Marie Brennan's Blog, page 210
March 7, 2012
Books read, February 2012
Only, um, a lot late.
Something interesting I've noticed: so far this year, every bit of fiction I've read has been by a female writer. (There's been some male-authored nonfiction and gaming material.) Granted, partly that's because of the disproportionate weight carried by Diana Wynne Jones. But given that I've been working entirely from my own bookshelf in choosing what to read, that actually makes me kind of happy; it means I am not, as many people do, skewing unconsciously toward men in terms of what books I read and talk about.
On the other hand, there's this bit of number-crunching, which shows to the extent that we're approaching parity on book reviews, a lot of that is driven by women reviewing women, counterbalancing the men who who mostly review men. And even then, we're not at equal numbers yet.
Anyway, last month's books -- before we get any further into this month.
The Kingdom of Benin in the Sixteenth Century, Elizabeth M. McClelland. Research. Dissected elsewhere.
Emerald Empire Gaming book, for Legend of the Five Rings. Extremely satisfying, in that it consists almost entirely of cool and/or useful setting information one could use to flesh out a game, rather than the D&D model of "spells, feats, magic items, and a few prestige classes, and we're done." L5R has a track record of being good like that.
Archer's Goon, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
The Political, Economic, and Social Structure of the Kingdoms of the Western Sudan: Ghana, Mali, and Songhai (Gao): A Comparative Study, Maxwell Owusu. Does not have the problems of the other book. Beyond that, it's an extremely dry (and short) academic read, that sent me down Nostalgia Lane over the archaeological discussion of urbanization and state formation that were current when this book was written . . . in 1966.
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal. Austen plus magic, but not in that "toss in some zombies and call it a day" fashion we've seen elsewhere. The major thing I would say about this one is that a lot depends on the expectations you go in with: as more of a fantasy reader than an Austen reader, I found myself reflexively looking for more oomph, that wasn't there: the stakes are very Austen-ish, which is to say personal rather than epic (though the resolution is definitely flashier than Austen would have done). I think it succeeds at what it's trying to do, though, so as long as that's what you're looking for, it's a good book. Taking it on its own terms, my only real quibble is that I would have liked it to dig into the gender issues a bit more deeply.
Power of Three, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. III: Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century, ed. I. Hrbek. Partial read. This is an abridged copy, but I've never seen the whole thing anywhere -- and that's probably fine for my purposes, since I skipped half the book anyway. It's a collection of extremely academic articles on topics on African history, many of which were either on regions I'm not currently looking at (like the Maghrib) or topics not useful to me (like a study of coinage and where it was minted). But I read the bits on West Africa, and they were helpful.
A Tale of Time City, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay: Life in Medieval Africa, Patricia and Frederick McKissack. A short book, and possibly one intended for kids, but it's the best resource I've yet found for daily-life description of the Western Sudan prior to the European influx. In contrast to McClelland, the authors here are scrupulous about noting where they're getting their information from, and when those sources contradict one another. Occasionally this comes across as sort of patronizing, but you know, I prefer that to the alternative.
Unexpected Magic, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Slow start so far this month; I'm having to entrench myself for more research reading, and that stuff doesn't go as easily. The next list may be a good bit shorter.
Something interesting I've noticed: so far this year, every bit of fiction I've read has been by a female writer. (There's been some male-authored nonfiction and gaming material.) Granted, partly that's because of the disproportionate weight carried by Diana Wynne Jones. But given that I've been working entirely from my own bookshelf in choosing what to read, that actually makes me kind of happy; it means I am not, as many people do, skewing unconsciously toward men in terms of what books I read and talk about.
On the other hand, there's this bit of number-crunching, which shows to the extent that we're approaching parity on book reviews, a lot of that is driven by women reviewing women, counterbalancing the men who who mostly review men. And even then, we're not at equal numbers yet.
Anyway, last month's books -- before we get any further into this month.
The Kingdom of Benin in the Sixteenth Century, Elizabeth M. McClelland. Research. Dissected elsewhere.
Emerald Empire Gaming book, for Legend of the Five Rings. Extremely satisfying, in that it consists almost entirely of cool and/or useful setting information one could use to flesh out a game, rather than the D&D model of "spells, feats, magic items, and a few prestige classes, and we're done." L5R has a track record of being good like that.
Archer's Goon, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
The Political, Economic, and Social Structure of the Kingdoms of the Western Sudan: Ghana, Mali, and Songhai (Gao): A Comparative Study, Maxwell Owusu. Does not have the problems of the other book. Beyond that, it's an extremely dry (and short) academic read, that sent me down Nostalgia Lane over the archaeological discussion of urbanization and state formation that were current when this book was written . . . in 1966.
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal. Austen plus magic, but not in that "toss in some zombies and call it a day" fashion we've seen elsewhere. The major thing I would say about this one is that a lot depends on the expectations you go in with: as more of a fantasy reader than an Austen reader, I found myself reflexively looking for more oomph, that wasn't there: the stakes are very Austen-ish, which is to say personal rather than epic (though the resolution is definitely flashier than Austen would have done). I think it succeeds at what it's trying to do, though, so as long as that's what you're looking for, it's a good book. Taking it on its own terms, my only real quibble is that I would have liked it to dig into the gender issues a bit more deeply.
Power of Three, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. III: Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century, ed. I. Hrbek. Partial read. This is an abridged copy, but I've never seen the whole thing anywhere -- and that's probably fine for my purposes, since I skipped half the book anyway. It's a collection of extremely academic articles on topics on African history, many of which were either on regions I'm not currently looking at (like the Maghrib) or topics not useful to me (like a study of coinage and where it was minted). But I read the bits on West Africa, and they were helpful.
A Tale of Time City, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay: Life in Medieval Africa, Patricia and Frederick McKissack. A short book, and possibly one intended for kids, but it's the best resource I've yet found for daily-life description of the Western Sudan prior to the European influx. In contrast to McClelland, the authors here are scrupulous about noting where they're getting their information from, and when those sources contradict one another. Occasionally this comes across as sort of patronizing, but you know, I prefer that to the alternative.
Unexpected Magic, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Slow start so far this month; I'm having to entrench myself for more research reading, and that stuff doesn't go as easily. The next list may be a good bit shorter.
Planning for Sirens
I intend to go to the Sirens Conference again this fall, where Nalo Hopkinson, Malinda Lo, and folklorist Kate Bernheimer will be Guests of Honor. I wasn't sure I'd be back for a third year . . . but then a) they moved the location to far-south Washington (just outside of Portland, OR), which is a lot more accessible to me, and b) they made the theme "retellings." And, um. I sort of have a thing for that.
Planning for the program has already begun, and![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380923608i/3292608.gif)
starlady38
is looking into doing a panel on fanfiction. Like her, I hope to see the programming be about more than just the obvious folkloric angle, so here's my own proposal: I'd like to talk about historical fiction.
The starting point would probably be books that interact directly with real historical events, like Kara Dalkey's Genpei . From there, you can expand to things like Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, which doesn't follow the actual trajectory of the Napoleonic Wars, but is still recognizably a retelling of that large-scale event. I'm particularly interested in the question of how the writer relates to historical people as characters, and what obligations, if any, she has regarding their representation.
So, three questions for the audience:
1) Do you think you'll be coming to Sirens?
2) If so, would you want to be on this panel?
3) Whether you are or not, what kinds of things would you want to see the panel discuss?
Planning for the program has already begun, and
starlady38
is looking into doing a panel on fanfiction. Like her, I hope to see the programming be about more than just the obvious folkloric angle, so here's my own proposal: I'd like to talk about historical fiction.The starting point would probably be books that interact directly with real historical events, like Kara Dalkey's Genpei . From there, you can expand to things like Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, which doesn't follow the actual trajectory of the Napoleonic Wars, but is still recognizably a retelling of that large-scale event. I'm particularly interested in the question of how the writer relates to historical people as characters, and what obligations, if any, she has regarding their representation.
So, three questions for the audience:
1) Do you think you'll be coming to Sirens?
2) If so, would you want to be on this panel?
3) Whether you are or not, what kinds of things would you want to see the panel discuss?
I knew him when . . . .
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a hearty round of applause for
ninja_turbo
, who has just sold his first novel(s):
He was a member of my crit group way back when he was an undergrad, so pardon me while I have a bit of a "he's all growed up!" reaction over here. :-)
(Not too growed up to do a public Kermit flail, though.)
ninja_turbo
, who has just sold his first novel(s):Michael Underwood's GEEKOMANCY, discovered at the Book Country website and pitched as Buffy The Vampire Slayer meets Clerks, to Adam Wilson at Pocket Star, in a two-book deal, in a nice deal, for publication in 2012, by Sara Megibow of Nelson Literary Agency (World).
He was a member of my crit group way back when he was an undergrad, so pardon me while I have a bit of a "he's all growed up!" reaction over here. :-)
(Not too growed up to do a public Kermit flail, though.)
March 6, 2012
fundraising reminder
In the wake of Rush Limbaugh's disgusting attacks on Sandra Fluke -- and when I've been reading articles like this one on funding cuts in the UK for domestic violence shelters -- it seems an opportune time to remind everybody about the random little fundraiser I'm doing.
More details at that link, but the short form is that, as a part of my ongoing analysis, if you donate to a women's charity -- you choose which one; it could be a shelter or rape counseling or pro-choice or anti-discrimination or whatever -- and send me the info, I will buy used copies of various bits of Wheel of Time merchandise, and blog about them for your entertainment.
Because I'm really tired of feeling like we're backsliding on women's rights, like the Overton window has shifted to the point where we've got a major presidential candidate speaking out against all forms of birth control, and people cheering him for it. So I hope this encourages some of you to donate to a worthy cause.
More details at that link, but the short form is that, as a part of my ongoing analysis, if you donate to a women's charity -- you choose which one; it could be a shelter or rape counseling or pro-choice or anti-discrimination or whatever -- and send me the info, I will buy used copies of various bits of Wheel of Time merchandise, and blog about them for your entertainment.
Because I'm really tired of feeling like we're backsliding on women's rights, like the Overton window has shifted to the point where we've got a major presidential candidate speaking out against all forms of birth control, and people cheering him for it. So I hope this encourages some of you to donate to a worthy cause.
March 5, 2012
Proud to be a Dragon
Warning: the following post will not make the blindest bit of sense unless you're familiar with Legend of the Five Rings. If you aren't, please continue on to the next blog post. Thank you for your time.
***
So in our session tonight, one of the PCs -- a Shosuro trained in the Bayushi courtier school -- goes with our NPC companion to hunt down this Yogo who's wanted for a crime. In the course of questioning the peasant innkeeper, she realizes he's lying. And, being a Shosuro, she opts to subtly intimidate him into telling the truth, rather than backhanding him across the face for lying to a samurai.
A Crane in the common room of the inn overhears this. He's a Doji trained in the Kakita dueling academy, and is trying to make a name for himself as a duelist, so he comes over and starts blustering to the Shosuro about the way she's treating this innkeeper -- basically ginning things up into an offense so that he can challenge her to a duel. She (very rightly) calls him out for eavesdropping on somebody else's conversation and butting into business that isn't his, and so thoroughly upsets him that he tries to slap her. Whereupon the NPC companion -- a Mirumoto bushi from the Iron Mountain school -- steps up and rams the butt of his katana into the Doji's ribs.
Stuff and things, we run and get a magistrate to okay the duel (to first blood only), the two guys face off. This could go badly, because the Mirumoto is a great skirmisher, but is much less experienced at dueling. The Shosuro, however, has told him that his opponent has the Brash disadvantage, so the PCs and their NPC companion are doing all kinds of little things to needle the Doji and put him off his game. Which we succeed at well enough that a) he basically false-starts, gets bashed in the ribs again, and has to be ordered back into position by the magistrate, and then b) he continues with his strike even though the Mirumoto went first, and the duel is therefore supposed to be over. But he misses -- not because he meant to, but because of the damage he took from a certain now-broken rib and the first cut -- and so it's an all-round disgrace for the Doji.
We're in Shiro Yogo, so various Scorpion, Lion, and Crab are all more than happy to buy the Mirumoto drinks after the duel, and while an Ikoma with a MASSIVE GRUDGE against the Crane tells the entire teahouse the epic saga of this duel (cementing the general inclination to start calling the Mirumoto "Roshin the Crane-Killer"), the Shosuro decides to turn the phrase "the strength of Roshin!" into a drinking game. (The teahouse owner LOVES us. Our hangovers, however, do not.)
The next morning is the second day of the cherry blossom festival in Shiro Yogo, and there are various competitions. Including one for shugenja, where the challenge is to ID the spell being cast by the demonstrator. Our Kuni shugenja PC shows up for this one . . . and so does Roshin. Somebody put his name down for that competition, and it wasn't him. (We later find out it's the brother of the idiot Doji -- the one who argued his companions into letting the duel go ahead, only to watch his brother get ignominiously thrashed.)
But our Mirumoto bushi is a Mirumoto bushi.
He succeeds at a rather difficult Lore: Shugenja roll (as does our Kuni), and realizes the demonstrator is a Soshi. So they both know all his words and gestures are actually a total smokescreen, and they have to look elsewhere for evidence of what spells he's casting.
Our Kuni wins the competition.
Our Mirumoto comes in second.
(There's a very awkward moment at the awards ceremony later, where you've got two shugenja and a freaking bushi in armor standing there to get the spell-ID prizes, and the judges have to figure out what to give Roshin, because god knows that spell scroll they intended ain't going to do him much good. Also? "Strength of Roshin" is now our battle cry. And our favorite drinking game.)
But! Of course! The idiot Doji's brother wasn't done. He'd avoided entering Roshin in the archery competition (because it's known Roshin wants to enter the elite mounted-archer unit in the Dragon army, so that's one he'd probably do well in), but there's one other going on today . . . and that, of course, is an iaijutsu tournament.
Three rounds.
The first opponent gets the first strike, and misses.
(Our Mirumoto is now "Roshin the Untouchable Crane-killer.")
The second opponent loses.
And so does the third. Who is, of course, a Crane.
They lose even though they're better duelists than he is. All three of them have five ranks of iaijutsu, and Roshin only has three. But the GM had me roll for the opponents, and I'm here to tell you, my rolls legitimately sucked. The only good one, out of nine, was the guy who won Focus in the first round, and then completely whiffed his strike. So I don't know if it's the blessing of my cricket or what -- my Togashi monk has a lucky cricket, the Indestructible Kongou, and she bestowed his blessings before each round -- but Roshin places second in a competition he had no business being signed up for at all, and wins one where he should have gotten trounced.
STRENGTH OF ROSHIN! <drinks>
And you know, this is why I love gaming. Most of the time, the stories are messier and less satisfying than a well-constructed novel/movie/comic book series/other narrative medium of your choice. (You can't revise things after they happen, and sometimes the dice screw up an otherwise good plot.) But because they're improvisational, and because the dice do add an element of randomness . . . those moments when the story pulls together just right? Are all the more amazing. Put Roshin's achievements in a book, and I'll roll my eyes a bit at the implausibility of it all. But dude, I was there: it really happened. And we managed to totally shame a couple of Doji (who were so asking for it), and not only defend the honor of the Dragon Clan, but show that our bushi are smart as well as strong.
I heart Roshin. Best NPC companion ever*.
(*For values of "ever" that equal "in this game." I don't want
gollumgollum
,
oddsboy
,
drydem
, or
feyangel
to come after me in defense of Grektar.)
***
So in our session tonight, one of the PCs -- a Shosuro trained in the Bayushi courtier school -- goes with our NPC companion to hunt down this Yogo who's wanted for a crime. In the course of questioning the peasant innkeeper, she realizes he's lying. And, being a Shosuro, she opts to subtly intimidate him into telling the truth, rather than backhanding him across the face for lying to a samurai.
A Crane in the common room of the inn overhears this. He's a Doji trained in the Kakita dueling academy, and is trying to make a name for himself as a duelist, so he comes over and starts blustering to the Shosuro about the way she's treating this innkeeper -- basically ginning things up into an offense so that he can challenge her to a duel. She (very rightly) calls him out for eavesdropping on somebody else's conversation and butting into business that isn't his, and so thoroughly upsets him that he tries to slap her. Whereupon the NPC companion -- a Mirumoto bushi from the Iron Mountain school -- steps up and rams the butt of his katana into the Doji's ribs.
Stuff and things, we run and get a magistrate to okay the duel (to first blood only), the two guys face off. This could go badly, because the Mirumoto is a great skirmisher, but is much less experienced at dueling. The Shosuro, however, has told him that his opponent has the Brash disadvantage, so the PCs and their NPC companion are doing all kinds of little things to needle the Doji and put him off his game. Which we succeed at well enough that a) he basically false-starts, gets bashed in the ribs again, and has to be ordered back into position by the magistrate, and then b) he continues with his strike even though the Mirumoto went first, and the duel is therefore supposed to be over. But he misses -- not because he meant to, but because of the damage he took from a certain now-broken rib and the first cut -- and so it's an all-round disgrace for the Doji.
We're in Shiro Yogo, so various Scorpion, Lion, and Crab are all more than happy to buy the Mirumoto drinks after the duel, and while an Ikoma with a MASSIVE GRUDGE against the Crane tells the entire teahouse the epic saga of this duel (cementing the general inclination to start calling the Mirumoto "Roshin the Crane-Killer"), the Shosuro decides to turn the phrase "the strength of Roshin!" into a drinking game. (The teahouse owner LOVES us. Our hangovers, however, do not.)
The next morning is the second day of the cherry blossom festival in Shiro Yogo, and there are various competitions. Including one for shugenja, where the challenge is to ID the spell being cast by the demonstrator. Our Kuni shugenja PC shows up for this one . . . and so does Roshin. Somebody put his name down for that competition, and it wasn't him. (We later find out it's the brother of the idiot Doji -- the one who argued his companions into letting the duel go ahead, only to watch his brother get ignominiously thrashed.)
But our Mirumoto bushi is a Mirumoto bushi.
He succeeds at a rather difficult Lore: Shugenja roll (as does our Kuni), and realizes the demonstrator is a Soshi. So they both know all his words and gestures are actually a total smokescreen, and they have to look elsewhere for evidence of what spells he's casting.
Our Kuni wins the competition.
Our Mirumoto comes in second.
(There's a very awkward moment at the awards ceremony later, where you've got two shugenja and a freaking bushi in armor standing there to get the spell-ID prizes, and the judges have to figure out what to give Roshin, because god knows that spell scroll they intended ain't going to do him much good. Also? "Strength of Roshin" is now our battle cry. And our favorite drinking game.)
But! Of course! The idiot Doji's brother wasn't done. He'd avoided entering Roshin in the archery competition (because it's known Roshin wants to enter the elite mounted-archer unit in the Dragon army, so that's one he'd probably do well in), but there's one other going on today . . . and that, of course, is an iaijutsu tournament.
Three rounds.
The first opponent gets the first strike, and misses.
(Our Mirumoto is now "Roshin the Untouchable Crane-killer.")
The second opponent loses.
And so does the third. Who is, of course, a Crane.
They lose even though they're better duelists than he is. All three of them have five ranks of iaijutsu, and Roshin only has three. But the GM had me roll for the opponents, and I'm here to tell you, my rolls legitimately sucked. The only good one, out of nine, was the guy who won Focus in the first round, and then completely whiffed his strike. So I don't know if it's the blessing of my cricket or what -- my Togashi monk has a lucky cricket, the Indestructible Kongou, and she bestowed his blessings before each round -- but Roshin places second in a competition he had no business being signed up for at all, and wins one where he should have gotten trounced.
STRENGTH OF ROSHIN! <drinks>
And you know, this is why I love gaming. Most of the time, the stories are messier and less satisfying than a well-constructed novel/movie/comic book series/other narrative medium of your choice. (You can't revise things after they happen, and sometimes the dice screw up an otherwise good plot.) But because they're improvisational, and because the dice do add an element of randomness . . . those moments when the story pulls together just right? Are all the more amazing. Put Roshin's achievements in a book, and I'll roll my eyes a bit at the implausibility of it all. But dude, I was there: it really happened. And we managed to totally shame a couple of Doji (who were so asking for it), and not only defend the honor of the Dragon Clan, but show that our bushi are smart as well as strong.
I heart Roshin. Best NPC companion ever*.
(*For values of "ever" that equal "in this game." I don't want
gollumgollum
,
oddsboy
,
drydem
, or
feyangel
to come after me in defense of Grektar.)
March 1, 2012
homebrew system for Dragon Age
Tossing this out there for the gaming geeks to play with: I think you could run a Dragon Age tabletop using the Pathfinder system.
(I know there's a DA-specific system out there. I haven't heard very good things about it, and particularly object to the way each book only covers five levels, requiring you to buy four books to have a "complete" game. True, Scion did something similar -- but they also did a remarkably good job of putting other worthwhile content in all of their books. Very few companies pull that off.)
I figure that, at its core, you make warriors into fighters, rogues into . . . uh, rogues, and mages into sorcerers. A spells-per-day system is rather different from the mana-based system of the video game, but on the other hand, the video game is wall-to-wall combat, which a tabletop game wouldn't be. (And this opens up the potential for mages to have spells useful for any purpose other than nuking people. Seriously, one of the great flaws in DA worldbuilding is that as near as I can tell, mages are only good at killing and destruction -- there's no peacetime use for their magic, with the lone exception of healing, that would allow them to be anything other than a threat to society. And how often do you see them out in public, healing people?)
The nice thing about Pathfinder is its (relative) adaptability: if somebody wants to play a Dalish hunter, say, they could play a skirmisher -- a ranger without the spellcasting abilities. You can customize the differences between a Dalish Keeper and a Circle mage by using the sorcerer mechanics, but letting them pick from different spell lists (like druid and cleric), and also by picking different bloodlines. You can toss in some Traits to vary things a bit more, too. And then specializations you model with prestige classes: borrow the barbarian rage mechanic for berserkers, maybe some paladin mechanics for templars, cook up something for blood mages, and so on.
You'd have to tack on a few additional rules, like something to handle demonic possession or action in the Fade. But I think this would strike a decent balance between accuracy and simplicity: it comes vaguely close to the feel of the actual game (with level-based advancement, feats as talent equivalents, etc), while not requiring vast amounts of untested modding to make work. (I originally thought of modding it a lot further -- replace Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom with Magic, Cunning, and Willpower; make d20-style mechanics for the talents in the game -- but that rapidly became a nightmare of effort.)
I haven't played Pathfinder very much yet, though, so I don't know if there are improvements or problems I ought to think about. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?
(I know there's a DA-specific system out there. I haven't heard very good things about it, and particularly object to the way each book only covers five levels, requiring you to buy four books to have a "complete" game. True, Scion did something similar -- but they also did a remarkably good job of putting other worthwhile content in all of their books. Very few companies pull that off.)
I figure that, at its core, you make warriors into fighters, rogues into . . . uh, rogues, and mages into sorcerers. A spells-per-day system is rather different from the mana-based system of the video game, but on the other hand, the video game is wall-to-wall combat, which a tabletop game wouldn't be. (And this opens up the potential for mages to have spells useful for any purpose other than nuking people. Seriously, one of the great flaws in DA worldbuilding is that as near as I can tell, mages are only good at killing and destruction -- there's no peacetime use for their magic, with the lone exception of healing, that would allow them to be anything other than a threat to society. And how often do you see them out in public, healing people?)
The nice thing about Pathfinder is its (relative) adaptability: if somebody wants to play a Dalish hunter, say, they could play a skirmisher -- a ranger without the spellcasting abilities. You can customize the differences between a Dalish Keeper and a Circle mage by using the sorcerer mechanics, but letting them pick from different spell lists (like druid and cleric), and also by picking different bloodlines. You can toss in some Traits to vary things a bit more, too. And then specializations you model with prestige classes: borrow the barbarian rage mechanic for berserkers, maybe some paladin mechanics for templars, cook up something for blood mages, and so on.
You'd have to tack on a few additional rules, like something to handle demonic possession or action in the Fade. But I think this would strike a decent balance between accuracy and simplicity: it comes vaguely close to the feel of the actual game (with level-based advancement, feats as talent equivalents, etc), while not requiring vast amounts of untested modding to make work. (I originally thought of modding it a lot further -- replace Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom with Magic, Cunning, and Willpower; make d20-style mechanics for the talents in the game -- but that rapidly became a nightmare of effort.)
I haven't played Pathfinder very much yet, though, so I don't know if there are improvements or problems I ought to think about. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?
The DWJ Project: Unexpected Magic
Last of the collections, both in terms of my (totally random) reading order, and publication date. It's also the largest, and contains a number of stories not found in the others; on the other hand, it reprints a lot of the weakest stories from
Warlock at the Wheel
, and I have no idea why.
Things that are new:
"The Girl Jones" -- non-fantasy story about a girl who ends up looking after a bunch of younger children, and screws it up in a way that ensures nobody will ask her to do that again. Not much to this one, and I'm really not sure why it was chosen to open the collection.
"The Green Stone" -- sort of proto-Derkholm, from the perspective of the "recording cleric" for a Quest that's about to begin. Unfortunately, because the cleric doesn't know much about what's going on, the plot kind of comes out of nowhere, and doesn't get fleshed out very well.
"The Fat Wizard" -- an iteration of the "unpleasant person gets their just desserts" trope. Better-written than most of the iterations in Warlock at the Wheel or Stopping for a Spell, but still not all that great, and (as the title suggests) it's likely to bother people offended by her treatment of weight issues.
"Little Dot" -- this, however, is fabulous. (And I don't just say that because it involves cats.) I want, as I usually do, more background for the threat, but this story excellently displays one of Jones' great talents, which is characterization. Henry's six cats -- sorry, let me correct that; the six cats that own Henry -- all have highly vivid personalities, from the brave and resourceful Dot to the gorgeous and deeply stupid Madame Dalrymple. Watching them go to town on the woman who invades Henry's house is a thing of horrifying beauty. :-)
The main reason to own this book, though, is for Everard's Ride, which was published by NESFA Press in 1995, but is almost impossible to find for a reasonable price.
The thing that fascinates me about it that to the best of my knowledge, it's actually the earliest thing of Jones' that has been published. Changeover came out in 1970, but the publication notes at the end of this collection say that Everard's Ride was written in 1966.
fjm
said in the comments on
Witch's Business
that her first couple of novels were meddled with by editorial influence, and reading this makes that quite apparent. Granted, I don't know how much (if at all) Jones revised Everard's Ride before its publication, but this feels far more like her style than her first couple of published fantasy novels do.
And there's enough meat to it that I need a spoiler-cut.
I like that it gives fairly good shrift to its female characters (mostly Cecilia, but also Susannah), and that the Courcys get redeemed from "stock rich kids" territory by their response to finding out that the Hornby children have gone missing. I also like the process of Alex and Everard becoming friends with one another; I've never been a young boy, but it seemed pretty plausible to me, with the beating each other up and being really angry at each other and then ending up good friends. I do wish the denoument had continued to split its attention between Cecelia and Alex, though, rather than sticking with him, and therefore relegating her situation to last-minute exposition. Still, the characters and their relationships are definitely a strength here.
If I have an overall complaint, it's that I wanted Falleyfell to be more fantastical. The early stuff leads us to expect it's a land of faeries or ghosts or something along those lines, but once you get there, it appears to be almost completely mundane -- just a mirror-realm of sorts, alongside the real world, but reachable only through special means. Robert's first appearance had me craving more: some kind of Wild Hunt thing, instead of simple politics. (This was possibly not helped by the fact that my subconscious decided to connect the whole story of how Everard's father was murdered to the "duel in the rose garden" thing from
pameladean
's Secret Country books, which added to the expectation of More Fantasy.)
Looking back over the collections, it turns out you can get almost all of her short fiction if you buy this and Mixed Magics . The stories in Stopping for a Spell aren't worth it, Warlock at the Wheel and Believing Is Seeing are all duplicated in one or the other of these two, and Minor Arcana has only The True State of Affairs that isn't included elsewhere. So if you want to be more efficient about this than I've been, that's how to do it. <g>
(Me, what I really want is a leaner, meaner version of this book to go with Mixed Magics: something with "Dragon Reserve, Home Eight," "Little Dot," "Enna Hittims," "What the Cat Told Me," "The Girl Who Loved the Sun," and then both Everard's Ride and The True State of Affairs, if you want to go ahead and have it be a big collection. Maybe a couple more, like "Nad and Dan adn Quaffy," that I'm not so fond of, but other readers are. Anyway, just her good work, and not the weaker stuff.)
Three books left: her first, her last, and the one that's half-autobiography. And -- crap, I meant to check this sooner -- a couple of short stories NOT in the collections I discussed above. Ack! Must get those, stat!
Things that are new:
"The Girl Jones" -- non-fantasy story about a girl who ends up looking after a bunch of younger children, and screws it up in a way that ensures nobody will ask her to do that again. Not much to this one, and I'm really not sure why it was chosen to open the collection.
"The Green Stone" -- sort of proto-Derkholm, from the perspective of the "recording cleric" for a Quest that's about to begin. Unfortunately, because the cleric doesn't know much about what's going on, the plot kind of comes out of nowhere, and doesn't get fleshed out very well.
"The Fat Wizard" -- an iteration of the "unpleasant person gets their just desserts" trope. Better-written than most of the iterations in Warlock at the Wheel or Stopping for a Spell, but still not all that great, and (as the title suggests) it's likely to bother people offended by her treatment of weight issues.
"Little Dot" -- this, however, is fabulous. (And I don't just say that because it involves cats.) I want, as I usually do, more background for the threat, but this story excellently displays one of Jones' great talents, which is characterization. Henry's six cats -- sorry, let me correct that; the six cats that own Henry -- all have highly vivid personalities, from the brave and resourceful Dot to the gorgeous and deeply stupid Madame Dalrymple. Watching them go to town on the woman who invades Henry's house is a thing of horrifying beauty. :-)
The main reason to own this book, though, is for Everard's Ride, which was published by NESFA Press in 1995, but is almost impossible to find for a reasonable price.
The thing that fascinates me about it that to the best of my knowledge, it's actually the earliest thing of Jones' that has been published. Changeover came out in 1970, but the publication notes at the end of this collection say that Everard's Ride was written in 1966.
fjm
said in the comments on
Witch's Business
that her first couple of novels were meddled with by editorial influence, and reading this makes that quite apparent. Granted, I don't know how much (if at all) Jones revised Everard's Ride before its publication, but this feels far more like her style than her first couple of published fantasy novels do.And there's enough meat to it that I need a spoiler-cut.
I like that it gives fairly good shrift to its female characters (mostly Cecilia, but also Susannah), and that the Courcys get redeemed from "stock rich kids" territory by their response to finding out that the Hornby children have gone missing. I also like the process of Alex and Everard becoming friends with one another; I've never been a young boy, but it seemed pretty plausible to me, with the beating each other up and being really angry at each other and then ending up good friends. I do wish the denoument had continued to split its attention between Cecelia and Alex, though, rather than sticking with him, and therefore relegating her situation to last-minute exposition. Still, the characters and their relationships are definitely a strength here.
If I have an overall complaint, it's that I wanted Falleyfell to be more fantastical. The early stuff leads us to expect it's a land of faeries or ghosts or something along those lines, but once you get there, it appears to be almost completely mundane -- just a mirror-realm of sorts, alongside the real world, but reachable only through special means. Robert's first appearance had me craving more: some kind of Wild Hunt thing, instead of simple politics. (This was possibly not helped by the fact that my subconscious decided to connect the whole story of how Everard's father was murdered to the "duel in the rose garden" thing from
pameladean
's Secret Country books, which added to the expectation of More Fantasy.)Looking back over the collections, it turns out you can get almost all of her short fiction if you buy this and Mixed Magics . The stories in Stopping for a Spell aren't worth it, Warlock at the Wheel and Believing Is Seeing are all duplicated in one or the other of these two, and Minor Arcana has only The True State of Affairs that isn't included elsewhere. So if you want to be more efficient about this than I've been, that's how to do it. <g>
(Me, what I really want is a leaner, meaner version of this book to go with Mixed Magics: something with "Dragon Reserve, Home Eight," "Little Dot," "Enna Hittims," "What the Cat Told Me," "The Girl Who Loved the Sun," and then both Everard's Ride and The True State of Affairs, if you want to go ahead and have it be a big collection. Maybe a couple more, like "Nad and Dan adn Quaffy," that I'm not so fond of, but other readers are. Anyway, just her good work, and not the weaker stuff.)
Three books left: her first, her last, and the one that's half-autobiography. And -- crap, I meant to check this sooner -- a couple of short stories NOT in the collections I discussed above. Ack! Must get those, stat!
The DWJ Project: A Tale of Time City
Okay, two things first.
1) Has anybody written the fanfic where the Pevensies get kidnapped away to Time City, and Vivian goes to Narnia? Because really.
2) OMG I WANT A BUTTER-PIE.
Ahem. No, seriously though -- maybe lactose-intolerant people and such can read the description of a butter-pie and not want one, but my god they sound good. (The name, not so much. But the description . . . yes please.)
Anyway, as for the book itself:
"Wild schemes" is right: Vivian realizes fairly quickly that Jonathan and Sam, the two boys who more or less kidnap her from the railway station, were -- well, they were acting like kids. Kids on an adventure, and they didn't really stop to think the whole thing through before it blew up in their faces. What's great about that is, Vivian catches herself acting that way a few times, and catches some (supposed) adults at it, too. I think I love that because, really, let's face it: a lot of us are readers, and if we suddenly found ourselves caught up in events that seemed more like a story than our daily lives . . . well, depending on the events, we'd either shriek and curl into a little ball -- or start thinking of ourselves as if we were the protagonists of a book. So that part rings really true to me.
I also love the cleverness of the entire Time City premise. The history of human beings is shaped like a great horseshoe, stretching from the Stone Age up to the Depopulation of Earth, and Time City -- perched not only on its own patch of space, but time (which makes it not so much "the far-distant future" as something else entirely) -- travels backward along that span, to keep it separate from history. Then there are the polarities, whose nature has been forgotten to the point of making them near-myth, and the stories of Faber John and the Time Lady, who founded the city, and even the political question of how Time City handles tourists from the Fixed Eras, and tries to keep the Unstable Eras from spinning out of control.
(There's also one other thing that amuses the hell out of me, from the scenes where Dr. Wilander sets Vivian at translation -- but that's a long enough story, and enough of a digression, that I'll have to do it in a separate post.)
Spoiler time!
You could waste time arguing whether this book is science fiction or fantasy, but I'm more interested in the way that its science-fictional characteristics run afoul of that common problem, which is that they age rather weirdly. The book was published in 1987: radial keratotomy was a thing by then, but Jonathan -- with all the technology of human existence to draw from -- depends on an "eye function" to correct his vision. And the worldbuilding (or rather, future-building) is just imaginative enough to make my anthropological brain wake up -- which ends up backfiring a bit, because then I'm sad it's not more imaginative. I recognize the game Jones is playing here, and don't have a problem with it, but that doesn't stop me from raising an eyebrow at the notion that there would be anything recognizable left of London (let alone the landmarks within it) seven thousand years from now. The Mind Wars and such are cool, but I have to remind myself to gloss over the bits where I don't feel things have changed enough. (Which is, I should mention, a new problem for me. Although I've read selections from this book for Milk & Cookies, I haven't read the whole thing for years -- since before I went to grad school, I think.)
My one other wish is that the narrative structure made it feasible to have the bad guys onstage sooner. The "real" Vivian and her parents are mentioned in the story as a problem for Protagonist!Vivian, but the revelation of their villainy doesn't quick click into place with full inevitability, because they haven't really been characters up until that point.
I think this one, in retrospect, is less technically strong than I remembered it being -- but I still like it a lot. Vivian's adventures in and out of history are fun, and there are lots of great character moments, like when she figures out the method to Sempitern Walker's madness. I love the notion of Time City itself, and the time ghosts (a nice bit of foreshadowing, in several places), and the weird AU WWII we get glimpses of, as Twenty Century goes off the rails entirely.
Side note: I blanked on Dr. Wilander's name before I started re-reading, and could only half-remember it, as Wiland or Wyland or some such. Which then made me wonder whether there's supposed to be an echo there of Wayland Smith. I only drew the connection because of the discussion as to what "Faber John" means, but having thought of it, now I think it could be deliberate. If it weren't for the -er on the end, I'd be fairly sure.
And that's it for the last of the second-tier favorites. One more anthology to go -- I hope to post about that tonight -- and then we'll be into the final three books, all of which I have left until last for very specific reasons.
1) Has anybody written the fanfic where the Pevensies get kidnapped away to Time City, and Vivian goes to Narnia? Because really.
2) OMG I WANT A BUTTER-PIE.
Ahem. No, seriously though -- maybe lactose-intolerant people and such can read the description of a butter-pie and not want one, but my god they sound good. (The name, not so much. But the description . . . yes please.)
Anyway, as for the book itself:
Time City -- built eons from now on a patch of space outside time -- was designed especially to oversee history, but now its very foundations are crumbling from age. Two boys are convinced that Time City's impending doom can be averted by a Twenty Century girl named Vivian Smith. They also know that no one will take the wild schemes of children seriously, so they violate nearly every law in the book by traveling back in time to pluck her from a British railway station at the start of World War II in 1939. By the time the boys learn Vivian's just an ordinary girl, they realize it's too late to return her safely -- unless, with her help, they can somehow manage to get Time City's foundations back on the right track. It's either that or she'll be stuck in the far-distant future forever!
"Wild schemes" is right: Vivian realizes fairly quickly that Jonathan and Sam, the two boys who more or less kidnap her from the railway station, were -- well, they were acting like kids. Kids on an adventure, and they didn't really stop to think the whole thing through before it blew up in their faces. What's great about that is, Vivian catches herself acting that way a few times, and catches some (supposed) adults at it, too. I think I love that because, really, let's face it: a lot of us are readers, and if we suddenly found ourselves caught up in events that seemed more like a story than our daily lives . . . well, depending on the events, we'd either shriek and curl into a little ball -- or start thinking of ourselves as if we were the protagonists of a book. So that part rings really true to me.
I also love the cleverness of the entire Time City premise. The history of human beings is shaped like a great horseshoe, stretching from the Stone Age up to the Depopulation of Earth, and Time City -- perched not only on its own patch of space, but time (which makes it not so much "the far-distant future" as something else entirely) -- travels backward along that span, to keep it separate from history. Then there are the polarities, whose nature has been forgotten to the point of making them near-myth, and the stories of Faber John and the Time Lady, who founded the city, and even the political question of how Time City handles tourists from the Fixed Eras, and tries to keep the Unstable Eras from spinning out of control.
(There's also one other thing that amuses the hell out of me, from the scenes where Dr. Wilander sets Vivian at translation -- but that's a long enough story, and enough of a digression, that I'll have to do it in a separate post.)
Spoiler time!
You could waste time arguing whether this book is science fiction or fantasy, but I'm more interested in the way that its science-fictional characteristics run afoul of that common problem, which is that they age rather weirdly. The book was published in 1987: radial keratotomy was a thing by then, but Jonathan -- with all the technology of human existence to draw from -- depends on an "eye function" to correct his vision. And the worldbuilding (or rather, future-building) is just imaginative enough to make my anthropological brain wake up -- which ends up backfiring a bit, because then I'm sad it's not more imaginative. I recognize the game Jones is playing here, and don't have a problem with it, but that doesn't stop me from raising an eyebrow at the notion that there would be anything recognizable left of London (let alone the landmarks within it) seven thousand years from now. The Mind Wars and such are cool, but I have to remind myself to gloss over the bits where I don't feel things have changed enough. (Which is, I should mention, a new problem for me. Although I've read selections from this book for Milk & Cookies, I haven't read the whole thing for years -- since before I went to grad school, I think.)
My one other wish is that the narrative structure made it feasible to have the bad guys onstage sooner. The "real" Vivian and her parents are mentioned in the story as a problem for Protagonist!Vivian, but the revelation of their villainy doesn't quick click into place with full inevitability, because they haven't really been characters up until that point.
I think this one, in retrospect, is less technically strong than I remembered it being -- but I still like it a lot. Vivian's adventures in and out of history are fun, and there are lots of great character moments, like when she figures out the method to Sempitern Walker's madness. I love the notion of Time City itself, and the time ghosts (a nice bit of foreshadowing, in several places), and the weird AU WWII we get glimpses of, as Twenty Century goes off the rails entirely.
Side note: I blanked on Dr. Wilander's name before I started re-reading, and could only half-remember it, as Wiland or Wyland or some such. Which then made me wonder whether there's supposed to be an echo there of Wayland Smith. I only drew the connection because of the discussion as to what "Faber John" means, but having thought of it, now I think it could be deliberate. If it weren't for the -er on the end, I'd be fairly sure.
And that's it for the last of the second-tier favorites. One more anthology to go -- I hope to post about that tonight -- and then we'll be into the final three books, all of which I have left until last for very specific reasons.
The DWJ Project: Power of Three
I'm way behind on posting, so expect a couple more of these soon.
This book, more than any other, illustrates how idiosyncratic my divide is between my first-tier favorites and the second tier. Power of Three is in the latter category, not because of any flaw in the story -- it's excellent, probably one of her best -- but simply because it never quite got into my imaginative foundations the way some of her others did. I don't know what made some books do that, and others not; all I know is that it isn't a question of quality. This is a wonderful book.
From the back cover copy, because my brain is too lazy to come up with its own plot summary:
A good summary, except that the final bit is quite wrong. I know it sounds more fantastical to talk about ancient curses, but one of the things I like about this novel is that the curse isn't ancient. It was placed within living memory -- it's the first thing that occurs in the book -- and is the simple, horrifying consequence of somebody being greedy and foolish and violent. And, as in The Magicians of Caprona, it's at least in part up to the younger generation to undo it. (Not entirely up to them, though. One of the other things I like is the role played by Gest and Adara, and Mr. Masterfield and Mr. Claybury, and at the center of it all, Hathil.)
There are lots of other things to like, too. The little grace notes in the worldbuilding, like the respect Gair's people pay to bees, and the customs of the Dorig. The perspective on what constitutes magic. The very believable relationships: not only are there lots of great sibling setups throughout this, but once again, as with Caprona, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and a few other books, we get imperfect-but-strong families, instead of abusive parents and neglected children. And the ending is a lovely balance of the mythic and the personal, which is one of the things I have always loved Jones for.
That's a lot of what I wanted to say, but a few more bits do involve spoilers.
Omniscient narration is mostly out of fashion these days, but I have to say, this book made me think about its strengths, and the things you can do with it that a more limited perspective wouldn't allow. I'm thinking specifically of Gair's relationship with his father, as summarized in this passage:
In modern YA (though this is probably more a middle-grade book, by current categories), we would only get Gair's perspective, which is that he thinks he's ordinary. We would know, by narrative convention, that he probably isn't, but until the revelation of his specialness came, we would be expected to play along with the trope. And you know, as a reader, I'm kind of tired of that. So I quite liked the fact that the pov here allows us all to agree that Gair thinks he's ordinary but isn't -- and also shows us Gest's side of things, which helps keep him sympathetic, which he might not otherwise be. And that plays out through the whole book, drawing our attention to parallels and contrasts between characters that Gair isn't consciously aware of, and heightening tension by helping us see that his weird decisions toward the end come out of the conflict between his Gift and the curse. Conventional wisdom is that a limited pov helps us empathize with a character, but in this case I think omniscient serves that purpose better.
The highlighting of those points of mismatch gets echoed in the way the three peoples are set up. There's a clear mythic template at work, with them as the People of the Sun, People of the Moon, and People of the Earth -- but Jones avoids the trap of fantasy essentialism, which is to treat that template as a deterministic straitjacket, only occasionally broken by a rebel. Hathil is, as Gest says, "a fire-eater among the wrong people," but he doesn't repudiate his kin, nor is there any suggestion he's somehow not really a Dorig because of it. And of course a lot of the resolution depends on the connections, rather than the differences, between the three peoples: most obviously the Gair/Gerald/Hafny linkage, but others as well. There's just enough truth to the mythic foundation to give things resonance, but just enough variation to make it complicated.
I do wonder a bit about the setting. If the radios and such didn't make the nature of the Giants clear, the place names tossed around later situate this firmly in England; what I wonder about is timing. The opening chapter, with Orban and Adara, says the Giants "were at war among themselves," because the children can hear their weapons. Is that meant to be World War II? Because unless they're near a military base (and there's no hint to support that notion), I'm not aware of any other modern conflict that involved large-scale fighting on or over British soil. (But my knowledge of modern history is woefully bad -- so if there is such a conflict, please do let me know.) The book was published in 1976, so I guess the timeline might work: Adara was supposed to be seven at the start, and Gair is twelve for the main events, which has him being born around 1964, give or take a few years for the vagaries of publishing. I'm curious to know if that's the actual interpretation I'm supposed to put on it.
I think I had a few other, smaller things to say, but I've forgotten them. That's what I get for not posting as soon as I finished reading the book, I suppose. :-P Anyway, look for more posts soon!
This book, more than any other, illustrates how idiosyncratic my divide is between my first-tier favorites and the second tier. Power of Three is in the latter category, not because of any flaw in the story -- it's excellent, probably one of her best -- but simply because it never quite got into my imaginative foundations the way some of her others did. I don't know what made some books do that, and others not; all I know is that it isn't a question of quality. This is a wonderful book.
From the back cover copy, because my brain is too lazy to come up with its own plot summary:
Something is horribly wrong on the Moor. Gair and his people are surrounded by enemies -- the menacing Giants and the devious, cruel Dorig. For centuries the three races have lived side by side, but now suspicion and hatred have drawn them all into a spiral of destruction.
With the existence of his people threatened, Gair realizes that evil forces are at work. For the Moor is blighted by a curse of ancient and terrifying power . . .
A good summary, except that the final bit is quite wrong. I know it sounds more fantastical to talk about ancient curses, but one of the things I like about this novel is that the curse isn't ancient. It was placed within living memory -- it's the first thing that occurs in the book -- and is the simple, horrifying consequence of somebody being greedy and foolish and violent. And, as in The Magicians of Caprona, it's at least in part up to the younger generation to undo it. (Not entirely up to them, though. One of the other things I like is the role played by Gest and Adara, and Mr. Masterfield and Mr. Claybury, and at the center of it all, Hathil.)
There are lots of other things to like, too. The little grace notes in the worldbuilding, like the respect Gair's people pay to bees, and the customs of the Dorig. The perspective on what constitutes magic. The very believable relationships: not only are there lots of great sibling setups throughout this, but once again, as with Caprona, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and a few other books, we get imperfect-but-strong families, instead of abusive parents and neglected children. And the ending is a lovely balance of the mythic and the personal, which is one of the things I have always loved Jones for.
That's a lot of what I wanted to say, but a few more bits do involve spoilers.
Omniscient narration is mostly out of fashion these days, but I have to say, this book made me think about its strengths, and the things you can do with it that a more limited perspective wouldn't allow. I'm thinking specifically of Gair's relationship with his father, as summarized in this passage:
Gest could not understand [Gair's desire to be alone]. He liked to live surrounded by other people. Things he did not understand always irritated him. He tried to be fair, but he could not manage to show as much affection to Gair as he did to Ayna and Ceri. Gair saw it. He knew his father was disappointed with him for turning out so ordinary. He went on to his windowsill all the more to avoid Gest. And the longer he spent there, the less Gest could understand him. by the time Gair was twelve, no two people in Garholt understood one another less than Gest and Gair.
In modern YA (though this is probably more a middle-grade book, by current categories), we would only get Gair's perspective, which is that he thinks he's ordinary. We would know, by narrative convention, that he probably isn't, but until the revelation of his specialness came, we would be expected to play along with the trope. And you know, as a reader, I'm kind of tired of that. So I quite liked the fact that the pov here allows us all to agree that Gair thinks he's ordinary but isn't -- and also shows us Gest's side of things, which helps keep him sympathetic, which he might not otherwise be. And that plays out through the whole book, drawing our attention to parallels and contrasts between characters that Gair isn't consciously aware of, and heightening tension by helping us see that his weird decisions toward the end come out of the conflict between his Gift and the curse. Conventional wisdom is that a limited pov helps us empathize with a character, but in this case I think omniscient serves that purpose better.
The highlighting of those points of mismatch gets echoed in the way the three peoples are set up. There's a clear mythic template at work, with them as the People of the Sun, People of the Moon, and People of the Earth -- but Jones avoids the trap of fantasy essentialism, which is to treat that template as a deterministic straitjacket, only occasionally broken by a rebel. Hathil is, as Gest says, "a fire-eater among the wrong people," but he doesn't repudiate his kin, nor is there any suggestion he's somehow not really a Dorig because of it. And of course a lot of the resolution depends on the connections, rather than the differences, between the three peoples: most obviously the Gair/Gerald/Hafny linkage, but others as well. There's just enough truth to the mythic foundation to give things resonance, but just enough variation to make it complicated.
I do wonder a bit about the setting. If the radios and such didn't make the nature of the Giants clear, the place names tossed around later situate this firmly in England; what I wonder about is timing. The opening chapter, with Orban and Adara, says the Giants "were at war among themselves," because the children can hear their weapons. Is that meant to be World War II? Because unless they're near a military base (and there's no hint to support that notion), I'm not aware of any other modern conflict that involved large-scale fighting on or over British soil. (But my knowledge of modern history is woefully bad -- so if there is such a conflict, please do let me know.) The book was published in 1976, so I guess the timeline might work: Adara was supposed to be seven at the start, and Gair is twelve for the main events, which has him being born around 1964, give or take a few years for the vagaries of publishing. I'm curious to know if that's the actual interpretation I'm supposed to put on it.
I think I had a few other, smaller things to say, but I've forgotten them. That's what I get for not posting as soon as I finished reading the book, I suppose. :-P Anyway, look for more posts soon!
February 29, 2012
quick question
Has anybody tried to send something to my P.O. Box and had it returned?
Two people on the Month of Letters forums have contacted me to say their letters/postcards have bounced as "undeliverable." I'm not sure why that's happening (since other stuff has gotten through just fine), but now I'm concerned that other people may have had the same problem.
Two people on the Month of Letters forums have contacted me to say their letters/postcards have bounced as "undeliverable." I'm not sure why that's happening (since other stuff has gotten through just fine), but now I'm concerned that other people may have had the same problem.
