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On comfort reads and so on
And now for the other thing I've been mulling over in my mind since the quick posts while reading Mercedes Lackey a few days back, and a lot more about the writing than the other one was.
Lackey does do some things very well: inchoate teenage angst, for one thing. That feeling you are all alone in a hostile world that doesn't understand you or recognize you as an individual of worth and feeling ... and then the experience of becoming special, a chosen one, who falls into a group of accepting, welcoming individuals who reassure you and spur you on to do great things. And she's got the trick of tapping directly into the id when she's really trying to do so. *coughVanyelcough*
What she does not do very well, however, is conflict.1
(Keep in mind that I'm mostly referring to the Valdemar books, here, as I'm more familiar with those, although I haven't read them all. And I don't think I've read any of her co-written books, either. At least not published since 1995 or so.)
Her first series were, I think, edited more closely than the later ones, and her tendency to amiably wander down the lanes of daily minutia while ignoring any need for an outside threat reined in.2 But that leads into another thing she does fairly well, which is one of the reasons I periodically pick her books up.3
There's this genre of books that my mom and I call "books in which nothing happens." Angela Thirkell writes these sorts of books. D.E. Stevenson and Flora Thompson also have, and quite a lot of classic children's novels fit into that category as well.4 Which isn't to say that there's not conflict of a sort, but it's primarily small-scale local stuff that tends not to have an impact much farther than the people involved, and there's not really a whole lot of physical action or high emotional drama going on.
Fantasy, at least most of the stuff that's published and sells, often seems almost the antithesis of this. Possibly as a result of coming from the heroic tradition, the readers' expectation is that there will be a large, dangerous conflict somewhere in there, the protagonist will be put at significant emotional or physical risk, and the stakes will be high. Man Versus Destiny! and Man Versus The Gods! instead of Man Versus the Vacuum Cleaner or Man Versus The Neighbor Did You Hear What She Called Our Sharon Last Week?
I've been noticing a definite lean in this direction in Lackey's later Valdemar books. The protagonists, who probably have some sort of traumatic backstory, end up in a new situation and sort of wander along more-or-less happily until the author realizes that she has to end the book in fifty pages and throws in an enemy from the outside who had little impact on the first two hundred pages, to end with a big bang. And even when the conflict from outside is hinted at, or spills over into the group of people with which the book is concerned, there's no sense that the protagonist is in real, actual, immediate danger. No sense of growing dread, and no sense of looking forward to the resolution of an overarching conflict.
I have to say the bits in which nothing happens are the bits I like better -- I'm not supposed to feel that the protagonist is in dire straits, and I can just lose myself in the minutia of living. I think this was best brought out in Alta5, a non-Valdemar book, which I can best describe as "Ancient Egypt with falcons dressed up as dragons." In real life, Lackey's a raptor rehabilitator as well as an author. In fact, the only time I've seen her live was at an Oklahoma con where she and a few others showed up to do a special presentation on birds of prey, and brought several education birds who couldn't be released with them, including a darling little peregrine. And she applied that knowledge to dragon raising and training, which I enjoyed. The overall conflict the protagonist had? Can't remember a thing. He was chased on dragonback at one point, but that's all gone. Daily details of how to raise, feed, and train araptor dragon? I'm so there! (I haven't read the sequels precisely because I don't remember any of the rest of the story. XD)
The owl trilogy (Owlflight and sequels) she wrote was where I first pinpointed this -- the protagonist was an orphan (Or WAS HE?!) who was accepted by the Hawkbrothers, a clan of sort-of elf-analogues who have large raptors as bond-birds. There was a threat of raiders in the background of the stories, but it remained very much in the background while the narrative followed Darien's personal story, until it needed a big bang, at which point the raiders attacked. I never felt like he was ever in danger of anything other than disappointment.
The most recent ones I've read, two books of a trilogy that will be completed later this year, which I also call Harry Potter Goes To Valdemar ... same thing, with a serious dash of Potteritis: we didn't really need a trilogy of friends, the girl with bushy hair, and Quidditch on horseback. Mags, the protagonist (called "Magpie" in the official description for some reason), has enough on his plate with trying to fit into an academic world alien from his abusive upbringing in a mine ... to my mind, we don't really need the last-fifty-page crisis that comes out of nowhere and ends the book. And I have to agree that Lackey got the style of the Potter books without the substance -- in the second book, there's a blowup between the three friends which comes out of nowhere, and is thus unbelievable. At least Rowling had the three wizard kids continually snipe and hurt each other in little, normal ways before their big bust-up, which lets us believe it.
And there's no real Big Bad behind the overall plot - there's a neighboring kingdom which has political differences, but no threat of danger hanging over the heads of the characters, just mentions every so often, and a group of diplomatic visitors who act more like bored teenagers picking fights than credible opponents.
I'm not going to go into her "Bards are SOOPER SPESHUL people!" thing that I hate when fantasy writers do, because I know too much about how traveling performers were viewed in medieval times. And I'll only rant a little about her characters' long-standing simplistic contempt for the entirety of the upper class, or "highborns," as she calls them. All characters you are supposed to like, even ones who are highborn themselves, dismiss out of hand the silly highborns who exist to wear expensive clothing, who hobnob with other highborns, and care only for status and wealth. If they're good highborns, they are egalitarian and generous and only play the game in order to put one over on or use the other highborns. No three-dimensional characters in the lot. It seems to be a shortcut signifier, like fantasy writers who have feisty young women straining against their gender bonds and say that they hate embroidery. I know far too many strong, self-willed, independent women who spend half their time on fiber arts to do anything other than roll my eyes at that. (I'd love to see, say, a grizzled woman mercenary who stitches flowers on hankies to sell during her down time!)
That's way more disjointed than I wanted, as I've alternated a sentence or two here and there with real work. :) I guess, in conclusion I'd say that what I really want out of one of her novels is to get rid of the Big Bad altogether and stick with cozy domestic fantasy. Or at least have the Big Bad be credible.
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1 And dialect. But I'm looking at conflict here, because all I could do with the dialect problem is post examples of it and poke fun at it.
2 Just an assumption. I could be wrong.
3 The other reason is that I can see the flaws in the writing clearly enough tat it energizes me -- throwing the book against the wall and saying "I could write that better!" actually seems true. Now all I have to do is actually write...
4 It's probably telling that my favorite examples are all of nostalgic British rural life. But Alexander McCall Smith hits pretty close to that nerve with his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series as well. Jan Karon's Mitford series has that, too, but there was too much of stopping and thanking God for life's little blessings every few pages for me to read more than the first book. And heading over into into manga and anime, Records of a Yokohama Shopping Trip has it in SPADES while Natume Yuujinchou and Niea_7 give me much the same feeling.
5 I DEFY YOU to NOT read the title as "FILTH". Bad choice of font there!
Lackey does do some things very well: inchoate teenage angst, for one thing. That feeling you are all alone in a hostile world that doesn't understand you or recognize you as an individual of worth and feeling ... and then the experience of becoming special, a chosen one, who falls into a group of accepting, welcoming individuals who reassure you and spur you on to do great things. And she's got the trick of tapping directly into the id when she's really trying to do so. *coughVanyelcough*
What she does not do very well, however, is conflict.1
(Keep in mind that I'm mostly referring to the Valdemar books, here, as I'm more familiar with those, although I haven't read them all. And I don't think I've read any of her co-written books, either. At least not published since 1995 or so.)
Her first series were, I think, edited more closely than the later ones, and her tendency to amiably wander down the lanes of daily minutia while ignoring any need for an outside threat reined in.2 But that leads into another thing she does fairly well, which is one of the reasons I periodically pick her books up.3
There's this genre of books that my mom and I call "books in which nothing happens." Angela Thirkell writes these sorts of books. D.E. Stevenson and Flora Thompson also have, and quite a lot of classic children's novels fit into that category as well.4 Which isn't to say that there's not conflict of a sort, but it's primarily small-scale local stuff that tends not to have an impact much farther than the people involved, and there's not really a whole lot of physical action or high emotional drama going on.
Fantasy, at least most of the stuff that's published and sells, often seems almost the antithesis of this. Possibly as a result of coming from the heroic tradition, the readers' expectation is that there will be a large, dangerous conflict somewhere in there, the protagonist will be put at significant emotional or physical risk, and the stakes will be high. Man Versus Destiny! and Man Versus The Gods! instead of Man Versus the Vacuum Cleaner or Man Versus The Neighbor Did You Hear What She Called Our Sharon Last Week?
I've been noticing a definite lean in this direction in Lackey's later Valdemar books. The protagonists, who probably have some sort of traumatic backstory, end up in a new situation and sort of wander along more-or-less happily until the author realizes that she has to end the book in fifty pages and throws in an enemy from the outside who had little impact on the first two hundred pages, to end with a big bang. And even when the conflict from outside is hinted at, or spills over into the group of people with which the book is concerned, there's no sense that the protagonist is in real, actual, immediate danger. No sense of growing dread, and no sense of looking forward to the resolution of an overarching conflict.
I have to say the bits in which nothing happens are the bits I like better -- I'm not supposed to feel that the protagonist is in dire straits, and I can just lose myself in the minutia of living. I think this was best brought out in Alta5, a non-Valdemar book, which I can best describe as "Ancient Egypt with falcons dressed up as dragons." In real life, Lackey's a raptor rehabilitator as well as an author. In fact, the only time I've seen her live was at an Oklahoma con where she and a few others showed up to do a special presentation on birds of prey, and brought several education birds who couldn't be released with them, including a darling little peregrine. And she applied that knowledge to dragon raising and training, which I enjoyed. The overall conflict the protagonist had? Can't remember a thing. He was chased on dragonback at one point, but that's all gone. Daily details of how to raise, feed, and train a
The owl trilogy (Owlflight and sequels) she wrote was where I first pinpointed this -- the protagonist was an orphan (Or WAS HE?!) who was accepted by the Hawkbrothers, a clan of sort-of elf-analogues who have large raptors as bond-birds. There was a threat of raiders in the background of the stories, but it remained very much in the background while the narrative followed Darien's personal story, until it needed a big bang, at which point the raiders attacked. I never felt like he was ever in danger of anything other than disappointment.
The most recent ones I've read, two books of a trilogy that will be completed later this year, which I also call Harry Potter Goes To Valdemar ... same thing, with a serious dash of Potteritis: we didn't really need a trilogy of friends, the girl with bushy hair, and Quidditch on horseback. Mags, the protagonist (called "Magpie" in the official description for some reason), has enough on his plate with trying to fit into an academic world alien from his abusive upbringing in a mine ... to my mind, we don't really need the last-fifty-page crisis that comes out of nowhere and ends the book. And I have to agree that Lackey got the style of the Potter books without the substance -- in the second book, there's a blowup between the three friends which comes out of nowhere, and is thus unbelievable. At least Rowling had the three wizard kids continually snipe and hurt each other in little, normal ways before their big bust-up, which lets us believe it.
And there's no real Big Bad behind the overall plot - there's a neighboring kingdom which has political differences, but no threat of danger hanging over the heads of the characters, just mentions every so often, and a group of diplomatic visitors who act more like bored teenagers picking fights than credible opponents.
I'm not going to go into her "Bards are SOOPER SPESHUL people!" thing that I hate when fantasy writers do, because I know too much about how traveling performers were viewed in medieval times. And I'll only rant a little about her characters' long-standing simplistic contempt for the entirety of the upper class, or "highborns," as she calls them. All characters you are supposed to like, even ones who are highborn themselves, dismiss out of hand the silly highborns who exist to wear expensive clothing, who hobnob with other highborns, and care only for status and wealth. If they're good highborns, they are egalitarian and generous and only play the game in order to put one over on or use the other highborns. No three-dimensional characters in the lot. It seems to be a shortcut signifier, like fantasy writers who have feisty young women straining against their gender bonds and say that they hate embroidery. I know far too many strong, self-willed, independent women who spend half their time on fiber arts to do anything other than roll my eyes at that. (I'd love to see, say, a grizzled woman mercenary who stitches flowers on hankies to sell during her down time!)
That's way more disjointed than I wanted, as I've alternated a sentence or two here and there with real work. :) I guess, in conclusion I'd say that what I really want out of one of her novels is to get rid of the Big Bad altogether and stick with cozy domestic fantasy. Or at least have the Big Bad be credible.
--
1 And dialect. But I'm looking at conflict here, because all I could do with the dialect problem is post examples of it and poke fun at it.
2 Just an assumption. I could be wrong.
3 The other reason is that I can see the flaws in the writing clearly enough tat it energizes me -- throwing the book against the wall and saying "I could write that better!" actually seems true. Now all I have to do is actually write...
4 It's probably telling that my favorite examples are all of nostalgic British rural life. But Alexander McCall Smith hits pretty close to that nerve with his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series as well. Jan Karon's Mitford series has that, too, but there was too much of stopping and thanking God for life's little blessings every few pages for me to read more than the first book. And heading over into into manga and anime, Records of a Yokohama Shopping Trip has it in SPADES while Natume Yuujinchou and Niea_7 give me much the same feeling.
5 I DEFY YOU to NOT read the title as "FILTH". Bad choice of font there!
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And even when she's set up the conflict, she doesn't do pacing well, so you still get the, "HOSHIT, I've only got twenty pages left!" ending. I've noticed this especially in her Victorian fairytale retellings (which probably have a series name, but I don't know what it is).
But mostly I'm just there to see the characters live their lives and learn about the world around them. Hooray for books in which nothing happens!
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That actually happened in one of Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper books. Well, she was a grizzled cop, but same principle.
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Apart from the main Heralds of Valdemar (but you are so right about her recent trilogy, I don't think I'll be buying the last book), I still love Tarma and Kethryveris and Kerowyn, of course, the most. And I like to re-read the Runic Voices books. The Alta world was okay - I liked the internal interaction of the dragon riders and the dragons the most, too.
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Even I noticed the "highborn" handwaving, though, and I know I read these during my especially oblivious years.
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I want to say that Elizabeth Moon had a character like that in the Paksenarrion stories. Maybe not embroidery, but just general tailoring/seamstressing. I have this memory of an older female soldier that joined up because her husband and children had died in a plague of some sort. Might not have been Moon, but I'm pretty sure I've seen that somewhere.
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I think it was the Chosen One thing that first turned me off her work when I found it in high school, actually- that and the Bards Are Special attitude. I have always had a massive negative reaction to that particular fantasy trope, even as a wee kid. Random chance and political scheming, cool, but not vague mystic choseniness. You might think this would make an awful lot of fantasy problematic for me, and you'd be right. But that's a whole 'nother rant.
But I really do love little slice of life story moments. Anyone recommend a Lackey book that's exceptionally low on Choseness and Trauma as Drama and high on the tiny moments? I really wouldn't object to enjoying such a popular author.
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But like I say, it's been at least a decade since I read it, so if someone shows up and says, "No, it was terrible," they're probably right. :)
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The first one, which I recommend the most in the vein you're looking for and which is standalone if you don't want to read on, has a young girl - who could potentially follow the Cinderella tradition (the conventions and tropes are enforced in that world by the fairy tale magic tradition and if people aren't careful they get inexorably stuck into reliving the appropriate story) - avoiding this and being picked up by a Fairy Godmother (which are the troubleshooters of the magical realms) to become a FG in training. The book then mostly talks about her training period and her first few successful manipulations of the storylines.
She even manages to manipulate the quest of a stuck up, impulsive prince in such a way to make him reconsider his ways and eventually become boyfriend material. I'm not sure that part is all that pc, but I enjoyed the reversed power flow.
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I know I've read a fair bit of (well-deserved) criticism of Lackey for whipping out the sexual sadists as villains, and I sort of wonder if that's because she isn't sure what else to do. Crap, the book needs a dramatic ending! I know, torture!
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Have you ever read The Interior Life? You might like it--it's half about a somewhat bored housewife dealing with various daily life issues, and half about the fantasy kingdom she invents to think about while doing housework. When I reread, I mostly skip the fantasy segments because I like the real world parts better. The one annoying bit is that there's one scene where a minor character makes an offensive remark about homosexuality, and I've never figured out why that came up, because it's pretty much unrelated to the rest of that scene or the book.