More Lymond Babble
http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2767
Wow. Apparently lots of stuff happens in the world when you spend two weeks devouring the Lymond Chronicles and ignoring everything else.
My boss told me that they’d announced the new Doctor as I walked into work today. My immediate thought was “I can’t wait to read Fandom Wank.” It’s not disappointing.
(I’m surprised, actually. I expected to have to grudgingly give Moffat his due for choosing Patterson Joseph. Instead I’m LOLing at him for choosing some random kid who looks like the mutated offspring of David Tennant and Robert Pattinson.)
I owe email and comment responses to people. I’m sorry. I really haven’t been at my computer for two weeks-I updated the last two times from Indiana via my magical phone.
Oh! And I have to say-THANK YOU kita0610 FOR THE LOVELY CARD AND DAVID TENNANT CALENDAR! And thank you
netweight for the incredibly sweet card! My internet friends are the best. :)
Now I’m going to ramble more about the Lymond Chronicles, because that’s all I spent my winter vacation thinking about. I finished Pawn in Frankincense and The Ringed Castle and am now partway into Checkmate.
I've rambled before about what an amazing difference it is to read these for the second time. I am also taking my time and reading very carefully--this time I've got a translation guide and am diligently looking up every quotation. It helps a lot when you know what the characters are actually talking about! The first part of Checkmate is practically incomprehensible if you don't speak French--I remember wanting to throw the book across the room the first time I read it because I had no idea what the hell they were saying. Plus it turns out that if you know what they're saying in French, the stuff they say later in English actually makes sense! And I'm even looking up English words in a dictionary, which I've never had to do before--I've always been able to figure out meaning from context. But here there are so many weird archaic Renaissance words, and used in ways where you can't get the meaning from context, and, being Dunnett, if you miss one thing you're bound to end up lost. So it's helping a lot. Plus I zoomed through the series the first time, wanting to get to the end. This time I'm savoring.
So, Pawn in Frankincense. Marthe really grew on me--maybe I relate to her bitterness. She's as brilliant as Lymond and yet because of her gender and birth, is never given the same opportunities he has. (Of course, her stubborn resentment doesn't help--she has plenty of opportunities later--but he does start his life with an unfair advantage.) And I found it incredibly moving when she helps Lymond through his opium withdrawal, and credits him for showing her the goodness that men are capable of. (And now I'm sad that she regresses later.)
Jerott... okay, still annoys me, but slightly less. I get that he's passionate and quick-tempered, but what bothers me is how naive he is. He still gets outraged about ridiculous things at a moment's notice, when he should realize by now that Lymond is a decent guy who usually has a good reason for the crazy shit he does. Like, take Jerott's outrage over Lymond sleeping with the Aga Morat. It's so obviously done to protect Jerott and Marthe, but Jerott gets all bitchy and puts it down to, I don't know, hedonism or corruption or whatever. Which just makes things worse for Lymond. Silly Jerott.
But I grew really attached to the group of characters on my re-read, much as I'm already attached to the Game of Kings grouping (*sniffle* -- Christian and Will). I kind of love it, Jerott and Marthe and Philippa et all on their crazy quest through the Ottoman Empire. I think Dunnett fell a bit too in love with her research--there are insane numbers of descriptive passages that go on forever. And don't get me wrong, they're fascinating--the kind of thing you savor on a re-read--but they definitely interrupt the narrative flow. I don't want to read three pages of beautiful descriptions of sixteenth century Istanbul--I want to know what the hell is happening with Lymond's quest for his kid!
Speaking of which... oh my god, you guys, the ending. It's even worse the second time. I spent the whole book dreading it. I mean, it's beautiful, brilliant writing, one of the most compelling things I've read in fiction, but it's awful. I forgot that after the child dies, Lymond goes over and kisses him on the lips. That is just the most disturbing image. And the way that Dunnett sets the whole thing up is just brutal. In book three, we see Lymond's adoration of his baby nephew, and the way his heart stops when Gabriel tells him he has a son. And when he meets Khaireddin in book four, the way he falls for that kid, the way the child brings out so much unexpected love and need and goodness in our hero's heart. I think that part of the reason his decision is so devastating is that Lymond weighs the choice differently than the reader. Lymond values Kuzum's likelihood of survival and bond with Philippa, but he doesn't weigh the value of Khaireddin on Lymond himself. As a reader, you desperately want your hero to have the child that he loves, but Lymond undervalues his own needs (and figures he'll be dead soon anyway) so he chooses differently than I would. (Plus, god, I know Lymond made a logical decision based on which child was more likely to survive, but I feel like at least Kuzum already had some good in his life, whereas Khaireddin had none, so I'd want to save Khaireddin so that he could at least experience kindness and love.)
Knowing the outcome also made it easier to appreciate the theme running throughout the book, which is the sacrifice of the personal for the greater good. Jerott realizes it when he sees the Byzantine treasure, and gets the difference between Marthe and Gaultier--who want to sell it for their own personal profit--and Gilles--who wants to study and preserve it for posterity. In the underground Byzantine ruins, Jerott feels the power of history. And, after having spent much of the book criticizing Lymond for being willing to sacrifice his son if it'll stop Gabriel, is able to advise Lymond at the start of the chess game to sacrifice any of them. Because the damage that Gabriel's brilliance, ambition, and sadism will cause to history, to great groups of people, is worse than anything that will happen to Lymond's friends as individuals.
Which, of course, still doesn't make it easy. And it's no wonder that after sacrificing his own son, Lymond does everything in his power to destroy his own capacity to feel emotion (speaking of the sacrifice of the personal for the greater good... in Pawn, it's the actual greater good, whereas in The Ringed Castle it's self-destruction and escapism disguised as the greater good). The Ringed Castle is a difficult book, and I think the most frustrating for me, because for the first time I feel like I'm not completely on the same page as the author. And, okay, Dunnett was brilliant, but I think there are flaws in this book. Like, we're supposed to think that the cold, hardened machine Lymond is becoming in Russia is bad, but he's actually not becoming a hardened machine. He punishes Adam to protect him from worse punishment by the Tsar and stays with him in secret afterward, he kills his eagle after it's used to kill a child, and he manages to win the heart of his enemy--d'Harcourt--even in his worst Voevoda Bolshoia mode. And, seriously, if he wants to try to annihilate his own gentler emotions, why the hell not? If you had to kill your own kid for the greater good, you'd probably want to do the same. I can't really blame him.
And then the other thing is that we're supposed to see his mission in Russia as doomed. The narrative compares it to Queen Mary of England--her delusional love for Philip, her false pregnancies, and her willingness to torture her people because she believes it'll earn her credit from god or whatever. It seems that we're supposed to see Lymond's desire to nation build under Ivan the Terrible as equally delusional and self-destructive. But... it's Lymond. After watching him through four books of absurdly superhuman feats of heroism, now we're supposed to doubt him? If anyone could tame Ivan the Terrible, it's Francis Crawford of Lymond. And, yes, we have the weight of history telling us he didn't, but the characters don't know that! It drives me fucking crazy that his various friends and minions won't leave him alone and let him choose his own path, self-destructive though it may be. The fact that they violently restrain him and resort to tricking him to keep him from Russia just... is not okay with me. And I don't even know whose side I'm supposed to be on in the narrative. Yeah, his friends want to help him, and they're probably right that he'd get himself killed in Russia, and Philippa's right that he needs his family, but it's not their decision to make. And, like I said, I'm just not convinced of the futility of Lymond's mission. He found a reason to live, and in doing something that may have no personal meaning for him (in his attempt to close off all personal emotions entirely), but it was still, intellectually, a quest for the greater good, a way to help millions of people.
I hate that Lymond ends up basically wasting two years of his life there. I guess you could call it part of the process of recovery from the events of Pawn, but still. All that brilliance and effort. And I love his budding friendship with Diccon Chancellor, their shared passion for discovery and progress. It's very intellectual--god forbid Lymond should allow himself to experience emotion--but it's wonderful anyway, that Renaissance spirit of adventure and knowledge. If Lymond thinks he's found his purpose bringing progress to Russia, why not??? I think if Dunnett really wanted me against him, she needed to make his Voevoda Bolshoia persona more awful--have him do something actually irredeemable for once, because otherwise it's just like the other books, where he appears to do something awful and then turns out to be totally justified. (But then, this is the author who manages to get her main character addicted to opium through no fault of his own--she really should've let him be more genuinely flawed.) And she needed to convince me that his mission was doomed to failure, because after four books of utterly implausible brilliance, I'm just not convinced that this time he wasn't up to task.
Plus, the narrative structure is just not very compelling. In all the first four books we have a clear enemy and a clear goal, shared with our protagonist. (Well, as clear as Dunnett can be, which is to say, clear on re-read.) Book one: Lymond wants to clear his name and is thwarted by Margaret Lennox and various English nobles. Book two: Lymond wants to protect Mary Queen of Scots from John and Robin Stewart. Book three: Lymond wants to build an army and stop Gabriel. Book four: Lymond wants to save his son and stop Gabriel. Book five... who's the villain? Lymond's own dark side? What's the goal? For Lymond, to nation-build in Russia; for the reader...? I guess we're supposed to want Lymond to stop being emo and go home to his family? Except I don't. Family is overrated. He's an adult and he can run away if he wants.
That said, the book does have one of my all-time favorite scenes: the "Languish Locked in L!" scene in the revels, where Lymond falls for Philippa. The banter is brilliant, and Dunnett writes scenes of joy so wonderfully. It's my favorite of them all: the whorehouse scene in book one (where Will falls for Lymond), the rooftop chase in book two (where Robin falls for Lymond), and the escape chase in book six (where Philippa falls for Lymond). Part of the reason Dunnett's incredibly emo hero is so compelling is that he's also capable of such joy and charisma, and of course, he should have a partner who's capable of the same. Philippa frequently annoys me with her meddling and bossiness, but she's also the only character with wit and artistry and joy to match Lymond's.
And now on to Checkmate. I really skimmed this one the first time--I wanted to get to the end, I was distracted in real life, the tiny print was giving me a headache, and the incessant French was driving me crazy. Like I said, the translations are helping. Unfortunately I also remember this one basically turning into a romance novel, which, *sigh*. Not my cup of tea. And I also remember being incredibly frustrated by all the prophecies--I don't believe in fate, but the book doesn't make any sense unless you buy into it. And the obsession with Lymond's birth is just... weird. I still don't get why it matters to him so much. Even if Sybilla isn't his birth mother--he loves her, she raised him, so what? And if she is his mother but she slept around--again, so what? Gavin was a dick; who can blame her? He's known Sybilla his whole life--he's really letting an old rumor outweigh a lifetime of her being the best mother ever? I just can't wrap my head around why it should matter, especially when Lymond himself dismisses the idea that parentage matters when he saves Kuzum over Khaireddin (which, as much as Lymond looks down on himself and his own potentially corrupted bloodline, he must know that if you're judging by birth, being the incestuous progeny of two sociopathic sadists is worse!)
But I do love Lymond and will continue re-reading. I'm definitely more fond of the earlier books, though--The Game of Kings remains my favorite, largely because I so adore the relationship between Lymond and Richard, and because Christian is awesome and Will is my favorite of the many naive young fools who falls for Lymond (he's way more fun than Jerott or Robin).
I think the series falls into four story arcs (book one: Lymond clears his name and protects Scotland; book two: Lymond explores his hedonistic side and protects Scotland; books three and four: Lymond builds an army and fights Gabriel; books five and six: Lymond falls in love, has migraines, and repeatedly tries to kill himself). Can you see why the last arc is less interesting to me? I have large amounts of patience for emo behavior in my heroes--witness my love for Doctor Who season three--but even I have my limits. Lymond being emo because he's suffering while heroically saving the world? That's fine. Lymond being emo because he's married to the woman he loves and she loves him back, but he hates himself for no good reason? Dude. Get over it already.
I think it's kind of an internal/external distinction. The first three "arcs" have an external enemy for Lymond to face and defeat. The final arc is Lymond defeating his own internal demons. I don't inherently object to the concept, to the books getting more psychological, I just think that the execution isn't up to par. Maybe because I just can't buy into Lymond's extreme self-hatred--he's just not that bad! Dunnett never has him do anything awful that isn't justified by the greater good--when he messes up, it's only because he's not superman. His worst actual traits are, what? That he's moody and rude and not quite perfect enough to save every single person who gets themselves killed trying to help him? I do understand it--he's a perfectionist, and has all kinds of self-esteem issues anyway stemming from his physically abusive father and various incidents of sexual abuse/exploitation. It's understandably irrational, but... I just... honestly, I lose sympathy, when he has everything he could ever want right in front of him, and he's too depressed to realize how incredibly lucky he is. It's tragic, but it's also really, really annoying.
Current Mood:
thoughtful
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