Lord of the Two Lands reread
I reread Lord of the Two Lands by Judith Tarr. This was my first adult book, and I got it when I was... 12 or 13? And by adult I mean the first book I read not marketed towards children :p
I don't remember a lot of my reactions to the book from back then, I do know I enjoyed it since I'm fairly positive I read it 5 or 6 times in a row. What I do remember is thinking it was ridiculously long and I would never get through it, and I had to look up a lot of words.
It's really not that long, the story is 394 pages with 6 pages of author's notes. Oddly, the... residual "OMG, long book!" made it hard to start reading the stupid thing. I still had to look up words, just not as many!
The story is about Alexander the Great, told mostly from the sorta perspective of Meriamon, an Egyptian priestess sent to get Alexander to Egypt. By sorta, we follow her around, but it's not first person and there are maybe 2 scenes that don't include her. But wait! She's not just a priestess! She's also a princess! Her dad was the last Pharaoh, and wouldn't you know it? Her wanted her to be trained like a boy, so she knew how to ride a horse and... I suppose other manly things (the horse riding was really the only thing mentioned). She was also knowledgeable about surgery, which is a good thing I guess, otherwise she wouldn't have met half the people she did. Oh, oh! And she can use magic! Awesome.
Adult me is less than impressed. A
Anyway, she meets up with the army after they had defeated Darius of Persia. Meriamon helps take someone to the hospital tent, why I'm not sure because it's constantly reinforced how tiny she is. Once there, she jumps in with both feet to help who she can. She manages to save the hand of a soldier who got run over by a chariot. He becomes important later.
She meets Alexander, he agrees to eventually go to Egypt as was foretold by her gods when he was conceived. Really, that's the first scene in the book, her father watches Phillip and Olympia have sex. This must of shocked younger me, but I really don't remember! Although it wasn't... explicit. The way it was written is more like they were fighting and then they start talking about a baby.
He makes sure she has a job (at the hospital, getting paid! awesome), a place to live (with a prostitute... well, a hetaira, but it's made rather clear that she does sleep with most of her clients). So, all Meri needs is a guard! Who better than Niko? The soldier who almost lost his hand? He is less than pleased, even though with a broken wrist he can't do his normal duties... nor is there any fighting going on for a big chunk of the book.
Although this is where the book kind of makes fun of itself, saying that in stories the guardsman almost always falls in love with the maiden they're guarding. Cuz we all know what's going to happen.
Right, so they travel to Egypt, there are some bumps on the way, where Alexander has... a temper tantrum and then promptly murders a city to bits. He doesn't take rejection well.
They get to Egypt, he's crowned pharaoh, they go to Siwah (a... shrine? oracle? oasis in the middle of no where) begin the groundwork on Alexandria, and then go to continue conquering Asia and defeating the nasty Persians. No one likes Persia in this book.
I still like the book, but I think I can objectively criticize it now. So, here we go.
1. There is magic in this book, which I don't mind. At all. It's clearly meant for gods to be more involved in every day life and that is rather awesome. What irked me is that Meriamon is supposed to be relatively weak, magic-wise, and yet is ALWAYS able to overcome stronger magic people. It got old.
2. Two women got pregnant through the course of the book. One is Barsine, a Persian who was chosen to be Alexander's lover and hopefully produce heirs, cuz that's what kings do. But Barsine had been married and widowed twice before and just about everyone knows the baby isn't Alexander's, but her last husbands. Once the baby is born, she's not mentioned again. The other is Thais, the hetaira that Meri was living with. She got became pregnant with Ptolemy's baby and was promptly relegated to a role of... not being as awesome as she was. She got to run errands. Whoo.
3. I really did not see the point in the few scenes there were that were just Alexander and Hephaistion. They were adorable, I just don't understand why Tarr bothered.
4. There are chunks where I swear everyone is talking in riddles. I vaguely remember just reading it and going on with my life before, but now it just ticked me off. I'm an adult! I've gone to college! Why can't I figure out what they're talking about?! I'm blaming Aristotle.
5. As amazing as we're supposed to think Meri is, and to a certain extent she is, she was completely incapable of taking care of herself. At one point she got incredibly sick, and she still wanted to go and hang out outside and in the hospital and stuff.
The stuff I did like:
1. That romance between Nico and Meri? Meri totally set the pace and it was awesome.
2. Alexander and Hephaistion. I said above, they are adorable.
3. The story itself, it's awesome!
4. The differences in the cultures. I'm not sure how much research Tarr actually did, the author's notes suggest a lot, but who knows if that is accurate. However, it was fantastic. Each culture had things that the others thought were weird. They even mentioned Christians! Which I'm not sure I caught before.
I feel like there's more to talk about, and I'm almost positive that the version of this I wrote in my head was much longer, but I'm tired. Whee.
I don't remember a lot of my reactions to the book from back then, I do know I enjoyed it since I'm fairly positive I read it 5 or 6 times in a row. What I do remember is thinking it was ridiculously long and I would never get through it, and I had to look up a lot of words.
It's really not that long, the story is 394 pages with 6 pages of author's notes. Oddly, the... residual "OMG, long book!" made it hard to start reading the stupid thing. I still had to look up words, just not as many!
The story is about Alexander the Great, told mostly from the sorta perspective of Meriamon, an Egyptian priestess sent to get Alexander to Egypt. By sorta, we follow her around, but it's not first person and there are maybe 2 scenes that don't include her. But wait! She's not just a priestess! She's also a princess! Her dad was the last Pharaoh, and wouldn't you know it? Her wanted her to be trained like a boy, so she knew how to ride a horse and... I suppose other manly things (the horse riding was really the only thing mentioned). She was also knowledgeable about surgery, which is a good thing I guess, otherwise she wouldn't have met half the people she did. Oh, oh! And she can use magic! Awesome.
Adult me is less than impressed. A
Anyway, she meets up with the army after they had defeated Darius of Persia. Meriamon helps take someone to the hospital tent, why I'm not sure because it's constantly reinforced how tiny she is. Once there, she jumps in with both feet to help who she can. She manages to save the hand of a soldier who got run over by a chariot. He becomes important later.
She meets Alexander, he agrees to eventually go to Egypt as was foretold by her gods when he was conceived. Really, that's the first scene in the book, her father watches Phillip and Olympia have sex. This must of shocked younger me, but I really don't remember! Although it wasn't... explicit. The way it was written is more like they were fighting and then they start talking about a baby.
He makes sure she has a job (at the hospital, getting paid! awesome), a place to live (with a prostitute... well, a hetaira, but it's made rather clear that she does sleep with most of her clients). So, all Meri needs is a guard! Who better than Niko? The soldier who almost lost his hand? He is less than pleased, even though with a broken wrist he can't do his normal duties... nor is there any fighting going on for a big chunk of the book.
Although this is where the book kind of makes fun of itself, saying that in stories the guardsman almost always falls in love with the maiden they're guarding. Cuz we all know what's going to happen.
Right, so they travel to Egypt, there are some bumps on the way, where Alexander has... a temper tantrum and then promptly murders a city to bits. He doesn't take rejection well.
They get to Egypt, he's crowned pharaoh, they go to Siwah (a... shrine? oracle? oasis in the middle of no where) begin the groundwork on Alexandria, and then go to continue conquering Asia and defeating the nasty Persians. No one likes Persia in this book.
I still like the book, but I think I can objectively criticize it now. So, here we go.
1. There is magic in this book, which I don't mind. At all. It's clearly meant for gods to be more involved in every day life and that is rather awesome. What irked me is that Meriamon is supposed to be relatively weak, magic-wise, and yet is ALWAYS able to overcome stronger magic people. It got old.
2. Two women got pregnant through the course of the book. One is Barsine, a Persian who was chosen to be Alexander's lover and hopefully produce heirs, cuz that's what kings do. But Barsine had been married and widowed twice before and just about everyone knows the baby isn't Alexander's, but her last husbands. Once the baby is born, she's not mentioned again. The other is Thais, the hetaira that Meri was living with. She got became pregnant with Ptolemy's baby and was promptly relegated to a role of... not being as awesome as she was. She got to run errands. Whoo.
3. I really did not see the point in the few scenes there were that were just Alexander and Hephaistion. They were adorable, I just don't understand why Tarr bothered.
4. There are chunks where I swear everyone is talking in riddles. I vaguely remember just reading it and going on with my life before, but now it just ticked me off. I'm an adult! I've gone to college! Why can't I figure out what they're talking about?! I'm blaming Aristotle.
5. As amazing as we're supposed to think Meri is, and to a certain extent she is, she was completely incapable of taking care of herself. At one point she got incredibly sick, and she still wanted to go and hang out outside and in the hospital and stuff.
The stuff I did like:
1. That romance between Nico and Meri? Meri totally set the pace and it was awesome.
2. Alexander and Hephaistion. I said above, they are adorable.
3. The story itself, it's awesome!
4. The differences in the cultures. I'm not sure how much research Tarr actually did, the author's notes suggest a lot, but who knows if that is accurate. However, it was fantastic. Each culture had things that the others thought were weird. They even mentioned Christians! Which I'm not sure I caught before.
I feel like there's more to talk about, and I'm almost positive that the version of this I wrote in my head was much longer, but I'm tired. Whee.