Legacy (LM Bujold)

[charlie_ego]

My homework for last weekend was reading Legacy. (Next weekend it will be to start looking up all these fabulous book recs I keep getting, yay, thanks!) I... didn't hate it. Probably from the Magic of Low Expectations-- I knew not to expect much, and, well, I wasn't disappointed

Comments

[ase]

Well, that's exactly it... I mean, the girl lives on a farm, right? Doesn't that automatically give one a fairly decent understanding of mating and consequences thereof?

It should. However, I'm assumpting that teenagers are universally stupid about sex, are perfectly willing to believe whatever their feckless peers tell them, and that she's - yes - not paying attention to details. I think what I'm trying to say here is that Fawn is that stupid, but has intellectual smarts. I am unimpressed with her street smarts to date.

I think the Chalion books might speak more strongly to people who have greater religious background than me. They read as adequate novels to me, but I don't feel a deep resonance. Does that make sense? One could write a novel about Cazaril's adventures as Iselle's Prime Minister (for lack of a better term) and ex-saint, but it would be a very different book, with a very different tone. I liked the sense of chance and inevitability in Curse: the long unwinding of how Caz got to be in a place to help break the curse. That was really neat. But it was a technical sort of neat, rather than pinging one of my major themes.

I really only like Hallowed Hunt for the Horseriver head-games. And oh, maybe Ingrey getting mocked a bit for his manpain. (Alcohol! This is a man who needs booze and a polar bear in his life.)

[almeda]

I'm not Devout, myself, but I deeply appreciated her using fantasy novels to show a *working*, not-our-world system of religion, that not only is internally consistent, and has 'real gods' (meaning, they can intervene in the world like DnD gods do), but where the hierarchy of the religion has a SOCIAL PURPOSE, just like in, oh, every single real-world religion ever.

As opposed to fantasy novels that (a) rub all the serial numbers off Christianity, (b) only use the gods as plot devices, and/or (c) pretend that nobody's faith ever has any real-world consequences in terms of social action or choices.

[charlie_ego]

As opposed to fantasy novels that (a) rub all the serial numbers off Christianity, (b) only use the gods as plot devices, and/or (c) pretend that nobody's faith ever has any real-world consequences in terms of social action or choices.

Yesyesyesyesyes. (Whenever we got "Jad" in the Sarantium books I would roll my eyes. I mean, yes, it's Byzantium, but geez, just call it Christianity and be done with it!)

I would add (d) postulate a not-very-thought-out fertility Goddess(es) religion that mostly results in everyone having a lot of sex and being very happy. (And/or sometimes there being a masculine God whose followers are repressed and annoying.) (Diane Duane and Sanderson, I'm looking at you!)

I hadn't thought about it exactly that way before-- though I had definitely admired her theological workings out-- how many fantasy novels with gods acknowledge theological problems about free will at all?-- but yeah, it's really cool that people in Chalion can both be religious and *use* that religion for either good or evil. The more I think about this, the more impressed I get.

[almeda]

In the way that some fantasy novels have a Really Neat Magic System, she's got a really neat god system in Chalion.

She herself says she was deliberately trying to have a non-binary religion (not just Good/Evil -- the Bastard is there to make it multivalent, and accepting of Weirdness), but that as she wrote the first book the Quadrene heresy just suddenly popped up and insisted that even in a world like that, binarism WOULD show up again, because it's just too damn convenient to the people in power.

[charlie_ego]

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the system *was* good or evil (and I *love* the Bastard, and I also love how it's so balanced-- someone once asked me if the Holy Spirit in Christianity was female, because she thought it was kind of weird that the Trinity is always male, and I had no good answer) just that people can always use it for one or the other. I totally love the Quadrene heresy-- that's so, well, sensible. In the sense of, that would totally happen, and I love when things are thought out so well.

[ase]

I am a fan of gods as plot device only when I get prophecy as plot device out of the deal, and I never get good prophecy plots. The narrative fails to do anything fun and devious with the Hallowed Prophecy of Old. "And oh, if you read the fine print, the common translation dropped a syllable, so it shouldn't read 'the Dark Lord is defeated by the first son of the kingdom', it should read, 'the Dark Lord is defeated by the first child of the kingdom' and by 'child' I think they meant your illegitimate daughter who just lopped off the Sauron analog's head. Sire. And perhaps Sire would see fit to decently funding the Chair of the Library of Ancient Knowledge so we can hire the good translators?"

This may be why I started actively avoiding fat fantasy epics a couple years back.

[charlie_ego]

Huh. It's true, I can't think of any besides Chalion (which I don't know if you count, but like you said before, it's satisfying to see how it all works out (and, kind of, how it doesn't)) and LOTR, which didn't really focus on prophecies, really. (And didn't have any gods to speak of, I mean, sure, Manwe and all that, but they didn't really show up explicitly in LOTR... which I think was a good thing.) Ah well.

And HP, I guess, but I totally don't count that because even now that I know how it all turns out, I *still* can't parse the darn thing.

I started avoiding fat fantasy epics because... the fatter they are, the worse the writing tends to be.

[ase]

I hadn't considered Chalion, but it's lurking in the background of the thought process, yes. An inexplicable prophecy turned explicable after the fact and on a technicality or two.

And HP, I guess, but I totally don't count that because even now that I know how it all turns out, I *still* can't parse the darn thing.

I, um, never really tried. HP is working off fantasy conventions, but with limited consideration of second-order effects.

I started avoiding fat fantasy epics because... the fatter they are, the worse the writing tends to be.

There's that aspect, too. I'm actively avoiding 1,000 page doorstops these days because the payoff is rarely worth the time investment.

[almeda]

If you have the willpower to STOP after book three, and never know 'how it comes out', the Wheel of Time is actually pretty cool.

However, after book 3, he wrote an endlessly growing series of difficult middle books that cover less and less actual TIME per doorstop, with the viewpoint characters growing exponentially, and UCK. I gave up after a book that, in its Jordanesque Doorstopness, covered *six days* of time. Six days. Plus, there were so many sidelong references to plots five books ago (with very few incluing details; things like, "In the city of many bridges over glittering canals, a shadowy figure with many clinking braids organized in a way you ought to remember, smiles to himself and thinks, "Ahh, my plan is coming together." And then he cuts away) that it was hopeless to UNDERSTAND it unless you'd just read all of them back to back.

That said, the first three, though totally unresolved, have some neat worldbuilding and magic in them.

[charlie_ego]

I stopped after about book 5 or so. I remember the first three as being fairly cool, but I'm also allergic to not knowing how things come out, so if I'd known I would skid to a halt I wouldn't've begun in the first place.

There's also the Martin Song of Ice and Fire fat fantasy epic, which is the only fat fantasy epic (now that HP's ended) I'm following nowadays, if I can define "following" as "skimming very quickly in bookstore when it comes out." After the first couple, it broke my first cardinal rule of books, which is: I have to like at least one of the characters. Which is too bad, since the plotting and all is pretty good.

[ase]

Aw. I stopped reading Fire and Ice after the second, when Martin broke the "he's dead - no, he's not!" rule a little too often. There's battlefield chaos, and then there's messing with your readers' heads because, ha ha ha, you're the author and you can.

[charlie_ego]

Heh. I think by that time I already didn't care enough about the characters to care if Martin had killed them off or not.

Guy Gavriel Kay is the one I always think of as being really annoying about the "he's dead - no he's not" rule. I'm in the process of writing up a rant about why GGK annoys me to the point I can barely read his books, even though everyone else seems to love him.

[almeda]

I can't read GGK because he's smug about being the author and knowing evvvvverything, and I don't, because I'm the iggerant reader.

Also, at least in Sarantium (which is all I've read), he keeps removing (or never giving them anything to do) the characters I like best, and taking the people I find boring and embroiling them in politics he gives me no reason to care about.

Totally not my kink.

[charlie_ego]

I can't read GGK because he's smug about being the author and knowing evvvvverything, and I don't, because I'm the iggerant reader.

Yes, exactly!

Hee, Sarantium was the one GGK I actually got through without hating too much... but mostly because I was all, "Hey, wait, that guy is Emperor Justinian!" and that interested me enough to get through it (and probably made me care about the politics much more than you did).

[almeda]

Thank God it's not just me; all of my GGK-worshipping friends look at me funny when I articulate that dislike.

The only two things that kept me reading Sailing-to to the end were (a) all the mosaicsgeeking, and (b) the bird. Yes, I took four years of Latin in high school. No, I was not uber-enchanted by the fact that Justinian is a character.

If you took Latin, too, btw, I can highly recommend Somtow Sucharitkul (or SP Somtow, as he's now known)'s Aquiliad books as HILARIOUS alternate roman history. Head and shoulders above Sarantium, and not just because he has the sense of humor GGK was clearly born entirely lacking ...

[charlie_ego]

ahaha. You have incited me a) to finish Arbonne, and b) write a rant about it (see my latest lj post). I actually didn't hate it, because it turned out not to have a lame plot. But I also skipped all the annoying teaser "ha, I know and you don't!" by reading only the last half-third.

oh, yeah, the mosaicsgeeking! I did like that. Someday I shall go visit Ravenna and Constantinople. Was not particularly entranced by the bird. I have had a Thing for Justinian and Theodora ever since reading The Dragon Waiting which led me to seduction by John Julius Norwich, so it *did*, in fact, uber-enchant me. What can I say? I'm easy to please if you punch the right buttons. (If the author shows me s/he's read The White Goddess or The Triads of the Island of Britain or the Mabinogion, I'll lap it up, even if it's complete drivel! )

I have not taken Latin, but actual history-based stuff is sufficiently interesting to me that I think I'd really like Somtow. Will make a note. Ah, it would be nice to read something with a sense of humor, now that I've gotten through more GGK.