UPROOTED and the Generation Gap in Fantasy

[rj_anderson]

So this week Naomi Novik's Uprooted won the Nebula Award, and as a result a lot of people are reading it. And the reactions, as they have been pretty much ever since the book came out, are... mixed

Comments

[rj_anderson]

"Respect the house, even after you've moved out" is a very useful way of putting it.

And yes, there is sometimes a statute of limitations on reading certain kinds of fantasy. I will forever be wistful that I didn't discover Diana Wynne Jones young enough to fall in love with her like so many other writers I know -- although I read several of her books as an adult and enjoyed most of them well enough, they never quite held together for me.

But I am also glad that I read certain books when I did, including some problematic ones, because I took more good away from those books than modern critics seem to think possible, and I don't think they did my worldview any particular harm. Even as a teen, I knew that being forced to have sex with somebody you don't love because dragons was creepy, and I was glad real life didn't work that way, even if it meant no dragons. But as a bullied and lonely child, Menolly's character arc in the first two Harper Hall books was a lifeline for me.

[kerravonsen]

But as a bullied and lonely child, Menolly's character arc in the first two Harper Hall books was a lifeline for me.

Oh yes, I think that those two books are the best of all the Pern books, hands down.

[kiwiria]

Could not agree more! I was so disappointed that there was so little of her in the third Harper Hall book.

I still reread the two first (and the second especially) on an almost yearly basis.

[rj_anderson]

There is no third Harper Hall book, I have no idea what you're talking about. *handwaves*

[kiwiria]

"This isn't the book you're looking for".