B-log: The Hero and the Crown

Every year, it seems, I find another author with whose corpus I feel the need to reaquaint myself. Last year it was Diana Wynne Jones, this year it is Robin McKinley.

The Hero and the Crown is her second book in the Damar series (however long that will be), though it is the prequel to The Blue Sword. I like this one just a bit better. Aerin is first sol (which roughly translates to Princess) of Damar and, unlike the rest of her family, seems entirely devoid of a magical gift. So she is searching for some way to prove herself and, due to a well aimed taunt and some interesting recipes, becomes a dragon slayer. Of course, that means the dragons start showing up in full force, the kingdom of Damar is under threat from the Northern Demons and Aerin is the only one who can do anything about it. After nearly getting herself killed, twice, Aerin fulfilled her role and finds out that her life is far more complicated and magical than she could have known.

As I've said before, McKinley's strength lies in her characters. Damar is one of the few places where she sets her stories that has its own history and existence and such; usually they're just in a kingdom somewhere. But Aerin is a marvelous heroine, with whom it is impossible not to identify. She is a twist on the usual princess, not just because she is an outcast, but because she is proactive. Women were never proactive in fantasy novels until McKinley and Tamora Pierce started writing. Aerin, in particular, is so lovable because her problems are real. I could actually sympathize with her position as first sol, which is a change from my usual scoff of "I wish I had your problems".

McKinley also does her readers the great service of making the romantic aspect of the story surprising. Having a painfully obvious romantic trajectory is acceptable for Jane Austen, but it is nice to see a bit of creativity in the more modern folk and McKinley provides just that. I thought I knew how the romance was going to turn out, but I was pleasantly surprised (especially as this was not the first time I had read this book. The first time in about seven years, though.) And the bittersweetness of Aerin's life is pretty much encapsulated in that.

I am, I'll admit, biased when reviewing my favorite authors. I've always been a littls suspicious of McKinley's heroines as the same sort keep popping up in vastly different stories. Still, they are excellent heroines and we could use more like them.

This is definitely my favorite of the two Damar books and it comes highly recommended, especially for any girl (such as myself) who spent her childhood searching for female leads who were not pathetic. As you might note, that search means that said female leads take up a disproportionate numer of entries in this blog.

B-log: Angel Isle

So yesterday was spent at a movie marathon and, as such, left me no time to blog. So we'll let the laxness slide and pretend it never happened. Right, anyway, the most recent book I've finished is Angel Isle, by Peter Dickinson. It is a sequel of sorts to The Ropemaker, in the sense that it is the continuation of that story, if not the lives of those characters.

I picked up Dickinson because he married Robin McKinley, which I thought said a lot about the man. One of these days, I will devote a full post to McKinley and explain my love for her work, my grudging respect bordering on annoyance with her personality and my adoration of her dogs. For those in need of more details, her blog. Somewhere on there is the story of how they met, which I really enjoyed reading. So it made sense, as far as I was concerned, to read Dickinson's work because his wife wrote well. I do like being right about things.

Maja and Saranja come from a family in charge of "Singing to the Unicorns" who protect the Southern border of their valley, while Ribek speaks to water and, through his gift, protects the Northern border. For two hundred generations (ever since the events chronicled in The Ropemaker) these protections have stood strong. But the magic's time is up and now they have set forth, some rather reluctantly, to find the Ropemaker and ask him to renew the spell. The Empire into which they venture is a dangerous place, ruled by Watchers who zealously guard all magic and who are displeased, to say the least, when they catch anyone using it. Which means that, naturally, our heroes team up with a mage, Benayu, and his inter-dimensional lizard, Jex. To complicate matters, Maja discovers that she has a special sense for magic and, when too much of it is used around her, she blacks out. Between the five of them, they need to reach the Ropemaker without bringing destruction down on themselves and hope that he has the power to do something before the Watchers drag the world down into total chaos.

Dickinson, first of all, is a delightful author. Despite writing for children, he never talks down to his readers, nor does he ever do them the disservice of assuming they are too young for complex material. Like L'Engel, he merely searches for a way to present it so that his audience can understand his topic of choice. Angel Isle is a rare find, for it combines fantasy and science fiction in a way I have never run into before. Dickinson creates a typical fantasy world, but instead of throwing up his hands and saying "It's magic, suspend your disbelief", he takes the lawful relationships and equations that we use to understand our universe and applies it to his. I was eagerly awaiting his description of a Universe different than our own and he did not disappoint me.

Having finished the book, I'm still not entirely sure who the main character was. I think it was Maja, who certainly got the plurality of the spotlight and who grew the most, but I found myself equally drawn to everyone in the book...which is to say not very much. I enjoyed reading about them and the book kept me hooked from the first word to the last, but I never really identified with the characters. I felt as though I was exploring someone else's world and following along as they told me about it, but the adventure was never really mine. Still, that might just be a testament to Dickinson's ability to create very real characters, who are so well defined on their own that they don't need my input. Either way, I was more than happy to hear about what happens to them, even though they has to share the spotlight.

Dickinson's world building abilities are truly stunning - his Empire and the universe it inhabits is incredibly well delineated even for a young adult book (and certainly for an adult novel) and he manages to capture the long journey taken by the characters without adding in the tedium they, no doubt, felt. I have no problem with the characters feeling the effects of a long journey, but reading a book should not replicate the experience (which is one of several reasons why I no longer read Goodkind or Jordan). Dickinson strikes the right balance between realism and entertaining the reader and if they ate liver-kebab a few more times than I thought necessary...well, there are worse sins.

As noted earlier, this book is a wonderful specimen of genre-defying fantasy, both in its insertion of "real" science and in its ability to suprise me with the ending. Having slowly read my way through an appreciable amount of YA fantasy, I tend to assume that a certain number of events are possible as methods of resolution and so it's always nice to see an unexpected one handled well. Despite five hundred pages, Angel Isle never dragged, and my only regret, at the end, was that it did not continue. One can always hope for another sequel.

B-log: Faces Under Water

I have a particular fondness for authors who are talented enough to attempt to retell fairy tales (in no small part because the majority of my stories, both finished and incomplete, are right along those lines). So when I journey to my local library, I have a list of certain authors whose work tends to fall into that category and for whom I look. True to form, my library tends not to have those authors' works and, on the rare occasions it does, I tend to find their books from different genres.

Faces Under Water, by Tanith Lee, was one of those books: picked up because I knew the author's name and figured "well, why not?" Having read the book, I can now answer that question. Lee's storytelling style, while gorgeous, lacks a sense of clarity and comprehensibility. Which is all well and good, except rumor has it that something might have been happening in the plot and it would have been nice to have been able to follow along. That, however, is the least of the book's flaws.

The story, once I figured it out, was not all that bad. Furian, a young lordling who abandoned his family for reasons unknown, is working around the canals of Venus (Venice) when he comes upon a mask under the water, presumably still attached to the body last wearing it. He takes it to his doctor friend and proceeds to forget all about it, at least until a couple of hitmen start hunting him and he falls for a lovely maiden in a butterfly mask. Thing "get weirder" as Furian finds himself enveloped in a giant conspiracy run by some fairly prominent members of Venus
and it is only with the help of Doctor Shaachen's magic and his newly found love that he has the smallest chance of survival.

I was particularly unimpressed with Furian as a hero. His motives are never clear and, while Lee clearly wants him to be the archetypal lord's son with a heart of gold, you get the feeling that Furian's behavior is because his author is directly forcing him to be this way and he's cooperating rather sullenly. His love for the butterfly lady is completely unbelievable and feels much more like fleeting lust cemented by sex with a wooden doll. And then he has his clichéd moment of doubt in order to add to the angst. That just killed it for me. I have no problem with creating situations in which the hero/ine is unsure of a lover's fidelity and behaves accordingly. But in order for me to believe that Furian actually doubted her, then he would have to be an utter moron. To be fair, though, his behavior in the rest of the book does not suggest any differently, but I'm incapable of rooting for a hero with a total of two brain cells to rub together who is supposed to be intelligent.

If you can get past the first one hundred pages, which are tedious beyond all measure, there is a reasonably interesting mystery behind it all. What is happening is clear (err, except to Furian the idiot) from the beginning, but the how is what kept me reading and the way Lee ties everyone together is extremely satisfying. The book's high point is definitely Doctor Shaachen and his magic; everything was much more entertaining when he was around.

Lee does have a lovely way with words and the images she can evoke are almost better suited to poetry than to fantasy. Her descriptions of Venus are deliciously full and inviting. Despite the strange and dreamy quality of her words, the place she creates comes through with all the vividness of a surrealist painting. It is disappointing to find that the material does not remotely do justice to the language.

B-log: Daughter of the Blood

Moving on in the realm of my ever so sophisticated literary taste, I recently reread Daughter of the Blood, by Anne Bishop. Something that is very clearly not children's literature. I would certainly not recommend it for anyone under sixteen (though I'm sure a select few precocious and gruesome thirteen year old girls would get a kick out of it). The plot is nothing new - the chosen one is born and must be helped to achieve HER destiny by a supporting cast including aged (50,000 years, give or take) mentor, snarky friends and gorgeous love interest. What makes this book so special, at least in my eyes, is a combination of two things. Firstly, it is a very well handled reversal of the fantasy norms. And secondly, it is unpretentious.

Daughter of the Blood is the first book in the Black Jewels Trilogy, which already sets the tone for the rest of the series. Bishop has created a world with the usual roles of light and dark are reversed, where darkness implies more power and, as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility. The magic users, called "The Blood" have been misusing their power and unbalancing the semi-precarious relationship between the genders; using men to dis-empower women and women to keep men on a tight leash.

Into this world is born "Witch", the most powerful of all the Blood. It is up to her to save the realms, assuming she lives long enough. This first book is our introduction to the ways of the blood and to some of the main characters, including Daemon Sadi, who is destined to be witch's lover; Lucivar Yaslana, Daemon's half brother and Saetan SaDiablo, the High Lord of Hell. I'm sure you're groaning by now, but don't be fooled by the names. These men are deadly, but follow a code of honor as strict as any knight. And they are, without a doubt, drop dead gorgeous.

Bishop is not trying to create a realistic cast of characters and, if that is something that bothers you. don't read the book. However, if you're willing to acknowledge her characters as some sort of (specifically male) ideal, then you're good to go. And the story itself is quite creative and fun to follow, especially for those of us who enjoy a good fantasy, but have had our fill and then some of the Richard Rahls, Rand al Thors, Aragorns and even Harry Potters that populate the literature. The Black Jewels trilogy is high fantasy geared towards women, with the goal of providing enjoyment. As a professor of mine once said, Romance Novels are pornography for women. We'll call this softcore for geek girls, then.

Part of the appeal of this book is how Bishop deliberately twists her Universe to make women the dominant sex. This is another lovely genre reversal and much of the book seems to be based on the premise of men deferring to women. Women have a higher caste and queens rule the territory, not kings. However, it is made clear that men, being the physically stronger sex, are there to protect and serve the women. So these blood males are bred to have all the qualities that females instinctively look for in a mate: good genes, commitment, protection, etc. Bishop might not have originally had this in mind, but she created the perfect male...from an evolutionary perspective. And, while that certainly goes a long way in explaining Lucivar and Daemon's appeal, the complex world she creates from the simple reversal of one gender role and the rule of light and dark is astounding.

Daughter of the Blood is only the first book and much of it is really focused on building this universe and examining how things can go terribly wrong with the system, in a manner reminiscent of some of the gender problems in our own. The next two focus on how "Witch" needs to set things right. This book receives such a high recommendation from me because I do find myself going back to it and rereading it. Is it great literature? No. But it sets out to accomplish a certain task and it does so masterfully, if in a little bit more gory detail that I could write with a straight face. Oh, and once again, rated R for the amount of sex, violence and combinations of the two.