I’ve fallen in love with Stephen King.

Never saw that coming. I don’t read horror novels; I don’t tolerate the whole genre well.  (I tried to watch some of Halloween H2O when it played at the theatre I was working in – I lasted four not particularly terrifying minutes.) Prior to last week I’d read three of his books: Gerald’s Game, which I had to read for school (art school, that is: we had to do a cover for a Stephen King novel; don’t know how I chose this one), Rose Madder (did I get it from the library? I don’t own it…), and The Eyes of the Dragon. GG was a horror, all right – it was more years ago than I wish to acknowledge, and I still remember parts of it vividly, above and beyond the part I tried to illustrate. (Also, it was in this I learned “lefty loosy, righty tighty”. Seriously – never heard that before.) (ALSO, I think of it almost every time I hear The Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” – “they call me a space cowboy”. *shudder* It would be every time, but they play it so blamed often.) The dog … *hard shudder* But what I remember most was the surprise I felt at how good a writer King is. I had assumed he was to fiction what reality shows are to television: popular schlock. Well, there’s reality tv, and there’s reality tv; Survivor is several steps above, say, “The Bachelor”, and SYTYCD is miles above Survivor. And Stephen King has chops. Rose Madder was strange, and good, and I don’t remember it as well. Eyes of the Dragon, more on the fantasy end of the spectrum, was okay, not as good as I expected. I’ve been collecting the Dark Tower novels as I’ve come across them, and after recently reading a Buffy/Salem’s Lot fanfic crossover I decided I needed to see if I could manage his vampires. I haven’t gotten around to that yet.

But in the past few months I’ve seen King’s On Writing recommended a couple of times, by writers I have some respect for. Confession: when I saw the recs, my first puzzled thought is “who is Stephen King to be writing a book on writing?” But when I did my “I’ve got my income tax refund and dammit I’m buying books” thing this year it was part of the Amazon order. And wow.

The first half of the book is a memoir, skimming over his life from his birth, through his childhood raised by his mother, alone, to the time of the writing of the book, in the middle of which latter he was hit by a van and horribly injured (1999). At first I wondered about the purpose of the memoir. I enjoyed the hell out of it, but wondered. By the time I finished the book, it made perfect sense.

The second half of the book is about, as advertised, writing. What not to do, and what to do – and a permission slip to go and do it. Read and/or write 4-6 hours a day. Not easy with a full-time job and a mom to look after – but he knows that. It’s not like Malcolm Forbes wondering why people don’t try to find work they love; this is a man who started out washing hospital laundry and trying to feed two kids on very low pay.

The advice is solid. The toolbox metaphor is brilliant. Who is Stephen King to write a book on writing? Stephen King is a man who has sold more than 350 million copies of his books, who started from nothing and made himself an icon. And who is a pretty damn good writer.

“What is writing? Telepathy, of course.”

I never, ever looked at it that way.

This is what we’re looking at, and we all see it. I didn’t tell you. You didn’t ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room … except we are together. We’re close.
We’re having a meeting of the minds.

And as valuable as the straightforward advice is, even more valuable is the feeling I came away from this book cherishing. It’s what the one really good teacher I can claim acquaintance with, Deb Simone of Paier College of Art, used to accomplish: that feeling of limitless space and the ability to achieve anything, the inspiration to move mountains, or at least molehills. To get out there and do something.

It’s motivation. It’s permission. It’s reassurance, and it’s a kick in the butt. It’s a slap on the hand (or a cuff on the ear) over committing some literary sins – and a high five over the shared concepts, the telepathy achieved.

Another reason to love the man: “King was quoted as calling conservative commentator Glenn Beck ‘Satan’s mentally challenged younger brother.’” Oh, heart.

 

Deryni

Following the pattern I’ve established (intermittently) of rereading books I read about and loved twenty years ago and haven’t read since, I picked up Chronicles of the Deryni a couple of weeks ago or so. Katherine Kurtz created a world based on dreams she had, I read once, that she believes were channeled actual historical tales from a land far far away or long long ago or whathaveyou. In the initial trilogy, we have King Brion out hunting when he is suddenly seized with a heart attack – or something; murder, actually – and far too soon Brion’s son Kelson, at the age of 14, is king of Gwynedd.

It’s a good story. Gwynedd is a land which has been ruled by humans for about 300 years, since the Interregnum was brought to an end: the period in which invading Deryni reigned. Whether Deryni (basically people with added powers: mind reading, the ability to detect lies, telekinesis, magical duels, the ability to influence and enthrall: basically, they’re Jedi) existed in Gwynedd before the Festil invasion is unclear; the invaders are Deryni, they favor Deryni, but whether all the Deryni there eventually are in this country came with them … anyway. 300 odd years ago things were going along just fine under the human Haldane rule, when the Deryni Festils swooped in and slaughtered (most of) the Haldanes and took the throne; they did ok for less than 80 years, then got greedy and nasty and were themselves deposed in favor of the Haldanes again. And despite the fact that there were “good” Deryni backing the restoration, Deryni shortly became the targets of a purge, reactionary to the abuses suffered by plain old humans under the Festil rule, and were nearly wiped out. Kelson’s story takes place in a time when Deryni are just starting to get a fingernail hold back into acceptance, and that makes his job that much harder, as his mother, as it turns out, not only hates and fears Deryni but is Deryni…

I don’t know why I don’t love these books more. I did when I was younger, certainly – to the extent that the concept of looking backward from a period of having lost everything to the mundanes to a period when those with “power” ruled is the backbone of my writing. Oh, possibly, dear. The similarities aren’t as strong as I was starting to fear, starting this reread, but between Deryni Chronicles and the AIVAS in the Pern books the seeds were sown for a post-race-specific-apocalyptic tale, followed by stories from the time of the apocalypse… I’ll need to be careful to avoid closer parallels than that, but I think I’m all right.

As I was saying – I don’t know why I don’t adore these books. The writing is usually impeccable. KK is a historian, and deeply enmeshed in the SCA, and her detail work is (as far as I, a comparative ignoramus, can tell), dead on. She embeds deep knowledge about the Catholic church, the Bible, and religious life, arms and armor and use thereof, and medieval ways and means in general to give her work a more solid grounding in reality than almost any I can think of. She uses dialect well but sparingly (as it should be), and in fact her dialogue is generally really very natural and … good; she rarely blips my pet peeve radar by anachronistic phrasing; the characters are Good Guys without quite being paragons of aggravating virtue, and they have disparate personalities – Kelson worked as a youth and Duncan as a rather worldly priest and so on. Yet terrible things happen and I don’t cry; wonderful things happen and I don’t get all misty; I’m left untouched by the events of the story. Which is a great shame. I keep thinking as I’m reading on through the series what a great total concept this is, what great storytelling, what great detail and breadth of knowledge and … I can pick it up and put it down with great ease. That shouldn’t be. The only thing I can think of to account for it is a slight chill in the narration. There’s third person omniscient narration, and there’s third person omniscient narration; this particular 3PON is, I feel, strangely distant in tone, very much third-person objective. Too objective. It’s impersonal. That’s it, I think: the feel is that the storyteller – as opposed to the writer, I guess – is utterly unbiased and detached from the events being described, and this makes it hard to warm up to the characters or to react strongly to events. Another factor in this is the off-handed way some information is disclosed. A major character’s marriage and the birth of his first child happened off-stage; it went from his being on fire for the woman for chapters and chapters to … no mention of her at all for chapters and chapters. For a good part of Deryni Checkmate, a woman is very pregnant, and then suddenly there’s no more mention of her or the baby for a while – until she and the baby appear in the background. The characters are far too focused on what’s in front of their noses – I’ll come back to that.

When I have time and exemplars handy I should take a look here at snippets from, say, Guy Kay or Kate Ross and compare them to Katherine Kurtz, especially if I can find sort of similar events being described. I fell idiotically in love with Kate Ross’s Julian Kestrel, and Guy Kay’s books are not ones I can pick up and put down easily. I’ve said it before: GGK requires a sort of mental calisthenics before I can crack one open. I’m passionate about GGK’s books. He makes me feel – does he ever. KK’s… I’m politely interested. Again, it’s a great pity; these are good books, but not great ones, books I’m enjoying reading but which I wouldn’t think to recommend to anyone or rush back to reread.

I think another factor in all of this is a strong questioning of characters’ actions, e.g. Seriously? They think nothing of pinning that man down and wiping his memory of what he’s seen and heard? And that man? And that one? And … on and on. I was brought up on Star Trek as my primary educational source regarding mind-to-mind contact. It’s rude, to say the least, to mess with someone’s mind without their consent. Actually, in I think every single other world I’ve read about that had people able to do it, it’s rape. But Morgan and Duncan – and others as well including Kelson when he gets stronger, but especially the dynamic duo of cousins there – traipse hither and yon blanking this man’s memory and “convincing” that one to do something and then forget it, willy nilly. Literally, will-he nill-he… Nobody’s safe, for they care for none – even friends are subject to occasional messings-with, though those sometimes come with apologies, either before or after. It’s troubling for me to read about the almost constant messing about with people’s thoughts and memories and wills. It’s troubling to read about them forcing their way here and pushing through there. These are supposed to be the good guys. When the bad guys do it I am expected to stand back with my hands on my hips and “tsk, for shame” – but hey, Morgan and Duncan couldn’t possibly make any errors! They have the Right of the Right to do what they will – all for a good cause, of course. Or, you know, to avoid a little trouble here and there.

Another good example of being bumped out of the story by a “he did what?” moment goes back to the misplaced focus thing (ironic with all the hypnosis and centering and such). A major character has what appears to be a stroke. Morgan, who has rediscovered the gift of healing, rushes to his bedside. Oh dear, he has wasted away, what a shame, we’ll miss him, now I need to be off on this other Very Important Errand, bye now. Which – it was an Important Errand, but – - sweetie? Did you forget something? Get your tight buns back to that bedside and lay on of hands! My mouth literally dropped open when he zoomed off that fast – “But – but – if he just – he’d be able to – and – Hey!” If he had done a little of that unlicensed poking about in this case, a lot of pain and suffering would have been avoided. Not even “could have” – would have. But off he went, with no more thought of trying to fix a man who *was his friend* than of trying to become an astronaut, and it’s not till chapters and weeks later (when it’s too late for some things) that he does that poking about. At which time I muttered things like “See?? See???”

One thing that’s both good and bad is – well, I see in the jacket notes that KK is a trained hypnotist. This is really a terrific foundation for Deryni magic – it’s solid. It’s smart. But … problem is, now that I’ve read that she’s thoroughly conversant in hypnotism I can’t help rolling my eyes a little when someone starts drawing a repetitive pattern in the sand or tossing off standard stock hypnotist phrases.

I finished what I have of the later-occurring Kelson novels (The Chronicles of the Deryni and The Histories of King Kelson; one of these days I want King Kelson’s Bride, I suppose, but I’m not in a great rush), and moved on to the Camber books. I’m looking forward to seeing how different the attitudes are here, how different trained, skilled, civilized Deryni are. I am about six chapters in on Camber of Culdi… What we have so far is: a young, apparently arrogant Deryni king (Imre); an elder statesman, also Deryni, who disapproves of said king’s policies as a prince and attitude as a king enough to leave court (Camber); the statesman’s son, a friend and counselor to the king (Cathan). Camber’s exact reasons for leaving are not really given; his “official” excuse is that he was getting on in years and wanted to spend time with his family. The real reasons – well, how bad was it? He’s purported to be one of the finest minds of his day, and was a loyal and steadfast guide and prop to a couple of kings – what was it exactly about Imre that made him leave? Why not stay and try to check the behavior he found objectionable? I’m using Kelson and Morgan and Conall as a comparison; Conall was pretty much a bad seed and wouldn’t have accepted guidance from such as Morgan, but I was still a little surprised at how quickly Morgan just backed away. Conall had no one to truly take his place as right hand, except perhaps for Arilan – and I don’t think he would have allowed Arilan in to a degree it would have been helpful. If I had written it Morgan probably would felt it necessary, in honor, to humbly offer his services to the new king/regent. Perhaps he didn’t want to incur a rebuff that would make it impossible to be useful later – but none of this was said. He just didn’t like Conall, had better things to do in looking for Kelson, and left without asking if he was wanted. Here, I would like to see the question addressed: mightn’t things have been different with an older and wiser man on hand for guidance? Cathan’s good (iirc), but he doesn’t have Camber’s experience.

Cathan’s presence at court raises no ill feelings between them, so while Camber does not want to be there himself, he seems to have no objections to his son taking on the role, although the son seems to be cut of much the same cloth as the father. I would think that if there had been Neroesque excesses in the court Camber would be quietly agitating to sever Cathan’s relationship to it, for the sake of Cathan’s family if nothing else, assuming Cathan was willing to stay and endure. Imre, the king, levied a massive tax against everybody, Deryni and human alike, to fund the construction of a snazzy new capital; his justifications aren’t given, but neither is any reason why a new capital is a terrible idea. A king is entitled to levy taxes (she said as devil’s advocate), and his people never like it; but what if the old capital is getting rundown, or overrun, or cramped, or simply has too much of the past Haldane rule about it? A king is entitled to make himself a new capital, if there are reasons for it. And hey, he’s the king – sometimes when there aren’t reasons for it.

Add to this a murder in a remotish village, the killing of a Deryni possibly because he was Deryni. Not good. That’s something that would need to be punished, no matter what. Rumors of a child being molested by the victim mitigate a little – but that would be cause to have the man dragged into a court of law, for legal punishment, or if vigilante action was to be taken I would expect the man to disappear one night. But the method of the murder wasn’t a simple stabbing in a dark alley, or even a little friendly torture session by the child’s family. This victim was hanged, drawn, and quartered. That’s … unusual. That’s a statement. I looked it up: in England it was purely a method of execution used in cases of high treason until its abolishment in 1814. It isn’t something one man could accomplish. This had to be at least five, I would think: they were likely not Deryni, while their victim was, so without the disabling drug merasha being involved simply capturing the man would take a few people. And even with merasha I can’t but think the logistics of this kind of killing would take five or six. Lookouts, cleanup, four horses to be managed and … washed after (unless horses weren’t used, though I thought they always were – apparently sometimes criminals were just cut apart); then, of course, the fun of distributing the body parts (and was there some message in that here? Isn’t there, usually? The four corners of the kingdom or some such? “Ho, there, messenger, what burden do you bear?” “Why, my errand is to deliver the left – wait, the right – let me check – the left leg of a traitor to the furthest southwestern corner of the land! Wanna see?”) There is unrest that Imre has had fifty hostages taken and will begin killing them unless and until the killers come forward. Which, given a medieval setting and the fact that the victim was a lord (never mind Deryni), is not all that unreasonable. They’ve tried to find the killers by the usual method, which in the then and there includes truth-reading anyone they can get their hands on, and found nothing. This isn’t the kind of thing that can be allowed to go unrecognized; in fact, I’m pretty sure upright medieval kings did much the same thing (she said, without any evidence whatsoever). Although, of course, those probably responsible are probably already resigned to the fact that their own lives are forfeit when they are discovered, and may sorrowfully write off the fifty as unavoidable (if unwitting and unwilling) sacrifices for the cause.

To the point I’d reached when I started writing this, he sounds like not a great king; possibly a very selfish king; not a king whose first interest is his people. Which does not mean he should be taken down in a coup. (As of chapter six he’s done some more heinous things… But I can’t help thinking of Nero and wondering – yes, but how is he as an overall ruler?)

Into this stew drops Rhys’s situation: an elderly patient who has come to be a friend confides to him on his deathbed that he is the last remaining member of the Haldanes, the royal family which was brutally ousted by the Deryni Festils almost 80 years ago. He’s dying, but he has a grandson, a legitimate heir to the old royal line. Do with that what you will. Rhys, a hitherto purposefully nonpolitical being, is thrown into a quandary: here he has potential dynamite. Somewhere, all unbeknownst to himself or anyone else but, briefly, Rhys (and then only Rhys and Joram), there is a forty-year-old monk with Haldane blood running in his veins. The next part of the test is a multi-part question: a) Is he still alive and can he be found? b) If he is found, should he be told anything other than that his grandfather is gone? c) If he is found, should any action be taken to restore him to the throne?

This last one is multi-part in itself: 1) Is he fit to rule, and who will be the judge of that? 2) Does he want to rule, and does it matter? If they decide to do this (which of course they will or there wouldn’t be a book) will they put him on the throne kicking and screaming if necessary, get him a wife (horrors!) and put him in a position (so to speak) where he has to get an heir? And how would that make him a better king than what they have? 3) What kind of solid justification is there for ousting the current, legally anointed, king – for committing all sorts of high treason and surely costing the lives of thousands in battle at least, and at worst thousands in battle plus the lives and families’ lives of every one of the people involved, and possibly of the inhabitants of the monastery where the uncrowned king lived all those years? (In 17th century England, during the Civil War, a Parliamentarian general said “We may beat the king 99 times, and yet he will be king still. If he beats us but once, we shall be hanged”.) His being selfish, greedy, and a bit of a spoiled brat tyrant, which is all that has been seen so far, is NOT justification for any good man to consider high treason. To the point I’d reached when I started writing this, he sounds like not a great king; possibly a very selfish king; not a king whose first interest is his people. Which does not mean he should be taken down in a coup. As of chapter six he’s done some more heinous things… But I can’t help thinking of Nero and wondering – yes, but how is he as an overall ruler? And … yes, but from what is said, as of when the quest for the uncrowned king started, Imre hadn’t committed any heinous acts… I think I’d be a lot happier if there had been more evidence of Imre being a bad king before that discussion. While I am glad that this bad king hasn’t (so far) followed the pattern so often seen in fantasy of the inhumanly evil, wicked, and unspeakably depraved bad king, I seem to recall that may come (incest, isn’t it?), it almost requires that for even considering a coup to be justified. There needs to be something more than “Father, we know your real reasons for leaving the court” that would excuse a character painted not as just a good man but the best of men sitting there with his son, daughter, and son-in-law-to-be discussing regicide. (Well, no one’s actually said “We need to kill the king” yet – but they’re looking for his legitimate replacement, and Imre’s going nowhere alive. The only place for a former king is in the grave – see The Quest for Saint Camber.) They were kind of light-hearted about the whole thing, too.

AND they didn’t even ward the room. Now, there’s no real reason they would have had to expect eavesdropping – but it seems like an unnecessary risk to me. What if there had been a servant or guest passing by who happened to overhear something about a discovered Haldane heir, and stood to listen (as who wouldn’t)? That could have been ugly.

All this aside – what a great idea for a High Adventure fantasy story. I love it: the ordinary man (somewhat) going about his ordinary business, tending to a patient who’s become a good, trusted and trusting friend and who is now succumbing to old age, and out of the blue having a huge (ginormous) secret dropped into his lap… and his life changes forever. It’s tempting to explore different avenues that the story could go down, what if’s and what about’s… and that, my children, is why it’s taken me half my life to bring my own book to even the point it’s reached. I’m far too good at haring off down new paths and alleyways.

This is a very interesting reread. Again, it’s going to be interesting wandering the past of the books I’ve just been reading – and it’s also interesting to see what I remember from all those years ago. The Chronicles rang bells on a regular basis; the Histories very strangely did not, to the point where I’m wondering if I ever did read them back when. I know I read the Camber books… and I also know I took a scunner against KK at some point, though I don’t know why. (Might have been that dream thing… which I will be big enough to admit carries a whiff of jealousy. Why does *she* get to be privy to transmissions from another world? *pout*)

 

The wisdom of Anne & Co.

I was looking for something – two somethings, in fact, quotes I jotted down in my work notebooks. I found one – that’s a whole ‘nother post – and the other is still MIA, but in the search – as always – I’ve found other things. As I said recently, I read through all (almost) of the Anne books (L.M. Montgomery, of course) last year, and I made notes as I went. There’s real wisdom in here, which belies the reputation the books seem to have of fluffy saccharine books for children. They are none of the above: they are thoughtful, sweet – genuinely, not artificially – books for anyone with a functioning heart. Which, of course, is not all that many people these days.

“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” … “Oh, don’t you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

I use this one often, and think of it more often. I’ve felt the same way, especially during some periods at work when it seems like I can’t do anything right. It’s surprising how much the thought helps – a) I’m not the only one to ever ball things up on a regular basis; 2) tomorrow is another day; III) someday, maybe, I’ll reach quota and all will go smoothly. Sadly, adulthood brings with it the knowledge that there’s no upper limit – there are always new mistakes to be made, or old ones to revisit. But there’s still a mistake-free tomorrow, even if that other red-headed orphan did go and tart it up with a song.

“If you went to your own room at midnight, locked the door, pulled down the blind, and sneezed, Mrs. Lynde would ask you the next day how your cold was!”

Oh, lord. That is so completely Mrs. P that I laugh whenever I read it. A woman who notices when my brother-in-law’s car doesn’t leave the driveway a couple of days in a row, and remarks on it to my mother… A woman who compares the relative lawn heights in every yard she passes… A woman who mentions that our town paper (a freebie of little use to us) is still sitting at the end of the driveway. A woman who has absolutely no business passing our house at all in the normal course of things – it isn’t en route anywhere for her – but who, as Bobbie across the street puts it, comes putt-putting along down our street quite often. Not that she’s spying. No. Of course not.

Eliza was sewing patchwork, not because it was needed but simply as a protest against the frivolous lace Catherine was crocheting.

I love that. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the two ladies, their characters, and their relationship to one another. If I can write a sentence like that someday I will feel I have accomplished something.

“I was just trying to write out some of my thoughts, as Professor Hamilton advised me, but I couldn’t get them to please me. They seem so stiff and foolish directly they’re written down on white paper with black ink. Fancies are like shadows… you can’t cage them, they’re such wayward, dancing things…”

And then, as I recall, Anne lapsed into a reverie, caught by her own words, about fancies like dancing shadows. I think this is lovely – again, it catches perfectly that feeling of the thought being completely unwilling to be translated to words. It was bright and clear and perfect – you thought you knew exactly how to write it – and then … either the words that come don’t match the thought, or the words simply won’t come and you sit there chewing your pen trying to find them.

This is marvelous:

“… You must excuse me, Anne. I’ve got a habit of being outspoken and folks mustn’t mind it.”
“But they can’t help minding it. And I don’t think it’s any help that it’s your habit. What would you think of a person who went about sticking pins and needles into people and saying ‘Excuse me, you mustn’t mind it … it’s just a habit I’ve got.’ You’d think he was crazy, wouldn’t you?”

Yes, you would. It’s something that’s always driven me a little wild: these people who say or do the most horrendous things, and who are excused by others: “It’s just her way.” That is insufficient. I was taught as a child that one does not say things to offend others, that in fact one tries very hard to avoid hurting others. For someone to go about excusing the pain they cause by saying “it’s just my way” – or “it’s my habit, don’t mind me” – is … inexcusable. I’ve seen it too often – including in the aforementioned Mrs. P; it’s a little like being a wife beater. You can’t make up for the stupid behavior with a greeting card claiming all kinds of affection, or by being extra nice after.

“True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed,” said Mrs. Allan, “and we should have a very high ideal of it, and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that has nothing of real friendship in it.”

Amen. Recent(ish) experiences have taught me this very well indeed. The internet has led to a whole new phenomenon of illusive friendship. A couple of years ago I was buying into it wholeheartedly, and scoffing at those who looked askance. I learned better. I have gained true friends through the internet – real, honest-to-Montgomery friends… but not nearly as many as I would have said two years ago. There is a long and pitiful post that could come out of this … could, but won’t.

This is one of the quotes that deepen the books for me, raise it beyond the level of saccharine:

“…How sympathetic you look, Anne… as sympathetic as only seventeen can look. But don’t overdo it. I’m really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart. My heart did break, if ever a heart did, when I realized Stephen Irving was not coming back. But, Anne, a broken heart in real life isn’t half as dreadful as it is in books. It’s a good deal like a bad tooth … though you won’t think that a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut-candy as if there were nothing the matter with it. And now you’re looking disappointed. You don’t think I’m half as interesting a person as you did five minutes ago when you believed I was always the prey of a tragic memory bravely hidden beneath external smiles. That’s the worst … or the best… of real life, Anne. It won’t let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to make you comfortable… and succeeding… even when you’re determined to be unhappy and romantic…
- Miss Lavendar

Anne, the ultimate romantic, a starry-eyed seventeen-year-old, was indeed disappointed – and the speaker, through a lady Anne greatly admires, gently makes fun of her discomfiture. And her youth. Early on, the breaking of a heart is the end of the world. (*cough*Romeo&Juliet*cough*) The most telling line here is “even when you’re determined to be unhappy and romantic” … Even when you’re trying to be true to the belief that this disappointment has shattered your life, left you nothing to live for, and while it may not kill you you will never smile again, never move on … It’s not possible. Not for anyone with a healthy sense of humor, anyway, or – dare I say it – an imagination. The people who do wind up blighted by huge disappointments – the Miss Havishams of the universe – must be lacking in those departments; it’s the only logical explanation. There is a certain forgetfulness that brings up a smile at a puppy, or laugh at a brother’s idiocies, or a sigh in appreciation of a crescent moon; these things will bring joy, whether you want them to or not. Bad tooth, indeed.

This book also left me confused for a long time in my youth about how “lavender” was supposed to be properly spelled; apparently from what I’ve seen it isn’t spelt with an “a” in the British any more than it is in the American. But I do love it with the “a”.

(The “l” word back there (logical, not lavendar) just reminded me that I still haven’t written about having seen Star Trek. I will have to do that before long… I wish I could see it again first.)

For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, at her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea, now despairing because some contrary character would not behave properly. Diana could not understand this.
“Make them do as you want them to,” she said.
“I can’t,” mourned Anne. “Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.”

(Thence came my early love of italics, I think…) That, apparently, is one of the marks of a true writer. It’s happened to me, I am humbled to say – here, now, you – you weren’t supposed to do that! But the character did, and there’s nothing that can be done but write around it. Trying to write it any other way leaves the words flat and cold on the page; this may be harder, but it’s necessary. One of the characters in my primary work-in-progress was never supposed to have the past he does, much less the future – but he insisted on being more prominent than intended, and on having his story told. Another character … well, I never intended that he die. Apparently some characters know when their ends will make sense for the story, which makes him rather self-sacrificing and heroic. Makes me unhappy, because I didn’t want to write that death scene – or the mourning after, and I didn’t want to do that to the other characters right then. But once he was dead, he was dead – and, again, nothing to be done.

There’s a YouTube video of Megan Follows’s audition for Anne – which is kind of fascinating (yes, I do need to write that Star Trek post). She’s nervous (says so), and doesn’t seem at all ready, flipping the pages of the script, clearing her throat – and then her facial expression changes, and then Anne’s sitting in the chair. She’s sixteen years old. Remarkable.

 

Blatant fantasy

I’ve been reading Fiona Patton – The Stone Prince and now The Painter Knight. I’ve had these books for a while; I can’t imagine I actually paid real money for them with those covers, so they must have come from Books and Company or a church or library book sale. I wanted a meaty fantasy, and these were handy.  And large.

The Stone Prince was written first and takes place a hundred or so years later. Demnor is Aristok (king) of Branion (Britain, thinly veiled), and the high priest of his people’s religion, which involves an ancestor who made a pact with one of the four elements, the Living Flame, and who bequeathed the Flame to her descendants. The Aristok is always the one to whom the Flame passes; other ancestors have some gift of it of varying intensities, but the Aristok is the one who can wield it to the fullest. This particular Aristok is a loose cannon (an even looser cannon than most of a rather unbalanced family), and makes a good avatar for wildfire.  So … why is he called the Stone Prince? Unless I missed something somewhere – always possible, there was a good bit of skimming involved – I don’t remember him ever being called that.

Cosmetically … well, it’s a cover by Jody Lee. I never have liked Jody Lee’s work. Her style is very distinctive: Colorful, a little cartoonish, and in the early stuff at least not very anatomically accurate. She’s not the artist publishers use for “serious” work, but one they want to sell as Action! Adventure! I think I’d be a little peeved if I found out a book of mine was going to have a a Jody Lee cover. (Who am I kidding? If I can get a book published I won’t complain (much) if the cover is done in crayon by the editor’s pet chimp.) I have to say, the main figure here is very well done indeed – he’s beautiful.

But, sweetie? The author calls it “auburn” hair. Not vermilion. I don’t know why it’s necessary to create a gaudy cover that shrieks “fantasy” like this – it’s certainly not a book for children, and how many adults have the backbone to sit in public and read this thing? I’ll admit it – I don’t. But the thing’s too damn long to read in small snatches, and just interesting enough that I didn’t want to start another “public” book – so I used my bookmark to cover up the cover art. That Demnor deserved better. She CAN do it, that figure proves; she just doesn’t.

This, from her website, is lovely. If only she stuck with portraits…

Regardless, it wasn’t a bad book, overall. One thing that did drive me up a tree was the constant switching back and forth through time. The author made note of the time period of the section about to be read… unfortunately, the first time it happened, it turned out that I hadn’t retained the dating of the initial section, in the “present”, so the date stamp of the next section showing it was several years ago didn’t register, and so had NO idea what was going on for a page or so. It was terribly annoying.

Some other aspects of the story took a little getting used to, as well. It took a while to stop having to stop and go back and reread when someone would refer to a female character as “My Lord” or “Duke” or “Prince” – wait, wasn’t that a woman?? – but it’s not at all a bad idea when the genders are completely and unthinkingly equal. In fact, I think this is one of the better examples of a society where there is not and never has been any form of sexism: anyone can be a priest, a warrior, a Companion (concubine, basically, though the author would probably smack me for the shorthand), or anything else, no allowances made and no eyebrows raised – not by the characters within the story, and not by the narrator unable to resist pointing out what she has wrought. Well done, that.

Related, perhaps, is the role of said Companions. After some thought, it comes out as a good idea, if it’s something managed consistently throughout the environment: to try to cut down on the number of bastards running about, nobles take same-sex Companions to their beds. The main character, Demnor, is deeply in love with his Companion, Kelahnus, and it’s reciprocated even though it shouldn’t be by the rules the Companions live by. Which gets complicated when Demnor does his duty and becomes betrothed and, shortly, married. All of which is fine, though yes it took some getting used to for me … but the ease with which all of the characters slide in and out of bed with just about anyone to me pushes the envelope a little too far. No one seems to have any gender-based sexual preferences at all, and monogamy or faithfulness doesn’t seem too highly prized. Kelahnus’s main concern upon the betrothal and its logical culmination is that Demnor will be distracted from him and begin to lose interest in him in the pursuit of his duty – not a high estimation of his own worth or of Demnor’s heart, but then jealousy isn’t real logical. Whether all of this is just among the nobles or extends to anyone is unknown: the common folk are there as background, if that. Which is, in its way, a fault in the book.

Of course, any irrational hatred avoided within the book by removing the prejudices against sex roles and relations is made up for by internecine clashes, madness galloping through the Royal family, and – most of all – religious bigotry. On the one hand is the religion of the Royals, the Triarchy (why it’s a Triarchy when there are four elements I don’t get …) and the followers of Essus (which, hello? Bearded prophet leader of religion? Name similarity? It might not have been best wise to call the OTHER religion Tri-whatever; I persist in thinking Essus=Jesus, one-third of God in three parts, so Triarchy=followers of Essus).  They hate each other, in all ways, and it gets ugly. There’s apparently no living together, but of course neither group wants to go anywhere, and apparently pacifism is no part at all of either faith.

Which means that The Painter Knight loses something pretty vital. I’m halfway through, and I don’t have the highest hopes for the ending; no matter what, I will be looking at it in light of events a hundred years or so down the road. The story is about Simon, court artist, who is an Essusiate, lover of the Aristok and rescuer of the Aristok’s daughter when her father is assassinated. It is about his peril-fraught mission to keep the child out of the hands of her mother’s brother, who has killed her father and doesn’t intend nice things for her.

There are three directions I need to go with this … The first is the one I already began: Simon, as mentioned, is an Essusiate. He and his family and some Essusiate friends are working very hard to help the Triarchic Aristok, and it is made clear that their god, Essus himself, is watching over the girl – it’s not just a matter of Simon needing to help the daughter of his dead friend and lover. And yet, having just read the preceding book which involves much later events, I know that relations between the religions are no better in this book’s future. If anything, they’re worse. So it is with a feeling of futility that I read about all of these good and faithful followers of Essus working so hard to help the little Aristok. The idea is that the kid will be so grateful to them that they spefically and maybe they, their religion, in general will benefit. Well, the kid is only four. All I can think is that either she does grow up into a decent human being and is benevolent to the Essusiates in her lifetime, and it doesn’t last, which is sad… Or she grows up under the regency of someone who makes her forget how much she loved these folks when she was little, and nothing changes, which is even more sad. In the long run, at least, this act of mercy won’t do them a damn bit of good. So … what’s with the deific support??

Another aspect of the book I take issue with is the kid herself. I don’t generally make any secret of it: I dislike children. I worked in too many retail environments to not dislike children. My mother always says it’s the parents’ fault, and the parents are the ones to despise; my feeling is that sure, I loathe them too, but it’s the kids who are the ones being the bloody nuisances, so they’re the prime targets for my dislike. I particularly despise precocious children, like the ones they have on talk shows who at age three can name all the presidents; they are usually far too enmeshed in the knowledge of their own cleverness, and so much of what comes out of them is pure performance with the expectation of the praise to which they have become accustomed. What’s her name, the mini Aristok of PK, is a very precocious child indeed. The chapter I just finished featured four solid pages of conversation between the kid and a somewhat slow adult. Stimulating. Apparently badly written children’s dialogue is much like badly written dialectal dialogue: it grows tedious, and then annoying, and then intolerable.

And another issue: a spoilerific one, this, in part. Simon is captured not quite halfway through, and his “interrogation” includes a brick being forcibly introduced to his hand. His painting hand (not that either hand would be a good thing). He’s pretty unconscious at the moment, which is why I had to put up with four pages of charming childish conversation just now, I guess. Thing is, though, that the book opens in this story’s future: Simon is in his seventies, having arguments with the ghost of a 23-year-old man called Leary and … climbing up on a scaffold to paint. In a couple of minutes it’s revealed that Leary is the nickname for the Aristok (I’m too lazy to go look up his full name, or the kid’s) (everyone has a nickname in these books. Everyone. Nicknames, I feel, are a good thing – a touch of realism. But Everyone. Has. A. Nickname), so I knew chapters ahead of time that he was going to bite the dust (probably would have known sooner, as I think it’s on the back cover blurb, but I try to avoid those for just that reason). And I know now, reading about the worry everyone feels about the terrible damage done to Simon’s hand, that … it doesn’t matter much. As with the efforts of the Essusiates, I already know that in the end it makes little difference, if any. Triarchists (I think I change that word every time) will still hate Essuiates in 100 years’ time, and Simon will be painting in 40-odd years’ time. Whether it will be a miraculous healing by the dead Aristok (though they don’t seem to go in much for healing), or when they put his hand in some kind of cast they form it around a paintbrush (who was it I knew who did that when they broke their hand??), or simply that Simon learns to use his other hand, unless all of that at the beginning is some senile delusion (in which case I will never read anything by Fiona Patton again, because that would be offensive to my idea of storytelling), something is going to happen. The horror of an artist having his hand bashed to pieces is negated from the moment it happens; my attitude right now is “Ouch. Annoying. No worries, though.” Which tends to make me wonder why she would do it to him in the first place … just to create the setup for the defection of one character? Just to shove the brat more center stage and give her the opportunity for childish prattle? Gee. Thanks.

In other words, I HATE time jumps and flashbacks and flashforwards, unless they’re absolutely necessary or very well done indeed.

One more annoyance. (So far.) This book and Stone Prince both focus on the royal family of Branion. Like many royal families, names are reused throughout history. Am I the only one who likes to keep reading the same writer if possible? And am I the only one to be really thrown off by meeting up with a Kassandra and a Mareselus (that’s it! I think. Leary. I think) and a whole slew of other characters whose names belonged to very different people in the last book? Also, it took chapters to stop being startled when the heir to the throne (can’t remember the title of the dukedom, and amn’t checking) behaved in an evil manner, rather than the simply bonkers way of the heir in SP. Maybe I’ve never read a series that jumped times like this within one group of people (after all, one can’t say I’ve read mine, since 99% of it isn’t written yet), but I don’t remember ever having this much trouble adapting.

Did I say SP was gaudy? Pshaw.

PK, in all its glowing tangerine glory (you could practically read by this thing, it’s so bright) with its children’s book dragons and its pouty crimson-haired child and its adams-appley Alan Rickman lookalike hero (I sincerely doubt that even so dedicated an artist as Simon is that he toted a palette around at any point in his rescue mission), makes SP look like the most sedate of Serious Literature. And really? Big blue eyes on the dragons? Part of the expression looks angry – which is grossly undermined by the pink tongue and Big Blue Eyes. This was why I hated most of her Valdemar covers for Misty Lackey: the great huge eyes just automatically throw the thing into the realm of Kiddie Lit. The Companions (WHOLE other kind of Companion there) were described as having blue eyes, and maybe she was just trying to keep them from looking like albinos, but … blech. They’re not the regal, insanely beautiful equines described in the books. They’re pretty horsies.

It’s all such a shame. Her Demnor and the little snippets of landscape visible beyond the dragon’s annoying wings make it clear that these two could have been really beautiful paintings. The landscape is stylized, but attractive. Whether it’s her direction, her preferences, or the author’s, they’re ridiculous. (Seriously, was it a conscious decision for Simon to look like Alan Rickman? I’d love to know.)

The books aren’t bad, despite what all of the above sounds like; I’d say (and probably will say on LibraryThing) 3 or 3.5 out of 5. The characters are a little over-the-top, maybe a little pigeonholed in some ways, but they’re pretty well done on the whole. Except for the kid. There’s a little more bloodthirstiness than I enjoy; everyone wants to go to war. The plot is predictable – except where it really isn’t. I’ve never liked the gods getting directly involved in the action, so that induced a little eye-rolling in me, but she made it work fairly well. My main niggle – as opposed to my Issues – was more with SP than PK: the editor was shockingly slack, but seems to have improved in PK. There were commas misused and missing (along the lines of “She knew that Carolin, her midwife was concerned” – argh), typos, and all sorts and kinds of awkwardnesses that I can’t believe weren’t ironed out at some stage. I always wonder about that sort of thing. There’s personal style – dammit, if I want to spell something the British way I bloody well will, and I won’t have it “fixed” – but the comma mistakes, for example, are just poor writing, and change the meaning of the sentences they’re in. And bring reading to a slamming halt. There are chunks that read like a high school creative writing assignment, in style if not in content. (No high school student had BETTER turn in some anything like some bits. !)

Oh wow. I’ve found another reason not to like Jody Lee. She has no modesty, apparently. Under an at-best-mediocre painting for a Misty Lackey novel, she discusses her motivations and great talent (emphasis and comments mine):

This wonderful painting, done for Book One of the Mage Storm Trilogy, shows Karal … Karal holds a heavy magical tome to symbolize his research on the origins of the storm (She likes the symbolic objects)…

This is such an interesting, beautiful piece, the only painting I did for a Mercedes Lackey novel in oils. I haven’t done another because the amount of fine detail involved was hard to control with a media so naturally messy as oil. (I loved working in oils. Messy?! She can’t manage detail in oils?? She needs to talk to some of my old art teachers: Zappalorti and Davies. I’m gobsmacked.) … My Valdemar covers began with inspiration from Gustav Klimt (Mother of God – if I were Klimt I’d so haunt her…) and this painting definitely carries on that tradition…

I was so hoping when I first saw all of the self-praise that either someone else painted the thing or someone else in the mood to suck up committed the write-up. Nope. Wow. Well. It’s good to be so confident in one’s abilities. Hey! This all ties in to the post title: Blatant Fantasy.

One more picture (I hope these are working) to get the taste out of my mouth: one of my favorite cover images, by Gerard Gauci, from the Canadian edition of A Song for Arbonne, one of my favorite books: