Frostflower and Thorn/Frostflower and Windbourne by Phyllis Ann Karr

[meganbmoore]

In a world where all warriors are women and sorcerers and sorceresses lose their powers if they have sex 9a trope that does later get turned on its head quite well), the warrior Thorn finds herself pregnant and desperate to get rid of "the grub" before it interferes with her work.  Meanwhile, the sorceress Frostflower desperately craves a child,

Comments

[magicnoire]

I have a lot of the early Sword & Sorceress anthologies edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley and if I recall correctly, there were short stories about Frostflower and Thorn included in them. I'm not sure at one point in the timeline they took place (I don't seem to recall a child) or if those short stories later gave rise to the novel or if those short stories were later incorporated into the novels (as Mercedes Lackey did with her Tarma & Kethry characters into her Valdemar books and Jennifer Roberson did with Keeley into her Shapechanger books). I read those anthologies a lot when I was younger so it might be interesting to look at them again

[meganbmoore]

I think fantasy is on the verge of being like movies, where you seemed to have a period of people actively making the roles bigger and more important, but it drifted into "you have women in the movie, isn't that enough?" I've noticed that the surge of women doing things independently and being the focus is starting to die off a bit (see: how much UF is all about which guy she'll be with).

[magicnoire]

I kind of think the UF genre is stagnating and in a rut at the moment. Much like stupid farmboy finds the plot coupons who save the world, we have kick-ass* chick kicks butt and has sex.

* Kick-ass here often being the adjective used even when the character in question is not remotely close.

[meganbmoore]

I can think of a few suppsedly demure Damsels in Distress who could mop the floor with a lot of these "I'm such a big tough fighter chick" characters.

(And what's wrong with farmgirls, huh fantasy? Give them a chance to get the magic sword and learn they're the secret granddaughter of the king who was hidden away from the evil dragon who was prophesied to kill it! Or whatever!)

[southerndave]

This is one author so obscure she doesn't even have an article in Wikipedia.. There are a lot of books under her name in Amazon (although I don't know if that link will work; I've given up trying to get a clean search link from Amazon... there's just so much session IDs and crap and associated stuff in the link it's probably not going to want to work).

The book titles do sound vaguely familiar though. I'm fairly sure I haven't actually read them, but I'm sure I've heard them somewhere before.

[chomiji]

Yes, a lot of things about these books don't hold water when examined really closely - especially with the cultural issues. But I liked the personalities, and the interactions often carried the story forward despite the rickety world-building. There are a large number of good female-female interactions in these stories. Frostflower's interactions with the priestess who was trying to get pregnant and who thought she would like having Frostflower as a co-wife were really sad and poignant, for example, and I like the elderly scholar-priestess at the end of the second book, too.

I think that in this era of story-writing, authors were trying to work past the idea that if someone is raped, then it's all over for her.

Thorn's growing fondness for Starwind sort of matches her feelings about Frostflower's dog Dowl ... they're both messy, annoying creatures who can be cute and fun sometimes. I've known both men and women who feel that way about babies!

[telophase]

I recently re-read them also, and the cultural structures were driving me insane, because the world doesn't hold together when you're coming at it from that angle. XD

Thorn's growing fondness for Starwind sort of matches her feelings about Frostflower's dog Dowl

And I was having more-or-less the same thought about that before I read this comment. XD

[meganbmoore]

I am forgiving with sucky worldbuilding with something this old.

Hmm...I left out how, while warriors, sorceri, and normal people had nature/action/noun/adjective-word-and-combination names, the parmer priests and their families had Generic Strung Together Sounds Names.

[meganbmoore]

The first book was a little too "all women are desperate for children unless they're unwomanly" for my tastes at times.

I think this was well into the "women's adventures start because they were raped" actually, the difference being that Frostflower forgave rather than grew bitter and vengeful.

[ryanitenebrae]

Uh, I know she wrote a book based on Arthurian legend titled, "The Idylls of the Queen." I had a copy somewhere, but I'm not sure where it ended up.

[bzoppa]

Fantastic Fiction is my resource. Sometimes it's off (the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child pages are misleading for the Pendergast books) but mostly it's accurate. Seriously, it's a great site if you haven't used it.

Phyllis Ann Karr

Like magicnoire, I read the Sword & Sorceress books when I was 13-15-ish years old. I think I got one of the books but couldn't get through it. I'm a little surprised you're reading them, I'd think they'd be incredibly dated and you'd find huge issue with them... but it's nice to intersperse other books.

Right now I'm read The Mists of Avalon and I don't hate it like I thought I would. Which is good, I suppose, as the book's nearly 900 pages long.

[meganbmoore]

They are very dated, but I can look at when something came out and judge it accordingly.

Thanks for the link.