flemmings | Of Bujold and Babies

Finished Curse of Chalion. Not so dusty. Not something I'm likely to reread, or even keep on the shelves, but at the end of the day it registered decidedly on this side of Worth Reading ie Not A Waste of Time: and of how many books or indeed manga can I say that with confidence? Manga at least exercises my Japanese, but otherwise its 'new and useful' content is about as low as most English fantasy. It's just a faster read. Curse also had one or two manga moments, for lack of another term, that I'd like to have seen expanded, in amongst the rather bland main characters and action. Imagine what Higuri You would make of suspending the king's long-time lover head downwards over a vat of water in the bowels of the castle: to say nothing of the Roknarian Saint and his maimed umm whatever he was. Yaoi fanservice, guys: if shounen manga can do it, why can't American fantasy? (FTR the evil galley-master and the pretty young captive bit was handled to my perfect satisfaction.)

Now I may forge on with Paladin of Souls. And see if it says anything as useful about the habits (or possibly habituation) of demonkind as Ima Ichiko's 'You wouldn't expect someone to ask for hundred dollars in return for the loan of an eraser, but a youkai might. Their value system is just *different*.' That in a story where to my mind she comes perilously close to All A Youkai Wants is To Be Us. But I'm unfair. She's shown enough humans fascinated by what youkai have to offer- even if she never convinced me sniff- she might as well show a youkai fascinated by what the mortal world has to offer. I mean, something more than the casual amusement Akama finds there. And especially because the draw of the mortal world evidently isn't anything as cliched as love or friendship or ~~democracy~~ the deep beauty of human relations that ~~the heathen in his blindness~~ youkai-eating youkai can't possibly understand: it's something as cliched as cherry blossoms. ^_^

You know, sad but true, most people's conversation bores me. Except New Yorkers, who somehow manage to be fascinating or at least colourful about whatever they're talking about. But most people up here are like Japanese- lots of words expressing nothing but the fact that 'we two are in verbal touch.' This makes it odder that I can have perfectly satisfying conversations that go:
Her: Dan.
Me: Yes, I'm Jeanne.
Her: Mime.
Me: Yup, that's Jemima.
Her: Bee.
Me: And that's Bea.
Her: Eeyai.
Me: Eli's not here. He's sick today.
Her: Hoo.
Me: Hugh's over there.
Her: Eliot. (no, really)
Me: Aaron Elliot's sleeping.

And wait only for the day that Eeyai turns into Eeyai? to indicate that she's registered that he hasn't been here at all today and wonders where he's got to, not simply assumed that he's vanished suddenly the way her friends tend to. But yeah- if we talk different viewpoints, the 14 month old one where people and objects have a random and interrupted existence is pretty different.

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But yeah- if we talk different viewpoints, the 14 month old one where people and objects have a random and interrupted existence is pretty different.

Or maybe not so much? I mean, if you're going to mention Ima Ichiko in the same post . . .

Her youkai seem to have zero attention span.
A: Where's Kagyuu?
R: Not here, not ever.
A: I just saw him.
R: Like 14 years ago?!?
A: So when will he be back?
R: Dude, he's dead.
A: Yeah? So where is he?
R: Dead!
A: Fine, I'll wait.
R: GAH.
Sort of like time doesn't mean anything to these guys? Yesterday is today is tomorrow.

You could extrapolate that her youkai (oh, for instance, . . . uh, was her name? Mizuna? the white snake that sets up housekeeping) are attracted to situations that fasten them down and provide more solid sensations of place and time and purpose.

Yeah well, but that's youkai with the different (or nonexistant) time sense. People do that, they're cases for Oliver Sacks. Or 14 months old.

White snake? Mizuna? Talking about Ima stories makes *me* feel like a Sacks patient. I can never identify which story it is. You mean the three women in the storeroom that isn't there story? What I never get in these stories- there's a fox one as well- is why they'd bother marrying a human in the first place- a guaranteed supply of human finery aside, of course.

Or, you know, if you're close to being immortal you may not register years as a real lapse of time, any more than a non-technological people register minutes and seconds. 14 years could be 14 minutes to a youkai. If they don't understand 'dead'- though Akama does, and bitches that humans go dead so easily- it also suggests something about how their souls transmute. Maybe that's why being eaten is such a casual thing for them.

I'm rereading Katharine Kerr's Deverry series (ongoing since 1986 and only two books left to be written!) and sharing it with a coworker who's reading it for the first time, so that's a lot of fun. Kerr has characters from the Seelie and Unseelie Courts who have absolutely no concept of human time, but oh do they like to meddle in human affairs. They are an absolute pain to negotiate with.

IMHO, Paladin of Souls is the more interesting book, with a more entertaining protagonist and plotline. However, if memory serves, it doesn't talk very much about demonkind, and spends much more time dealing with saints/world mythology. The same is also true of the third book in the series, "Hallowed Hunt". Again, interesting characters and plot, but more about shamanism than the habits of demons. The second and third books are a bit of a disappointment in that regard.

The plotline so far is giving me the same kind of hives that the start of Curse did. Wow, how innovative-- stifled dissatisfied woman takes to the road in spite of overly-protective patriarchal family/ servants who want to Keep Her At Home Where She Belongs and stop her from Being Herself. Innovative? Yeah, see, she's a **40 year old** woman, not a spunky 18 year old. (The spunky 18 year old is her servant.) See, it's about *middle age* and the sandwich generation and all that good contemporary stuff.

So what's it doing in a fantasy? This lead-footed pushing of a good feminist partyline is at least 25 years old if not more. The Broken Chain, here we come. Again.

*grin* Somehow I don't exactly picture Ista as the "sandwich" type, age range non-withstanding. After all, the whole problem with the sandwich generation is that they can't go gallivanting off across the countryside at a whim. ^_^

I agree, the party-line pushing is decidedly lead-footed. Although I tend to doubt many other fantasy authors would have the skill make a 40 year old protagonist marketable in a genre where the average buyer is in the twenties range....

Nah, as I see it, Ista was tied down by her ancient mother and now her ancient mother's gone and her daughter's busy having kids. It's just updated from 'the kids are gone my husband's not interested in my any more I shall go out and Find Myself.'

And nah again, as I see it, this is just another in the line of older protagonists from (established and ageing themselves) female authors like Leguin. Publishers seem vaguely aware that they need some kind of diversity in their approach, and possibly someone pointed out that the Boomers who fuelled the SF&F explosion 30 years ago are now middle-aged themselves, still reading the genre but not interested in 20 year old protagonists any more. The greying of the SF cons has been a noticeable event for the last ten years at least. (

nojojojo in her early 30's has talked about being one of the *younger* people at these cons, and what a change the manga conventions were with their dear god teenagers and 20-somethings.) So if a proven best-seller says she wants to write an older character, I can't see many publishers demanding 20-somethings from her instead.

Of Bujold and Babies

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