ingold at the end. I mean, they seem like a good match otherwise I guess, so perhaps I am being judgy for being squicked by the forty-year age difference? And yet . . . I know some of you have read the books, how do you feel about it?
- okay, I have to take a digression here, which is, I am sorry, J.K. Rowling, but you have RUINED me for twinkly-eyed elderly wizard mentors. I am fairly sure I used to like twinkly-eyed elderly wizard mentors fine! Or at least I did not have the instinctive reaction to them that I have now, which goes something like, "Ha! I can see right through you! You may be a fabulous wizard but you're probably a terrible administrator, aren't you? I bet you enjoy playing God, saying irritatingly mysterious things and occasionally smiling sadly instead of doing anything useful! WHY ARE YOU TWINKLING INSTEAD OF PROVIDING REASONABLE ANSWERS, IT'S NOT CUTE." Thanks, Dumbledore.
- so anyway, I had a hard time warming to Ingold the wizard, a fairly central character, because unfortunately Barbara Hambly described him as twinkling in his first scene with Gil and a great cry of distrust rose up in my heart. But by the second book, when Ingold went off with Rudy on a long quest and started to get cranky and depressed and showed no signs of twinkling at all, I liked him much better!
The second book I also liked better because Gil just gets consecutively awesomer as the books go on. In the first book, she's a cool intellectual who pops through and turns out to be awesome with a sword, and I liked her okay but people going to mysterious otherworlds and turning out to be awesome with weaponry by great coincidence is not a new concept. But in the second and third books, Gil gets bored and starts putting her actual research skills to use as well as her badassery, and basically SAVES THE WORLD WITH DISSERTATING as well as occasionally killing people, and it's amazing. She is fantastic. I also like Rudy's-girlfriend-the-queen, because again having the stranger pop through and fall in love with a high-up lady is not particularly new, but Minalde actually has a character arc about growing into her government role, and in the second book she and Gil form an odd-couple friendship, and that's also pretty awesome. (My actual favorite characters, though, are neither of these, but Kara the untrained mage and her AWESOMELY CRANKY MOTHER. I want the fic about Kara and Tomac's epic mostly-offscreen romance while her mother rampages around cursing everyone out. I want it SO BADLY.)
Caveats: I suspect Hambly would be a lot better about this now, but there are unfortunate real-world implications all over the place with both the White Raiders, a Dangerous Tribal Group who both fill the role of and are I think explicitly compared to (in Rudy's mind, at least) the kind of savage-and-superstitious-Indian stereotype you would see in a Western, and the southern land of Alketch, which takes on the role of the Corrupt and Decadent Oriental Empire Complete With Slavery and Oppression To Women. There are a couple of vaguely friendly White Raiders; there are no noble Alketchians. Also, there is what might be ableism fail with Elkor and how he becomes vaguely-evil-via-mental-trauma-and-PTSD and then gets savagely burned, apparently just so that there can be an outward signal of the fact that he is warped. It's very Phantom of the Opera.
On a differet note, I have no idea how I feel about Gil/Ingold at the end. I mean, they seem like a good match otherwise I guess, so perhaps I am being judgy for being squicked by the forty-year age difference? And yet . . . I know some of you have read the books, how do you feel about it?