Another SFF Omnibus Entry

[bibliogramma]

The Fourth Bear, Jasper Fforde

The second of Fforde’s Nursery Crimes novels, it’s just as strange and just as funny as his other books. What’s particularly interesting is that in this book, the Nursery Crimes detectives, and the other characters in the book, have become more conscious of their nature as characters in a book, making reference to plot devices and literary tropes as they go about their entirely fictional lives. Within the story line, the protagonist, Jack Spratt, is revealed as a Person of Dubious Reality himself – a nursery rhyme character working among “real people.”

These developments may in part result from the writing chronology – Fforde’s first novel was The Big Over Easy, which did not, however, see publication until after he had begun writing his Tuesday Next series, in which the independent existence of literary characters outside of their books is established. In fact, we meet, as minor characters in the Tuesday Next books, some of the main characters of the Nursery Crimes novels, as they wait in the Well of Lost Plots to see if the book they are in will ever be published. But whatever it is that Fforde is doing, he’s doing it right, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next Fforde novel.


Califia’s Daughters, Leigh Richards

A new author to me, Leigh Richards (who primarily writes as Laurie R. King, the author of various detective series, including the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books that I’ve always meant to read but never had the time) has written a strong post-apocalyptic novel set along the West coast of the US following a period of not-fully explained catastrophes including wars, ecological disasters and a viral epidemic that kills up to 90 percent of male children before they’re 10.

There are a lot of things I like about Richard’s ravaged new world. It may be dominated by women, but it’s no utopia – Richards shows us a world in which all the flaws and virtues of humanity still exist, where there are beneficent overlords and ruthless tyrants and idealistic hermits hiding out in the woods, where there’s courage and corruption, love and violence. There’s no “let women rule and the world will be paradise” here. Also, unlike many novels that start with the premise of a world in which women are both the dominant and the more numerous sex, there is no attempt to ignore the reality that many women who seek sexual intimacy are going to be finding it with other women – even if their preference is for men. Depending on how one’s society is organised – and Richards provides several possible models – not every heterosexual woman who wants an ongoing intimate relationship that is both emotional and sexual is going to be able to find a man to have it with.

The created world is fascinating, the story is interesting, the characters have an integrity that comes from being written as whole people, and I’m sad to hear that Richards/King has such a fully committed writing schedule that it could be five years or more before we see another novel in this universe.


The King’s Name, Jo Walton

In this novel, the brilliant conclusion to the Tale of the High King Urdo and his boldest knight, the Lord Sulien begun in The King’s Peace, Walton’s intentions in giving us an Arthurian-themed novel in which the strong sword-arm of the king is a woman become clear.

In Arthurian legend, the bright age of the King fails because no one man can hold back the dark forever, and Arthur has no successor. His only child, Mordred, is tainted by birth and upbringing, and after Arthur spends his strength over the long years defeating all others who would destroy his vision of unity and peace, he has not the strength to survive his defeat of his own son, and is instead taken back to the place where heroes come from, leaving behind only the memory of what he created, but which others could not hold.

In Walton’s land of Tir Tanagiri, Urdo has only one son – but he has two heirs, thanks to a general belief that Sulien’s child – officially fatherless, actually the child of rape – is also Urdo’s child. The existence of two heirs, one brought up to cherish Urdo’s vision, the other to despise it, changes the final dynamic and means that the story need not end in the loss of the peace. Urdo need not be the countervailing force against two generations of attack, he needs only to fight for his own time, and leave the next to another hero – and that makes all the difference.