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ricardienneI finally got my hands on a copy of Tamora Pierce's latest this afternoon. A couple of hours and 500-odd pages later (okay, I admit I skimmed frequent, extensive, and rather boring Big Flashy Magic parts), I am ready to spoil it ridiculously. You've been warned.
So, I concur with Natalie. It is more enjoyable than the last ones. This is mainly because when she's got all four of her utterly perfect and supremely competent characters in one novel, the only way she can make it interesting is for them to disagree. Which, shockingly, makes them flawed in a way that is not wholly contrived.
The setting is back inRussia Namorn (clearly Not!Russia: they even manage to pick up a holy fool for themselves), at the court of a sort of Catherine the Great crossed with Good Queen Bess. Actually, the emperess is closer to Queen Elizabeth. She even prefers dancing the Volta with her man-pet of the week, though we're only told this in passing. Yay. It appears that Briar is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress, having witnessed Not!China's invasion of Not!Tibet and the ensuing massacres and other Horrible Things. We know this because after, scenes of Big Flashy Magic, his flashbacks of Dying Women and Children make up the next single largest section of the book. Any section from his perspective eventually devolves into shell shock. Granted, this is probably realistic. But it does tend to bulk out a book unnecessarily. The third largest section was devoted to Daja's discovery that she is, in fact, lesbian. As none of the societies that exist in this book have problem with this, it was anything but a difficult realization for either or her friends. So why did we have to spend so much time on it? Other than that, however, the story did move fairly well, though she still seems to have this problem about respecting her readers. It is one thing to try to give your villains motivation, to make them rounded and even pitiable. I like that. But you can't really do that with one really clumsy stream-of-conscious passage at the end of a chapter, just before a previously innocuous character decides to metamorphose into a misogynist kidnapper/rapist. It just doesn't hold together.
Plotwise, there was another huge issue. I just cannot quite believe that four young adults, however powerful they may be, are so valuable a resource that trade embargoes are threatened over them and an entire border is closed down in order to stop them. Speaking of borders, there were a couple of historical things that were bugging me, but that I don't have the knowledge to know for certain. One is precisely those borders. These books are set in mid to late Renaissance Not!Europe. Were borders to meticulously delineated and guarded at that time? I just don't know, but it seemed a little off. Secondly, health insurance. When the Emperess sends her chief mage to off Tris a job, she includes the provision that "your health [will be] tended by Imperial Healers without charge." Because, you know, who would accept a job that didn't offer decent health coverage? I wonder if dental is included? But that also seemed off. Finally, there was an obsession with, well, with what I might best term 'duty' ever since I found in the back of our copy of Hamlet that the word can have the meaning of the respect(ful conduct) due to a superior. Now, I admit that this has fascinated me, as well. I used to flip through the very back of my dictionary, looking down the columns of honorifics, and finding that a Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church is referred to as "Your Beatitude" while the daughter of an earl can claim the title of "The Honorable Miss ____. Reading historical fiction, historical documents, and such, it's impossible to ignore the many formulas that sound downright servile: the "my dear lord"s, the "'an it please Your Grace"s, and the like, not to mention the innumerable references to curtsies other physical expressions of humbleness. I've been reading Shakespeare recently, and so it's his plays that come to mind, but one of the most basic analogies for pride vs. humility, for rank vs. lack thereof, is one of knees being straight or bent. It's tossed around all the time. And yes, I notice it. I notice it a lot and I find myself thinking about it, because it is so alien to me, really. It is unnatural to me, affected, obsequious, inappropriate. I'm sure it's that way for most people. I'm sure it is that way for Tamora Pierce. The problem is: it's very evidently that way for her characters, as well. I don't know how many times Sandry squirmed as her serfs made their bows and curtsies to her; I don't know how many times Tris muttered about ridiculous ceremonies of deference or was unable to curtsy gracefully; I don't know how many times, in short, I was forcefully reminded that the main characters were as alien to this idea of what I'm calling 'duty' as I was. And that I think it wrong. Rank was an important concern in other times and other places -- it's clearly important in the world of Emelan and Namorn -- and I have a feeling that where it is so important, expressions of it won't seem odd. If you accept the drastic social differences (which our four heros do) there is no reason why you wouldn't accept the various behaviors that enforce and distinguish those differences. If honorifics and obeisances are part of your culture, are you going to worry about them so much? It was jarring every time it came up.
Tamora Pierce is still reminding us that 'kid' is a slang term for child. For the record, the OED records 'kid' in this usage as slang, first used in 1599, but widely accepted since the 19th c. Whatever the case, the in-text reminders are getting ridiculous, and now she puts it in the glossary, as well, along with the various words she had made up for her world. What the hell?
However, I did enjoy this one very much. In particular, I liked Cousin Ambros. I would even go so far as to say that he's the best character she's created yet for the Circle-verse. If I were to fangirl anyone, it would be he. From about a chapter after he was introduced, I was thinking "she's got to sign over her lands to him; she's got to!" And she did. He deserved it, such a nice, dependable, steady, honest, honorable man. The kind I like. Although I couldn't help but think Ambrose of Milan whenever his name came up. The harping on the abduction of women issue was a little odd, however. I realize that this is still a problem in certain of the "Stans," and it seemed rather soapboxy of Tamora Pierce to make it such a plot point. I also question making it the single largest problem facing a conscientious landowner. Surely it isn't the only injustice visited on the hapless peasantry.
As for other characters, however, they all sort of blurred. Gudruny wasn't much different from Lalassa (and is still a poor imitation of Rose Buck, in my opinion), and all of these witty nobles were rather wearing. Tamora Pierce goes out of her way to make witty characters, but they are all witty in the same way. That isn't true in real life. Different people make different kinds of jokes, different kinds of quips. Hers all make the same. Simply based on dialogue, Sandry was not particularly distinguishable from Berenene; Briar was a lot like Fen or Shen or whatever he was called. And a joke really isn't a joke if the author has to explain that it's funny, as happened a few times.
There were no howlers along the lines of "'Hakkoi's hammer, what is that?' He asked, pointing to her bosom" (from Shatterglass), but there were a few things that I couldn't help but put a not-so-nice turn to. But what am I supposed to think when the slightly nymphomaniac Emperess says to her trusted advisor, "I prefer the sight of such bold and brawny fellows on their knees before me, thank you all the same"? As our protagonists are now in their late teens, there was much more innuendo and sexual discussion. Daja dealt with a realization of her feelings, Sandry played the flirtatious (but nevertheless chaste) rational heterosexual woman; Tris was not interested (making her my favorite character as the one I could best related to), and Briar showed himself to be a regualar Don Juan, not simply flirting with every maidservant who appeared, but getting each into his bed, as well. Now, this is a world of (magical) very effective contraception for both women and men; its magical healers can probably treat any sexually contracted disease. On these grounds, then, it is apparently perfectly fine for a young man to sleep around. Well, perhaps it is. I don't know. But for a novel whose moral subetext is the oppression of women, it seems a bit strange that everyone turns a blind eye this. Is it justified, simply because Briar is careful, and makes it clear that he doesnt mean anythin by it. And all the girls are falling over themselves to get him, anyway, so it must be all right. These would be the maidservants employed by a very staid, conservative household -- are they desperate to sleep with every man who crosses their path? Or does Briar's obvious interest in them, combined with his power and status, make them feel that it is inappropriate to appear less than charmed? I would tend to say the latter; I think it would be somewhat naive to say otherwise. And yet, Tamora Pierce, who once censured me (unfairly, I would say) on Sheroes for implying that the only consequences in a sexual relationship are the practical consequences of pregnancy, disease, and the like, sees no reason why there should be a problem with this more subtle subjugation of women to male sexul needs. The earlier possibility -- that all of these women are just dying to sleep with any handsome man they meet, is not much less disturbing. It seems such a typical chauvinistic assumption, that women are desperate for sex, that they lose their reason as soon as a comely man shows up, that lower class women in particular have no sense of self-respect and so justly taken advantage of. Even, at the very ends, Sandry rewards her guards with extra money, "for the purchase of -- 'comforts -- on the journey home." Thanks for protecting my virtue, now go rent yourselves some whores. Because, you know, prostitution isn't at all a source of exploitation.
/rant
There was also some evidence for Tris/Duke Vedris, which iss very interesting, and not wholly implausible, and which I may begin to ship in a quiet, noncommittal, more-joking-than-serious way.
So, I concur with Natalie. It is more enjoyable than the last ones. This is mainly because when she's got all four of her utterly perfect and supremely competent characters in one novel, the only way she can make it interesting is for them to disagree. Which, shockingly, makes them flawed in a way that is not wholly contrived.
The setting is back in
Plotwise, there was another huge issue. I just cannot quite believe that four young adults, however powerful they may be, are so valuable a resource that trade embargoes are threatened over them and an entire border is closed down in order to stop them. Speaking of borders, there were a couple of historical things that were bugging me, but that I don't have the knowledge to know for certain. One is precisely those borders. These books are set in mid to late Renaissance Not!Europe. Were borders to meticulously delineated and guarded at that time? I just don't know, but it seemed a little off. Secondly, health insurance. When the Emperess sends her chief mage to off Tris a job, she includes the provision that "your health [will be] tended by Imperial Healers without charge." Because, you know, who would accept a job that didn't offer decent health coverage? I wonder if dental is included? But that also seemed off. Finally, there was an obsession with, well, with what I might best term 'duty' ever since I found in the back of our copy of Hamlet that the word can have the meaning of the respect(ful conduct) due to a superior. Now, I admit that this has fascinated me, as well. I used to flip through the very back of my dictionary, looking down the columns of honorifics, and finding that a Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church is referred to as "Your Beatitude" while the daughter of an earl can claim the title of "The Honorable Miss ____. Reading historical fiction, historical documents, and such, it's impossible to ignore the many formulas that sound downright servile: the "my dear lord"s, the "'an it please Your Grace"s, and the like, not to mention the innumerable references to curtsies other physical expressions of humbleness. I've been reading Shakespeare recently, and so it's his plays that come to mind, but one of the most basic analogies for pride vs. humility, for rank vs. lack thereof, is one of knees being straight or bent. It's tossed around all the time. And yes, I notice it. I notice it a lot and I find myself thinking about it, because it is so alien to me, really. It is unnatural to me, affected, obsequious, inappropriate. I'm sure it's that way for most people. I'm sure it is that way for Tamora Pierce. The problem is: it's very evidently that way for her characters, as well. I don't know how many times Sandry squirmed as her serfs made their bows and curtsies to her; I don't know how many times Tris muttered about ridiculous ceremonies of deference or was unable to curtsy gracefully; I don't know how many times, in short, I was forcefully reminded that the main characters were as alien to this idea of what I'm calling 'duty' as I was. And that I think it wrong. Rank was an important concern in other times and other places -- it's clearly important in the world of Emelan and Namorn -- and I have a feeling that where it is so important, expressions of it won't seem odd. If you accept the drastic social differences (which our four heros do) there is no reason why you wouldn't accept the various behaviors that enforce and distinguish those differences. If honorifics and obeisances are part of your culture, are you going to worry about them so much? It was jarring every time it came up.
Tamora Pierce is still reminding us that 'kid' is a slang term for child. For the record, the OED records 'kid' in this usage as slang, first used in 1599, but widely accepted since the 19th c. Whatever the case, the in-text reminders are getting ridiculous, and now she puts it in the glossary, as well, along with the various words she had made up for her world. What the hell?
However, I did enjoy this one very much. In particular, I liked Cousin Ambros. I would even go so far as to say that he's the best character she's created yet for the Circle-verse. If I were to fangirl anyone, it would be he. From about a chapter after he was introduced, I was thinking "she's got to sign over her lands to him; she's got to!" And she did. He deserved it, such a nice, dependable, steady, honest, honorable man. The kind I like. Although I couldn't help but think Ambrose of Milan whenever his name came up. The harping on the abduction of women issue was a little odd, however. I realize that this is still a problem in certain of the "Stans," and it seemed rather soapboxy of Tamora Pierce to make it such a plot point. I also question making it the single largest problem facing a conscientious landowner. Surely it isn't the only injustice visited on the hapless peasantry.
As for other characters, however, they all sort of blurred. Gudruny wasn't much different from Lalassa (and is still a poor imitation of Rose Buck, in my opinion), and all of these witty nobles were rather wearing. Tamora Pierce goes out of her way to make witty characters, but they are all witty in the same way. That isn't true in real life. Different people make different kinds of jokes, different kinds of quips. Hers all make the same. Simply based on dialogue, Sandry was not particularly distinguishable from Berenene; Briar was a lot like Fen or Shen or whatever he was called. And a joke really isn't a joke if the author has to explain that it's funny, as happened a few times.
There were no howlers along the lines of "'Hakkoi's hammer, what is that?' He asked, pointing to her bosom" (from Shatterglass), but there were a few things that I couldn't help but put a not-so-nice turn to. But what am I supposed to think when the slightly nymphomaniac Emperess says to her trusted advisor, "I prefer the sight of such bold and brawny fellows on their knees before me, thank you all the same"? As our protagonists are now in their late teens, there was much more innuendo and sexual discussion. Daja dealt with a realization of her feelings, Sandry played the flirtatious (but nevertheless chaste) rational heterosexual woman; Tris was not interested (making her my favorite character as the one I could best related to), and Briar showed himself to be a regualar Don Juan, not simply flirting with every maidservant who appeared, but getting each into his bed, as well. Now, this is a world of (magical) very effective contraception for both women and men; its magical healers can probably treat any sexually contracted disease. On these grounds, then, it is apparently perfectly fine for a young man to sleep around. Well, perhaps it is. I don't know. But for a novel whose moral subetext is the oppression of women, it seems a bit strange that everyone turns a blind eye this. Is it justified, simply because Briar is careful, and makes it clear that he doesnt mean anythin by it. And all the girls are falling over themselves to get him, anyway, so it must be all right. These would be the maidservants employed by a very staid, conservative household -- are they desperate to sleep with every man who crosses their path? Or does Briar's obvious interest in them, combined with his power and status, make them feel that it is inappropriate to appear less than charmed? I would tend to say the latter; I think it would be somewhat naive to say otherwise. And yet, Tamora Pierce, who once censured me (unfairly, I would say) on Sheroes for implying that the only consequences in a sexual relationship are the practical consequences of pregnancy, disease, and the like, sees no reason why there should be a problem with this more subtle subjugation of women to male sexul needs. The earlier possibility -- that all of these women are just dying to sleep with any handsome man they meet, is not much less disturbing. It seems such a typical chauvinistic assumption, that women are desperate for sex, that they lose their reason as soon as a comely man shows up, that lower class women in particular have no sense of self-respect and so justly taken advantage of. Even, at the very ends, Sandry rewards her guards with extra money, "for the purchase of -- 'comforts -- on the journey home." Thanks for protecting my virtue, now go rent yourselves some whores. Because, you know, prostitution isn't at all a source of exploitation.
/rant
There was also some evidence for Tris/Duke Vedris, which iss very interesting, and not wholly implausible, and which I may begin to ship in a quiet, noncommittal, more-joking-than-serious way.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 10:25 pm (UTC)Hadn't thought about that before, but you're probably right.
On the issue of Briar's sleeping around - she did have several scenes wherein the girls tend to grumble about Briar's behavior - Tris warns the housekeeper about Briar, for example. But still, I see your point.
I liked it better than the Circle Opens books too, overall. Not sure if I like it better than a couple of the originals, though.