Sci-Fi & Fantasy Girlz discussion

Usually, the Girlz group takes a break in December what with the holidays, and the family stuff, and all the fabrication of easily cast off New Years' resolutions to be done. This year we're going to do something a little different.

I've been jonesin' to re-read The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip for some time now, so this year we're going to go ahead and make that our December read. It was #2 on our November poll. As is often the case, every book on that poll has distinct merits, and would be perfectly apt for this group. It's always a bit bittersweet for me looking at the poll results. So many books, so little time, and if every poll is an opportunity to read something intriguing, it's also a set of such opportunities lost, or at least delayed. If ambition strikes, maybe we can even start in on #3 Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik or #4 Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. Reading three books for December rather than none might be a bit unlikely... but in the spirit of ambitious goals (and because I finished our November book, The Girl in the Tower already) I'm starting this thread early. I hope that will both give us a bit extra time and allow folks a chance to get their hands on a copy (copies...) of the book(s).

Don't forget to use the spoiler tags!

I've already got three books on the way for the PIFM December thread from the Good Thrillers group. Don't think I'm participating for next month on this.

Wheee!!!

I like this book.

I'll try to join in after I'm done with The Girl in the Tower.

I'm only a little bit into this re-read, and I'm trying to remember if I've read it once or twice before, but failing. I read it first about when it came out, and may have read it again after that. Regardless, it's been 30+ years, so I thought it'd been so long since I read it that I would have forgotten most of it. However, I'm remembering it quite vividly—which is somewhat ironic, given that I can't remember how many times I've read it... oh, and because of the eventual plot hook of this story. (No spoilers....) At least, that's the case so far. Later plot points are a bit fuzzy.

I remember finding the names, for instance, pretty brash. Some of them would be trite and obvious—almost eye-rollingly silly, in fact—weren't it clear she's using those names so knowingly and with a wink. It could read like Brian from Family Guy naming a character John Everyman in his perennial unwritten Great American Novel. But in this case, she knows her readers know, and she does a little narrative/dialogue tapdance every once in a while to let us know she knows we know.

Deth is arguably the most obvious, though Hed as the name of the land from which Morgon comes is also pretty pointed as well. She plays with those names a lot through the story, in her world-building, and in the dialogue in a way that I remember picking up on back in the day, but didn't find as amusing as I do in this re-(re-?)read. Rood is my everything-old-is-new-again, new favorite character name.

The scholarly school of mysteries cum magic was probably less of a cliche back when this thing was written, but even with the Hogwarts of it all these days, I'm still finding her take on the college of riddles interesting. These are not "What walks on four legs in the morning..." kinds of riddles, nor would hobbits see much merit in them. It becomes clear pretty soon that riddles are a kind of affectation in order to study history and folklore. They become the allegorical way of approaching the world intellectually. Instead of thesis-hypothesis-experiment of the real world Enlightenment, the world building in this book has riddle-answer-lesson/moral (or "stricture" in this case.) Scientific method might not be a great comparison, given the fantasy nature of things in the book. Maybe the symbolic presentation of medieval alchemy might make better sense.... Somewhere in-between, probably. It's like the medieval alchemical approach, but one that actually works because there's actual magic in the world in which it operates, and even in our mundane world, we recognize that as a "mystery" or "the Art" so riddles work just as well as chants at midnight.

Morgon's "Chosen One" status is probably where I'm finding this re-read running a little thin, not that that's necessarily McKillip's fault. Again, we've just been inundated by the ubiquity of Rowling. Three stars on Morgon's forehead these days is something that's almost impossible not to associate with Harry Potter even though it pre-dates the Potter series by nearly 20 years. It'd be interesting to find out if Rowling had read McKillip; if there were, say, a dog-eared copy of R-MoH with lots of underlining at the bottom of her semi-mythical huge box of notes and prep.... "Cough:cough! Patrick Rothfuss too! Cough:cough:cough!" Or even, the Maesters of the Grand Poobah, George Martin.

I did a little Internet sleuthing and wasn't able to find a picture of Rowling with a copy of McKillip's work on a shelf in the background sitting there like a half-empty bottle of performance enhancing drugs in plain sight behind a sports star in his locker... but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were the case.

McKillip, of course, didn't invent the concept whole clothe either, but if we held up Le Guin's 1968 Earthsea books alongside McKillip and the contemporary writers (dare I say, "followers?") then I think McKillip's version still has it's own distinct flavor compared to the rest.

I hate "Chosen One" tropes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuTQ0...

Some of these tropes have been around since the dawn of the printing press... in China.

Amber wrote: "Some of these tropes have been around since the dawn of the printing press... in China."

Well, if I remember correctly (and apparently I do...) she backs it up in this one with some goodly world-building. So, it's not like Harry Potter when some Big Bad just shows up and kills his parents because... reasons. Or GRRM where the secret turns out to be because (not necessarily in this order) love & sex & violence, and dragons! Or even that whole silly virgin birth nonsense. It's more like the thousands of years of background that lead to the birth of the Kwisatz Haderach in Dune. With riddles, I guess.

Too much world building is the same as info dump. *wink* That's what both JMA (Jean M. Auel) and GRRM do.

Actually JMA is worse than GMMR because she doesn't stop the world building after the end of The Clan of the Cave Bear. Only world building needed for the five sequels was the non-Ukrainian/non-Russian locales in the story (e.g. the lands of the Lanzadonii, Losadunaii and the Sharamudoi, etc).

Dune, however doesn't actually have that much world building, not even for the planet Arrakis itself. The world building was pretty much left to the sequels by Frank and the other sequels (and prequels) by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert.

Besides, what OTHER sci-fi/fantasy series has a song by Iron Maiden?! *BG* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Aa2O...

I'd differentiate between world-building and an information dump in that world-building can be presented as an information dump, or it can come out in some other form. An information dump is when it all comes out like an appendix but right there in the text. Sometimes an author might cover it up with Q&A dialogue or some such contrivance, but no matter the form when it all comes in one big block then I feel "dumped on" as it were.

In the case of this book, for instance, she drops us in right AFTER a pretty major plot point has already taken place. Another author might have told us the story with the life or death riddle game with Peven, for instance, but we get it as a much more low-key family quarrel and in a few dribs and drabs later. And then that segues in to the death of his parents, which also gets filled in with a few more bits and pieces later. To me, that's "responsible" world-building.

In any case, one of the things I'm noticing about this re-read is the extent of Morgon's pacifism and the amount of hand-wringing he does over his "destiny" (or the role for him proscribed long ago... which is about the same thing.) I didn't remember him musing so much on the whole existential nature of his position.

The first time he does that (right in Chapter 1) I think it reads very much like something out of a Joseph Campbell primer, in which refusing to go on the Heroic Journey is an early step to going on a Heroic Journey. Authors sometimes have their heroes reject the Heroic Journey like they're ticking boxes on the Pop song lyric writers' check list.

Luke Skywalker: Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate it, but there's nothing I can do about it right now... It's all such a long way from here.

Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: That's your uncle talking.

But Morgon doesn't just reject his heroic journey, he questions it while he's on it, which is something of a departure from the heroic standard. He does it in dialogue with other characters, while musing to himself on the road, etc. It's in there much more than would be necessary to satisfy Campbell's sense of heroism. It might, in fact, be the major theme of the novel: his musing on the nature of heroism and destiny. The "head" of Hed, we might say.

JMA and GRRM (or so I've heard about him) do it appendix-style in the main text, but JMA REPEATS it multiple times in each book. That's info dump.

As a matter of fact, I think I've caught her repeating it within 5 pages of the LAST time she'd laid out the information in the fourth book of her series, The Plains of Passage. She takes four pages to describe the geology of the mountains near the Sharamudoi, then repeats it five pages later!

Bravo on the Star Wars quote! It seems that everyone has been influenced by Campbell to some degree since his study came out...except maybe the Twitlight Saga...and those who insist on making God-awful mashups of bad Regency literature and zombies like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. *cough cough*

This said, I doubt that I'd enjoy this book even if I'd been able to FIND it in the database of my library system.

I went ahead and blew through the first book, so I've started in on the second....

That's a very sensible thing to do. It's more like Lord of the Rings than Harry Potter as a series.

Heh. I stopped reading Harry Potter when I was introduced to Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden...and Tavi of Calderon.

I read both Harrys.

Mary wrote: "That's a very sensible thing to do. It's more like Lord of the Rings than Harry Potter as a series."

Since I whipped through #2 over the weekend, I've started in on #3. These books do have a certain continuity, though elements are a little jarring. The ending of Book #1 is a bit (view spoiler)[abrupt, shall we say, so the POV shift from Morgon to Raederle in book #2 is a bit of a grinding of the gear shift (hide spoiler)]. I remember finding it more jarring when I first read these books because the cliff-hanger is still out there. I knew it was coming this time, so it didn't bother me, but the shift did remind me of that first reading. By the time that plotline picks back up as a reader, I was comfortable with the focus being on her, so the progression seems a bit more natural since they go on together.

Well, it is like The Lord of the Rings in that, too.

Because it was originally meant to be a six book series, but Tolkien's publisher said it wouldn't work that way in post war England because of the economy, Mary. Re: LOTR's cliffhangers.

No, it was meant as a single work. The technology for binding books was not up to the omnibus yet.

That's NOT what the professor's literary executor, his son Christopher Tolkien, says about a the negotiations between his father and the publisher.

Are you gonna argue with a member of the Professor's family?

I'm nearly done with Book #3 now, and though I do remember a lot of it, I can't remember the ending... which is funny.

I've found this to be an interesting, nostalgic kind of re-read, and a lot of the dynamics of these books had a sort of formative effect on my reading habits in the years since (particularly the nerdier stuff.) McKillip has a flair for poetic language that I didn't recall from my first reading. She'll bust out with a metaphorical description of a scene as fast as moonlight shimmers on a frozen lake or [Insert your own poetic language here].

Her treatment of secondary and primary characters struck me as particularly unusual this time. Characters get introduced, developed and then disappear and/or reappear with almost jarring abruptness. An early example is Rood who appears with a lot of drama and profundity, and then pretty much disappears from the narrative. But even the main protagonists appear and disappear suddently. Morgon is missing through the first part of the second book, and we follow Raederle, then both of them, then Morgon alone again, then Raederle appears again. Morgon's little sister, Tristan, shows up and seems to have all the characteristics of a significant character, but then also pretty much vanishes. Lyra could easily be the lead of a series of more swashbuckling, sword & sorcery (or spear & shifters, I guess...) set of stories, and she appears and disappears from the narrative just like the rest.

Now, thematically, I think that serves a particular purpose. McKillip's theme and plot, or one of the major components of it at least, is the whole shapeshifting reality of the forces being described. Not all the characters can change shape and then come and go as they please, but in that context, it's makes sense to point out the transitory nature of the encounters and the broader depth of the world in which they live by having characters show up and then disappear with a comparable frequency. Other books are arranged in a more linear fashion, and though I don't think she ever loses the thread of her story, I did wonder why it was going off in one direction or another on several occasions.

Amber wrote: "That's NOT what the professor's literary executor, his son Christopher Tolkien, says about a the negotiations between his father and the publisher."

I've remember reading that the publication of those "six books" in three volumes had more to do with post-WWII shortages and publication issues than anything else, which always seemed to make sense. But it's funny, because now I do wonder about how serious a concern that was now that you mention the source of that being Christopher Tolkien as the executor. I've always been a bit leery over Christopher Tolkien's handling of that intellectual property. Sure, he's no Brian Herbert (whose handling of his father's legacy has been abysmal IMO) but there are a few dubious decisions that got made under Christopher (the publication of a few shorter pieces that were unfinished and likely in a state that JRRT would not have been happy about going out into the public, and the weird, convoluted rights to a film adaptation, for instance) and the rationalizations of them have struck me as being more than a little shaky.

So, now I'm wondering about the need to publish in three rather than four volumes post-WWII. It's not like there weren't gobs amount of shorter, pulp fiction paperbacks.... I suppose that would save money on publication costs, and could have had some sort of effect on price, but it seems like six books would have, well, not doubled the chances, but been more easily tweaked into more profit.

It's hard to say what the particulars of mid-20th century British publication economics were now, of course. But now I think on it, I'm not as sure it adds up.

It does make for a weird contrast with Riddle-Master series in that McKillip's work was published in three volumes and reads very much to me like that's how it was meant to be read, but later got put together into a single "Riddle-Master" volume. That's not particularly unusual, of course. Writers serialize stories in magazines that wind up being published as a book, some volumes anthologize any number of disparate works. Etc.

For the most part, I don't know that that process necessarily hurts any given product, though it does create some awkward situations. Probably the most famous these days George R. R. Martin's monstrous series that I remember reading was first envisioned as a trilogy for no apparent reason whatsoever other than the whole "Fantasy goes with Trilogy" thing.