P.C. Hodgell's Blog, page 6

Publisher's Weekly review of Gates

Someone at Baen just alerted me to a review in PW.  I don't think I've had one since someone there said that Dark of the Moon should kill all future interest in the series.  I didn't eat for a week after that.  Anyway, this one is much better:

The enchanting eighth installment of Hodgell’s Chronicles of the Kencyrath (after Sea of Time) continues to follow Jame, who is both sister and heir of Torisen, the Highlord of the Kencyr, and the avatar of the destructive side of the Kencyr’s Three-Faced God. Jame is given command of the fort of Tagmeth as a way to prove herself in lieu of her third year of military school, but her family’s political enemies live between Tagmeth and the Highlord’s forces, making her journey there treacherous—and the ancient evil that the Kencyr’s god has destined them to fight is drawing near from the other direction. The Kencyr live in one of the most deeply realized worlds in fantasy, a rich and complicated space that includes many cultures and riveting, three-dimensional characters. Full of dark wonder, wry humor, and the quirks of Jame’s inimitable personality, the newest installment in Hodgell’s life’s work demonstrates why it can be worthwhile for a writer to spend 40 years writing the same series. (Aug.)

I'll be signing at Uncle Hugo's in Minneapolis August 12 (1-2 pm I think), including any copies ordered by mail through that dealer.

Questions

Another question:  did Bane ever figure out who his father was?  My sense is that he still thinks it's Ishtier although Jame knows that it's Ganth.

And another:  do haunts have shadows/souls?  I don't think Jame has ever noticed.  The situation in Tai-tastigon is getting complicated.  (Heh.  What else is new?)  Evidence that the city is falling under Perimal Darkling's shadow?

Winnipeg

I'll be in Winnipeg the first week in July (3-7, roughly).  Any fans up there who want to get together?

Men-dalis

Here's a question:  Men-dalis is wearing Dally's d'hen.  Why?  I don't think it's pure guilt.

eARC

In case anyone missed the posts, the eARC of Gates is now available (http://www.baen.com/the-gates-of-tagmeth-earc.html).  Expect some typos. 

An extended snippet

Thanks for the input on the unsecured connection. As far as I can make out, everyone involved with LJ is facing this question. If I don't post something personal, I don't think I'm going to get in trouble, given that I expect my entries to be read by anyone.

So, the promised snippet. A major issue in this new novel is how Jame deals with her conclusions about gods in GS, which since have been shown to be incomplete, to put it mildly. In this scene, she's talking to Titmouse, a Kencyr priest in the Tastigon temple. I don't mean this to be the final word on the subject -- one big issue, re: the role of the temples, is yet to be solved -- but I would like to know if what I have so far makes sense even in this initial context. Damien, could you remind me of your Builder theory? This could be a place to insert it as a possibility. I may even be coming around to a version of it as The Truth.
////////
Someone stood beside the statue, in a belted robe as black as the stony folds above it.
“Titmouse,” said Jame, swallowing the lurch of her heart. No, not Ishtier.
“I want to talk to you,” said the young priest in his abrupt manner, unfolding from the shadows. “Especially after learning who you are. Jamethiel Priest’s-Bane. The arch-iconoclast.”
“Only on occasion,” Jame said, wondering who had told him. “I move as I must. Who moves you?”
He snorted. “Direct. I like that. Who but my superiors, or don’t you acknowledge any?”
Good question. “I obey my brother – most of the time.”
“What good is he?” said the priest, waving aside the Highlord of the Kencyrath. “We are still on the verge of losing to our ancient enemy, or hasn’t he noticed? All attention, these days, seems to turn inward, to politics.” His tone made that a curse. “Tell me: what is the Anti-God Heresy?”
Jame remembered that first fragmentary conversation with this man in Patches’ house, how they had seemed to talk at cross-purposes. “‘The belief that all the beings we know to be divine are in fact but the shadows of some greater power that regards them not.’”
“Wait. The local priests say that?”
“They aren’t all fools, and this city’s gods aren’t just parasites. It’s more complicated than that.”
He glowered at her. “I don’t see why it has to be, but tell me: how?”
Jame gathered her thoughts. “When I first came here,” she said, beginning to pace, “all of the supernatural entities in this city panicked me. We are taught that there is only one god. Here there are many. We also value truth as much as we do honor. So. Is our long, painful history based on a lie?”
Now he was pacing with her, hands clasped behind his back. Five steps one way, turn away from each other, five steps back. Turn. Clump, clump, clump went his heavy boots as their god’s image seemed to sway above them.
“I did eventually realize that Tai-tastigon’s New Pantheon came into existence at the same time that our temples started up,” she said, turning again, “immediately after the Fall and just before our arrival here on Rathillien. Then I saw the gods of Tai-tastigon flare and come untempled when Ishtier let the power of this temple run amok. Between, I realized that the New Pantheon draws its power from our temple, but its shape from the beliefs of its worshippers.”
Titmouse grimaced at Ishtier’s name, but otherwise his pace remained steady.
“There you have it,” he said. “Parasites.”
“The thing is, there was native power here before we arrived. The first I knew of it was when I met the Four.”
“Who?”
“Earth Wife, Falling Man, Burnt Man, Eaten One, the elementals of Rathillien, but before that, before our temples, they were as mortal as we are.”
“Are you saying that the same thing happened to them as to the New Pantheon’s so-called gods?”
“No. The Four are individuals, but they are also heirs to forces here before we came. The Old Pantheon is still represented by gods such as Gorgo, many with mixed human and animal attributes. Before them, among others, there was Stone, that tells truths hard to bear. Dune, that reveals with one hand and covers with the other. Mirage, that always lies and lies without purpose. And Salt the Soulless. Yes, they had power too. Granny Sits-by-the-Fire calls them ‘the Big Truths,’ at least for the desert. Mountain and Ocean presumably had others. Field, cliff, and hedgerow too, as far as I know. Perhaps they all still do. The Arrin-ken might know.”
“You make my head spin.”
“So did mine. Many times. It seems to me now that divinity isn’t one thing, nailed down forever. It changes as people change, and people are changed by it. Did that make it untrue for Rathillien? Does it for us?”
“Are you saying that we should no longer believe in the Three-faced God? Because of your … researches?”
“Oh, our god is real, whatever that is.” Ancestors knew, she felt at least one aspect of him (or her, or it) thrumming through her even as she spoke.
Priest’s-bane, iconoclast, That-Which-Destroys….
But what was such power if not to break down old concepts, old ideas? If she overstepped, it was in creating new ones, or in clinging to what she only wished to believe.
“Here’s a thought,” she said slowly, considering it out-loud. “In the beginning, something definitely brought together the Kencyrath to fight Perimal Darkling. Say that the Three-faced God existed alone on our three home worlds, monotheism incarnate. We accepted that destiny, were proud of it. Too proud, perhaps. We lost. Fleeing down the Chain of Creation, we shattered our direct link to our god. He didn’t abandon us. We left him behind, except for fragments embedded in the Shanir, waiting to reemerge as the Tyr-ridan.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Yes. There could be any number of explanations. For example, here’s one: Perimal Darkling invades the Chain of Creation. The Arrin-ken bring together the Kencyrath. Looking for a reason, we create our deity with our faith out of the god-stuff present on all of the worlds. In our pride, we have to be unique, so that’s how we see our god: monotheistic. See? I can spin you ideas all night. Thal’s balls, maybe even the Builders were to blame.
“Here is the point, though: why have we let one interpretation shape our entire society? What do we really know about what happened thirty millennia ago? Oh, perhaps the Arrin-ken do, but they haven’t talked freely to us about such things in a long, long time, if ever. At least you haven’t yet accused me of blasphemy. I’m trying to figure out how our past became our present, without invalidating either.”
“And what do you posit about our temples?”
“Now you’re sneering at me again. Maybe I deserve it. The Builders were sent ahead to construct the temples, in case we failed. So we have, repeatedly. Our god’s power is either conducted through them down the Chain of Creation or recreated by them, exactly why or how, I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Chirp about that.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. The point is this: that power is mindless, as far as I can make out.”
“You’re forgetting the God-voice.”
“So-called. On rare occasions since we came here, the voice has spoken through rare individuals, Ishtier for one. I’ve come to believe, though, that that was the Arrin-ken.”
Titmouse blinked. “What conceivable reason can you give for that?”
“Think about it: There’s the Fall, with Gerridon trying to create his own future at the cost of everyone else. After it, the Arrin-ken support Glendar as the new Highlord on Rathillien, but the priests try to turn us into a hierocracy. For the first time, the God-voice speaks through the high priest to smash their pretensions. Sorry. I forgot for a moment that I’m talking to a priest. Say, though, that that was actually the Arrin-ken again.”
“Then they lied?”
“They didn’t actually call themselves God’s voice; they let us assume it.”
“A lie, then, by omission.”
They had still been pacing but now stopped, facing each other.
“I don’t know the mind of an Arrin-ken,” said Jame. “I don’t think one would deliberately lie, but their morality is … different. Maybe we understood once, but since then, with their withdrawal, we’ve grown apart.”
He snorted. “And these are our judges.”
“They would be, if they deigned. We aren’t what we should be either. There is this too: since I was last in Tai-tastigon, I’ve met two of them face to face, and after the fact I recognized their undertones in what spoke to me out of Ishtier’s mouth. What game are they playing? I’m still not sure.”
“Huh. At least you admit some ignorance.”
“About a great deal. Life has been very confusing over the past few years. Think about it, though: what good have the temples done us since we first came here, perhaps even before? What world have we managed to hold except, so far, Rathillien? And the temples here are crippled. The one in Kothifir was never completed due to the Builders running afoul of the rathorn in the Anarchies. Since then, several others have been destroyed. Where are we today? What’s going on here in Tai-tastigon?”
“As to that …” he began, but was interrupted.

Argh

I'm trying to post a long snippet, but livejournal says this is an insecure connection. I can't figure out what to do to get around this. Suggestions?

Happy Holidays

Happy holidays, all!  It's been viciously cold here, wind chill currently at -9 (it was -15 at the barn yesterday), which may be why I haven't felt like doing much seasonal stuff.  No cards this year.  Maybe I'll start next years, when it gets warmer.

I just heard from Wisconsin Writes about a 4 minute segment I taped for them months ago.  You can see it at  http://dpi.wi.gov/wisconsin-writes/pc-hodgell.  My favorite part is Dora's tail circling me like a shark's fin, something she does frequently, always going clockwise.  Someone once told me that I was the crazy cat lady, and Dora was the crazy cat.

And Amazon has printed the cover for Gates of Tagmeth for preorder.  It's a pretty good representation of Jame, from what I can see, but I have no idea what scene from the book it's supposed to illustrate.

Am waiting for the contract for the next novel, of which I've written about a quarter.  It will be shorter than others in the series and cover a shorter period of time than most (about a week).  Just the same, it's fighting me.  First paragraphs, meant to mirror God Stalk:
The hills rolled away forever and ever.  In their hollows lay tangled shadows to catch weary feet.  On their crests, thin gray grass wove together around knees in a restless wind that blew this way and that, that way and this. 
Ah, it said, in the smug, knowing tone of an idiot.  A-ha-ha-ha … and its breath stank like something long dead.
Overhead, a leprous moon tumbled out of tattered clouds, seeming to shred them as they careened past.  It was huge, and felt close enough to smell.  Shadows swept past below over the undulation of hills.  Up and down.  Down and up.
Everything was in fretful motion – hills, grass, wind, moon – but without meaning.  On and on it all went, on and on.  Oh, so weary, the aching muscles, these never ending nights …
Then, suddenly, there was the House.

A Snippet about Marc and fish -- sort of

Someone asked for a snippet about Marc.  Note that many of the details here come from a medieval cookbook.  One can't make such things up.  This is set in Tagmeth.

Apprentices scurried about the keep’s kitchen, preparing the midday meal.  Off to one side, Marc was learning how to prepare lamprey soup.
“Now, I’ve taught you how to dress this slippery fellow,” the little master cook was saying, obviously pleased to have no less a person than the keep’s steward leaning attentively over him.  “Repeat.”
“First, you bleed it through the mouth and cut out its tongue,” said Marc, with the air of someone counting steps on his fingers.  “That last is to stop it from screaming.  Save the blood, for it is the fat.  Then scald it as you would an eel.”
“Yes!  And here it is.”
The cook thrust a long handled fork into a seething pot and drew out a dark, lank form, not unlike a boiled snake.
“Oh, what a beauty!” he exclaimed, turning it so that it flopped this way and that, its tongue-bereft circular mouth grimacing with rings of bared teeth.  “Caught it myself, I did.  I’ve never seen its like.”
Probably he hadn’t, thought Jame.  Such fish weren’t known in Kothifir from which, judging from his walnut tan, the cook had recently come.
“Then thread it crosswise on a very thin spit in one or two loops, like this, and roast it.  Meanwhile, what spices do you prepare?”
“Ginger, cassia, cloves, nutmeg, grains of paradise … what’s that, by the way?”
“Never mind.  We don’t have any.  If we had some parsley, we could turn the broth bright green, but it’s supposed to be thick and black.  ‘Mud,’ we call it.”
Jame regarded the sinuous loop crackling in the flames and seeming, stealthily, to writhe. 
“That’s not a lamprey,” she said.  “It’s a blackhead.”
The little cook blinked at her.  “A what?”
“They come from the lake that’s the source of the Silver, under the shadow of Perimal Darkling.  When they bite their prey, they lay eggs in its flesh.  These hatch and compel their host to migrate down-stream, even while they devour its flesh from the inside out. Finally it explodes, releasing them to a new stretch of the river.  I’ve seen them infest a man who ate an infected host.  It wasn’t pretty.”
As the cook stared at her, aghast, Marc reached over his shoulder and slid the creature off the spit, into the devouring flames.
“There, there,” he said, patting the little man kindly on the back.  “Why don’t you teach me how to make a nice parsnip pottage instead?”

Publication Date for Gates

A couple of readers have asked me about this, and I just realized that I hadn't generally announced it:  Baen tells me that The Gates of Tagmeth is due out next July.  At that point they will have had the ms in their hands for 14 months.  Why the delay?  I don't know.  Sorry about that.

My agent is working on a contract for the return to Tai-tastigon novel.  I'm a bit nervous about revisiting the city after all of these years.  For one thing, my style has changed a lot since God Stalk.  I think that, technically, I'm a better writer now.  However, I don't think I still have the youthful bounce that made GS so much fun.  After all, for me it's been 30+ years.  It will be different for Jame too.  A lot has happened in her life too although it's only been about 4 years.  That will be an issue:  how much has she changed?  Then too, the city is in a bit of a mess.  So we'll see.  I've carried this extended story in my mind for a long, long time.

On the domestic front, I cleaned out and winterized the 3,000 gallon koi pond yesterday, a multi-stage endeavor that takes between 6 and 7 hours.  All of the koi survived, thank goodness.