some stories sprout bright vines that tendril off beyond our sight
I didn’t read much this December at all. It's been busier than I anticipated.
• Robert Jordan, Warrior of the Altaii: Jordan’s first novel was written in the late 70s and sold twice, but never actually published until now. It’s hard to judge what I would have thought of it if it had been the first book of his that I’d read.
The Wheel of Time is one of my favourite series -- I’ve spent a lot of time rereading and analysing it -- and what I found most interesting about Warrior of the Altaii were the differences and similarities between it and WOT. In terms of the protagonist, prose and plot, it feels very different: its first-person narrator is a warrior and leader, already fully grown into his adult roles; the story revolves around why and how the nomadic Altaii try to take a city; and it’s all over by page 350.
But many of the worldbuilding elements are variations on things which are also in WOT: interactions between people from very different cultures, nomadic tribes living in a harsh landscape, ruling queens, a city that’s never been taken, magic that’s only done by women, travellers from a different world, detailed military strategies, matter-of-fact nudity for prisoners and magic rituals, corporal punishment, implied off-screen sexual assault… (That last one was unnecessary, ugh. At least WOT does a better job of acknowledging the horror and trauma of assault, and it’s also a much smaller percentage of the whole story.)
The Altaii are like proto-Aiel: they live on the Plains, not in the Waste, and they have horses and swords but also they have ideas about honour, humour, pain and death which are very Aiel-ish; the story ends with them facing changes as aspects of their lifestyle become no longer important or relevant. (Oh! And there’s a bit about an unborn baby who was fathered by an Altaii man but will be raised by non-Altaii parents. And I would like to take this moment to say how relieved I am that a certain protagonist in WOT did not have this as his parents backstory.) There’s also a character who was a bit proto-Moiraine and another who was a bit proto-Elaida -- and not just because their names begin with M and E respectively.
If I hadn’t read WOT, I would have still found the worldbuilding interesting but probably not enough to make up for not really connecting with any of the characters. There are some tense sequences, but others, like the battle sequences, failed to captivate me because I wasn’t invested in anyone’s survival.
Wulfgar is an oddly emotionless protagonist. That sort of thing can be really effective if a character then changes, or else if it becomes apparent that their lack of emotion is just a mask. But that’s not the case here, and it meant I found Wulfgar a hard character to get to know.
Jordan’s women are interesting -- they have different personalities and motives and types of power. They have the potential to be nuanced characters but are just not given enough space. I think I would have liked this story a lot more if it had been from Elspeth’s perspective.
• Terry Pratchett, Soul Music: Sixteen year old Susan fills in for her grandfather, Death, after he disappears. Meanwhile Anhk-Morpork discovers “music with rocks in it”.
I knew about the Discworld series for years and years before I read any of the books. I have a clear memory from when I was about thirteen and a school friend mentioned a line from the book she was reading: Susan kept trying to get an education, but school kept getting in the way.
As I’ve been working my way through the Discworld books, I’ve wondered when I was going to get to Susan and that line -- and wondered if I was even remembering it at all accurately. But here I am. She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept trying to interfere with it.
I enjoyed watching Susan learn about Death, Pratchett’s parody of rock music was a lot of fun, and the combination of those two storylines means this book isn’t a rehash of Moving Pictures-but-this-time-with-rock-music. However, I didn’t find the final act -- and its resolution -- quite as satisfying as Moving Pictures’. And given the situation Pratchett had written his characters into, with stakes that are a matter of life-and-death, I’m not sure if there was a possible better ending. It was a poem about daffodils.
Apparently the poet had liked them very much.
Susan was quite stoical about this. It was a free country. People could like daffodils if they wanted to. They just should not, in Susan’s very definite and precise opinions, be allowed to take up more than a page to say so.
This was music that had not only escaped, but had robbed a bank on the way out. It was music with its sleeves rolled up and its top button undone, raising its hat and grinning and stealing the silver.
• Meg Cabot, Notebooks of a Middle School Princess: Royal Crown: I enjoyed this more than the previous two. The focus is on Olivia’s family and friends in the days leading up to a coronation. Olivia’s family is Mia’s family -- after reading all The Princess Diaries books, I care about them, and I continue to think it’s interesting (but also very believable) that Olivia has such a different relationship with Grandmere than Mia does.
And I like how Olivia navigates relationships with, and advice from, her peers. She’s got a lot to learn because she’s thirteen, an age where there are a lot of changes, but she’s realistically level-headed.
• Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There: September returns to Fairyland, a year older, to discover that Fairyland has been changed for better and for worse by her previous adventures -- her shadow is now ruling Fairyland-Below -- and that this sojourn is not going to unfold how she’d expected and hoped it would.
As a story about changes, consequences, coming back to a place you love and entering adolescence, this is poignant and astute; it resonated with me so much. I also liked its many nods to the portal fantasy I grew up with.“I’m not a Knight. I’m a Bishop. Or at least I am trying to be. And travelling with you is the most slantwise, backward thing I can possibly think of, which in this place probably means it’s the right thing to do.”
But I found some of the landscapes, and the people September meets, less appealing than those in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. I’m not sure why... They’re darker, shadowy -- but without that, this wouldn’t be a story about September discovering that Fairyland has more shadows and complexities than she knew about. Oh, September! It is so soon for you to lose your friends to good work and strange loves and high ambitions. The sadness of that is too grown-up for you. Like whiskey and voting, it is a dangerous and heady business, as heavy as years. If I could keep your little tribe together forever, I would. I do so want to be generous. But some stories sprout bright vines that tendril off beyond our sight, carrying the folk we love best with them, and if I knew how to accept that with grace, I would share the secret.
Originally @ Dreamwidth.
• Robert Jordan, Warrior of the Altaii: Jordan’s first novel was written in the late 70s and sold twice, but never actually published until now. It’s hard to judge what I would have thought of it if it had been the first book of his that I’d read.
The Wheel of Time is one of my favourite series -- I’ve spent a lot of time rereading and analysing it -- and what I found most interesting about Warrior of the Altaii were the differences and similarities between it and WOT. In terms of the protagonist, prose and plot, it feels very different: its first-person narrator is a warrior and leader, already fully grown into his adult roles; the story revolves around why and how the nomadic Altaii try to take a city; and it’s all over by page 350.
But many of the worldbuilding elements are variations on things which are also in WOT: interactions between people from very different cultures, nomadic tribes living in a harsh landscape, ruling queens, a city that’s never been taken, magic that’s only done by women, travellers from a different world, detailed military strategies, matter-of-fact nudity for prisoners and magic rituals, corporal punishment, implied off-screen sexual assault… (That last one was unnecessary, ugh. At least WOT does a better job of acknowledging the horror and trauma of assault, and it’s also a much smaller percentage of the whole story.)
The Altaii are like proto-Aiel: they live on the Plains, not in the Waste, and they have horses and swords but also they have ideas about honour, humour, pain and death which are very Aiel-ish; the story ends with them facing changes as aspects of their lifestyle become no longer important or relevant. (Oh! And there’s a bit about an unborn baby who was fathered by an Altaii man but will be raised by non-Altaii parents. And I would like to take this moment to say how relieved I am that a certain protagonist in WOT did not have this as his parents backstory.) There’s also a character who was a bit proto-Moiraine and another who was a bit proto-Elaida -- and not just because their names begin with M and E respectively.
If I hadn’t read WOT, I would have still found the worldbuilding interesting but probably not enough to make up for not really connecting with any of the characters. There are some tense sequences, but others, like the battle sequences, failed to captivate me because I wasn’t invested in anyone’s survival.
Wulfgar is an oddly emotionless protagonist. That sort of thing can be really effective if a character then changes, or else if it becomes apparent that their lack of emotion is just a mask. But that’s not the case here, and it meant I found Wulfgar a hard character to get to know.
Jordan’s women are interesting -- they have different personalities and motives and types of power. They have the potential to be nuanced characters but are just not given enough space. I think I would have liked this story a lot more if it had been from Elspeth’s perspective.
• Terry Pratchett, Soul Music: Sixteen year old Susan fills in for her grandfather, Death, after he disappears. Meanwhile Anhk-Morpork discovers “music with rocks in it”.
I knew about the Discworld series for years and years before I read any of the books. I have a clear memory from when I was about thirteen and a school friend mentioned a line from the book she was reading: Susan kept trying to get an education, but school kept getting in the way.
As I’ve been working my way through the Discworld books, I’ve wondered when I was going to get to Susan and that line -- and wondered if I was even remembering it at all accurately. But here I am. She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept trying to interfere with it.
I enjoyed watching Susan learn about Death, Pratchett’s parody of rock music was a lot of fun, and the combination of those two storylines means this book isn’t a rehash of Moving Pictures-but-this-time-with-rock-music. However, I didn’t find the final act -- and its resolution -- quite as satisfying as Moving Pictures’. And given the situation Pratchett had written his characters into, with stakes that are a matter of life-and-death, I’m not sure if there was a possible better ending. It was a poem about daffodils.
Apparently the poet had liked them very much.
Susan was quite stoical about this. It was a free country. People could like daffodils if they wanted to. They just should not, in Susan’s very definite and precise opinions, be allowed to take up more than a page to say so.
This was music that had not only escaped, but had robbed a bank on the way out. It was music with its sleeves rolled up and its top button undone, raising its hat and grinning and stealing the silver.
• Meg Cabot, Notebooks of a Middle School Princess: Royal Crown: I enjoyed this more than the previous two. The focus is on Olivia’s family and friends in the days leading up to a coronation. Olivia’s family is Mia’s family -- after reading all The Princess Diaries books, I care about them, and I continue to think it’s interesting (but also very believable) that Olivia has such a different relationship with Grandmere than Mia does.
And I like how Olivia navigates relationships with, and advice from, her peers. She’s got a lot to learn because she’s thirteen, an age where there are a lot of changes, but she’s realistically level-headed.
• Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There: September returns to Fairyland, a year older, to discover that Fairyland has been changed for better and for worse by her previous adventures -- her shadow is now ruling Fairyland-Below -- and that this sojourn is not going to unfold how she’d expected and hoped it would.
As a story about changes, consequences, coming back to a place you love and entering adolescence, this is poignant and astute; it resonated with me so much. I also liked its many nods to the portal fantasy I grew up with.“I’m not a Knight. I’m a Bishop. Or at least I am trying to be. And travelling with you is the most slantwise, backward thing I can possibly think of, which in this place probably means it’s the right thing to do.”
But I found some of the landscapes, and the people September meets, less appealing than those in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. I’m not sure why... They’re darker, shadowy -- but without that, this wouldn’t be a story about September discovering that Fairyland has more shadows and complexities than she knew about. Oh, September! It is so soon for you to lose your friends to good work and strange loves and high ambitions. The sadness of that is too grown-up for you. Like whiskey and voting, it is a dangerous and heady business, as heavy as years. If I could keep your little tribe together forever, I would. I do so want to be generous. But some stories sprout bright vines that tendril off beyond our sight, carrying the folk we love best with them, and if I knew how to accept that with grace, I would share the secret.
Originally @ Dreamwidth.