I’ve been wanting to write about this wonderful book for a while now, but haven’t ben able to find a way of explaining just how utterly fantastic it is without major spoilers.
So I’m pleased to be able to link to this review of it, by Susan de Guardiola.
This sounds fascinating, and I shall have to read it.
Another library book I don’t have in front of me anymore. Released in the US & Canada as “Scepter of the Ancients”.
This is YA, with the requisite 13-year old heroine. Stephanie (Valkyrie Cain) is tough, active, but definitely not feisty – she actually gets things done, instead of spending all her time acting out and screeching. She’s not a fan of arbitrary authority, but then that’s a trait of sensible adults as well as sensible teenagers.
Lots of good stuff here; magic, adventure, a paranormal community with some practices that make sense and aren’t explained in tiresome detail, and a smart-talking skeleton detective. Recommended.
The Dark is Rising Sequence, by Susan Cooper. Book 4.
Very Welsh, and feels right to me. Given that I spent a lot of my A-level science lessons looking out of the window at Cader Idris, if I’m happy with it then anyone should be.
I can’t find any Welsh spelling mistakes – though Welsh is a language with a lot of stratification and regional variation – and Bran’s Welsh pronunciation lesson to Will is pretty much spot on.
It does well on Welsh mythology, too; at one point, Bran and Will are asked riddles, the answer to which are Triads – Who are the three wise elders of the world?[1] Who are the three generous men of the Island of Britain?[2]
As far as plot goes, this one lives out the first prophetic verse we heard at the end of Greenwitch, and emphasizes very pointedly that the Light is Not Nice. Unpleasant things have to happen to good people, or the Dark will win and everyone will be vastly more unpleasant to each other. To be more specific, the Light has to do unpleasant things to good people, and there isn’t any mention in the text of alternatives being considered & rejected – the things the Light do are the right things to do because the Light did them. On the other hand, victory is by no means predestined[3], so the idea of just treading out the predestined steps is a little problematic. Of course, it’s not the only problematic thing – it’s heavy on the “birthright” angle. Anyone trying to reach the plot coupon who wasn’t born to do so will be killed, and all that.
This is precisely what it says – a history of the fantastic, beginning with mythology and moving through fairytale and the Gothic novel to the beginnings of Fantasy As We Know It and then forward to the present day.
The first text mentioned (in passing) is the Epic of Gilgamesh; the most recent is Alice in Sunderland (graphic novel, Brian Talbot, 2007). At 280 pages including chronology, glossary, and further reading, there’s little enough space for any particular text, but plenty of them are given a thorough enough discussion that it’s clear where they fit into the braided narrative of fantasy.
An extensive “Chronology of important texts” always invites the reader to tick off what they’ve read, and I’m mildly disappointed by my lack of erudition there; but I’m pleased to find that I’m familiar with most of the texts referenced in the main body, at least until the last chapter (2000-2010).
Clearly, I need to read more heavyweight-recent SF!
One of the infallible signs of traditional SF – a ten-letter species classification. ‘Doc’ Smith used it, James White used it, and I’ve just found it in a Diane Duane. (Wizard’s Holiday – in which Duane shows off her Star Trek roots)
Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whose sentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea.
Like all of Lord Dunsany’s work, this is a beautiful and strange story. The full text is available online here. It’s about the same unconquerable, barely expressible yearning for the Sea that Legolas experiences in The Lord of the Rings, and which seems to be an interesting characteristic of elves-done-properly generally. (Not that the characters in this story are elves, or even elvish; people are quite strange enough for Dunsany as it is.)
It’s hardly an exclusively fantasy, theme, however – Kipling and Masefield both expressed it perfectly.
For some reason I cannot articulate, this story reminds me of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. It may be mere coincidence.
I decided against continuing with the series; it’s frankly just too depressing right now, and the themes of possession and mental health are really not ones I want to read about for some time yet.
Reading Rush-That-Speaks’ livejournal post about MammothFail, I finally codified one of the principal issues I have with a great deal of (particularly American) fantasy, and why I instinctively class it as “fluff” or “not serious” in comparison to other examples.
There’s no sense of history, or of change. The names are all instantly legible – Oaktown, Kingswood, or Greywood, for instance. And I’ve heard Americans asserting that this makes them “sound English”. The thing is, though, that in Britain that’s a marker of newness, not of antiquity – if a place has a name that any English speaker can instantly understand, it’s not been around for very long at all.
The three examples I cited are all places in Britain, but in translation – Acton, for instance, the town in the oaks. Coed-y-Brenin, near where I grew up in Gwynedd, is Welsh – it translates as “the King’s wood”. Lytchett, in Dorset, and Llwydcoed near Aberdare both mean “grey wood”.
Names tend to stay the same, or at least the same at their root, while languages change around them. The River Avon, for instance – afon is the Welsh word for “river”, and in Irish & Scots Gaelic it’s abhainn, so what that means is that some dim Anglo-Saxon came along, said “‘ere, whatcha call that thing?”, the Celt he asked said “‘s a river, innit mate”, and the Anglo-Saxon put it down on his map as the River River.
Sometimes, though, two almost-parallel terms can survive alongside each other. For instance, the Welsh names for a lot of towns & cities begin with Caer (as in Cair Paravel – but pronounced more like “kyre”) and the English versions will usually end in -caster, -cester, or -chester. Chester itself is referred to on Welsh maps as Caer, and Gloucester is Caerloyw (“shining fortress”). But the two words, caer and castrum, aren’t from the same place at all – the Welsh just means an enclosed place, more or less the same as the hay component in southwest English placenames, while the English term is from Latin military terminology.
Actual castles in Wales (most of which were built by the English as instruments of subjugation) get referred to as Castell – Castell Harlech in Snowdonia, for instance.
“Snowdonia”, of course, is another example of the same linguistic layering and obfuscation. Any English speaker will vaguely recognise that the -ia suffix means “place of” or “around that sort of general area”, but “Snowdon” is the Saxon name for the highest mountain, meaning “Snow hill”. And in Welsh it’s Yr Wyddfa (though I don’t know the etymology) while the area is Eryri. It’s tempting to think that that means “eyrie” (since eryr means “eagle”), but it’s more likely just “highlands”. Of course, this isn’t just English nationalism (though that plays a large role) – Welsh place names are notoriously difficult for the English anyone else to get right.
Which name you use for a place can be highly politicised, too – mention in the wrong pub that you’re thinking of a trip to Derry, or to Londonderry, and you may well be In Trouble.
Tolkien, unsurprisingly, is very good on this. Fornost Erain became Norbury of the Kings, and Amon Sul became Weathertop, while the Tower of the Sun became the Tower of Guard.
Robert Jordan has instances of interestingness, too – Mafal Dadaranell became Fal Dara, and Al’cair’rahienallen became Cairhien. Of course, since we learn this from the Ent expy, it’s an obvious homage to Treebeard’s comment that the Land of the Valley of Singing Gold has become the Dreamflower, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
Juliet McKenna’s Einarinn books have a couple of instances of the same thing – Kel’Ar’Ayen (the new continent) becomes Kellarin over time. Though, oddly, there’s no sign of anything similar happening to the original continent of Tren’Ar’Dryen, and the name just falls out of use.
On the other side, we have David Eddings (yes, yes, cheap target, I know). In the world of the Belgariad, almost all countries have uniform naming schemes. The capital of Tolnedra is Tol Honeth, and the other cities are all Tol Something; the capitals of Arendia are Vo Mimbre, Vo Astur (ruined) and Vo Wacune (ruined and genocided). Everything in Gar og Nadrak starts with Yar, and everything in Cthol Murgos with Rak. Of course, there’s an in-universe explanation for this, in that the Gods really did just dump people down into a wide-open uninhabited land, but again that’s an in-universe explanation. We don’t see it except from characters in the narrative, so we’re entitled to treat it with Suspicion… especially considering that marginal savage demon-worshipping peoples survive in the icy or jungle-covered parts nobody else wants. They even wear feathers.
Raking through the shelf of books I might want to read again someday, but probably not, I found an even better example – Jane Lindskold’s Through Wolf’s Eyes. Flipping to the front of the guidebook for the map, I see New Kelvin and Dragon’s Breath by the Sword of Kelvin mountains. The White Water River runs down to the sea at Port Haven, passing by Stilled, Gateway to Enchantment, Plum Orchard, and (oddly) Zodara. Scattered across the rest of the map, we see Eagle’s Nest Castle, Rock Fort (by Broadview), Revelation Point Castle, and Good Crossing.
This is clearly a colonialist land, though we can hold out some hope for Zodara. Flipping through it – since I haven’t a clue what it’s like after so long – I see kings, queens, Grand Duchesses, both “societies” and noble houses named after animals, but no mention of where the colonists come from (except a tantalizing note at the top of the obligatory genealogical chart full of Adjectivenoun Names that some dates are in the “Gildcrest Colonial Calendar”) and no mention of any indigenous population. Not even any fairy mounds.
Seriously, this makes Eddings look good.