Anne Bishop: World of the Fae series

Sometimes, when you read a new author, you are disappointed. Sometimes, you're pleased. and sometimes, you wonder why the hell you hadn't found out about her earlier.

I think I first read about Anne Bishop in sauscony's book journal, sausconys_books. And based on this recommendation, I put some of her novels on my wishlist, and for Christmas, I received Pillars of the World, the first of Bishop's World of the Fae series.

And I am delighted with it, and very much looking forward to reading the rest of the series, and other of Bishop's books. she writes well, and she's taken some standard themes and sources of fantasy and done something very interesting with them.

In some ways, Bishop's conceptualisations of elves is reminiscent of Gael Baudino's elves in Gossamer Axe - more like the elves in Tam Lin than in Tolkien - and her treatment of the distinctions between elves and witches made me think of another of Baudino's books - Strands of Starlight.

A new author on my shelves, and one I'm delighted to welcome there.

Ring of Swords - Eleanor Arnason

One of the most interesting "early alien contact" novels, and one of the most thought-provoking representations of an alien culture, I've read in a long time. With her aliens, the Hwarhath, Arnason creates a culture based on a very different set of relationships between gender, sex, reproduction, power and violence than those that exist in modern human culture (though there are some historical and non-human parallels - I found myself thinking of both Spartans and elephants), and makes the reader think seriously about the implications.

Ursula LeGuin, herself no stranger to thought-provoking representations of alien cultures and sexualities, wrote this about Arnason's Ring of Swords (in the Wiscon 20 Program Book):

Both the narrators of this book use an understated, slightly self-mocking, casual tone which may lead the reader to take the story lightly. It is not a lightweight story. It is intellectually, emotionally, and ethically complex and powerful. A great deal of it is told by implication only, and so the moral solidity of the book and its symbolic and aesthetic effectiveness may pass a careless reader right by. The characters are mature, thoughtful, imperfect people, the settings are vivid, the drama is tense, and the science-fictional reinvention of gender roles is as successful as any I have ever read.

The only problem is that Arnason's other writings about the Hwarhath are a series of short stories, published in a number of magazines, and it's going to be rather difficult getting my greedy little paws on them all. Fortunately, three of them have apparently been reprinted in a collection of Arnason's short fiction just out from Aqueduct Press, entitled Ordinary People. That's a starting point.