My life in books

Peasprout Chen and her younger brother Cricket live in the land of Shin, where wu liu, the beautiful and deadly art of martial skating, was invented. Peasprout, who is fourteen and a prodigy at wu liu, and as such, she and Cricket have been selected by the Dowager Empress herself to study at the Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword in a goodwill exchange - a mission that carries much responsibility, for the independant city-state of Pearl has taken preeminence in the great martial art and Peasprout is here in Pearl not just to learn all the secrets of wu liu but to do better than all the Pearlian students and restore the honour of Shin.

This is the premise behind Henry Lien’s delightful Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword, a fantasy for children with the spirit of anime and the feel of one of those classic children’s books that grows organically from a special story invented to tell a beloved child to a tale that enchants children everywhere. It’s set up as a traditional boarding school novel, with the protagonist as outsider forced into competition with the school bully and persecuted by the bully’s clique, with stern teachers who never understand the difficulties facing the protagonist, and unexpected allies.

Yet underneath this surface lie some dark secrets that could spell serious danger for Peasprout and Cricket, who are both innocent of the political machinations that lie behind this ‘goodwill exchange’ but may nonetheless suffer the consequences of intrigues they had no part in.

I’m really looking forward to reading the sequel, Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions, because she’s a character that it’s hard not to love, and I know I want to see more of her.

Last night we watched the new adaptation of C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian. We were disappointed. There was so much that didn't seem right at all that I had to get the original novel from the shelf and re-read it right away, muttering to myself all along "Why did they move this around?", "Why did they cut this out?" and most importantly, "Why did they put in this freaking raid on the castle sequence that isn't in the original and doesn't make sense in the freaking movie?" It was just all wrong.

On the other hand, the book, Prince Caspian, by C. S. Lewis, was as charming as I remember it from previous multiple readings. The plot makes sense and the story unfolds without needless repetitions. (Aslan is not a Tame Lion, and I hardly think he'd bother telling Lucy in the same way twice that things that things don't happen in the same way twice - a rather amusing bit of irony that can happen all to easily when you hack up parts of a perfectly good plot and mix them in some kind of stew with your own longing for bigger and longer swords.) And the Bacchae fit right in, as Lewis knew full well, understanding that Christianity like many other religions is both Apollonian and Dionysian in nature.

About the only thing the movie did better than the book was having Susan in the middle of the melee doing double duty with short-sword and bow and giving Legolas a run for his princely money and perfectly coiffed hair, rather than just shooting lady-like arrows from afar while the boys grunt and sweat and bleed. (I always thought Lewis gave Susan a raw deal, but there are something that must be understood in the context of the time and culture, even if one must disagree with them.)

And now for Part 2 of the omnibus thumbnail reviews of recently-read sff.


The Temple and the Crown - Katherine Kurtz & Deborah Turner Harris

Kurtz and Harris write wonderful alternate history occult fantasies, drawing to some degree on Templar mythology with (in the Adept series) a large splash of Blavatsky et al. The is actually the second of two alternate history books they’ve written in which survivors of the discredited Templar Order place their abilities in battle, both mundane and arcane, at the service of Robert the Bruce in his struggle to free Scotland. I’ve not read the first book, but this one was lots of good fun, assuming you enjoy reading about Templar occultists fighting for the Scottish throne against the villainous Sassenach.


Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner

I am kicking myself for only now having read my first book by Ellen Kushner. Swordfights, politics, intrigues, long-lost heirs to ancient noble houses, and wonderfully gay heroes – good reading and wildly entertaining.


Crossroads - Mercedes Lackey
The Valdemar Companion
Sanctuary

I have discussed my weakness for Mercedes Lackey’s books in other entries. Crossroads is another Valdemar anthology, and includes stories written by a number of authors including Judith Tarr, Tanya Huff and Lackey herself. Much fun. The Valdemar Companion is of course a reference work for those whose memories can’t keep track of all of the characters of all of the Velgarth stories, but it also has some fun articles and new material written by Lackey herself. Definitely for fen.

Sanctuary is the third book in Lackey’s new series about dragon-riding pseudo-Egyptians, and it continues the series well. The evil magicians are now in control of both Upper and Lower Egypt, er, the lands of Tia and Alta, and the remaining dragon riders, er, Jousters, of both countries are hiding out in the desert protected by Bedouins, er, whatever she’s calling them instead. We’re all set up for the fourth and final book of the series, in which young Kiron, the dragon-boy with a Great Destiny, leads his valiant army of free dragon-riders to the rescue and restores truth, justice and goodness to the Two Lands. And I’ll just lap it up once it’s out in paperback. ;-)


A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L’Engle
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet

I confess, I had never read Madeleine L’Engle’s oft-recommended Time quartet until this year. Now I’ve read the first three books and have been properly charmed by her writing, which, while somewhat quaint and perhaps just a shade too overtly religious at times (much like C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, which one loves, if one does, perhaps as much because of as in spite of these things), are indeed delightful. I fully intend to read at least the rest of the Murray-O’Keefe (Kairos) books, which continue the adventures of the family from Wrinkle in Time and I may try the Austin (Chronos) books as well, although since they are generally described as being more realistic than the Kairos books, I may not enjoy them as much.


The Dragon Prince Trilogy - Melanie Rawn
Dragon Prince
The Star Scroll

I read Rawn’s two interlocking trilogies, The Dragon Prince and Dragon Star, when they were first written back in the late 80s and early 90s, so these two books go in the list of re-reads. I deeply enjoyed both trilogies, at least in part because of the complicated and interwoven political manoeuvrings of both secular and esoteric power bases. Like many others, I regret that real-life difficulties have so far prevented her from completing her Exiles trilogy, and continue to hope that someday The Captal’s Tower will appear. In the meantime, I can always re-read the Dragon trilogies again.


Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J K Rowling

Well, I’m ready for the final book now. I surely hope that Rowling has a finale that’s big enough and strong enough to carry the weight of all these years of building expectations. But whatever happens to Harry, Snape has to be one of the great literary love to hate, hate to love characters.


The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart
The Wicked Day

More re-reads! I was going to wait until I had the full set in hand again, but there I was one afternoon, really craving some good old Arthurian historical fantasy, and there the two books were, and I said to myself, “I know what’s in The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, I can re-read them separately once I pick them up.” So I read what I had to hand, and it was indeed fun to relive some of the earlier books of the popular Arthurian lit explosion of the 20th century.


The King’s Peace - Jo Walton

This is the first volume of Walton’s alternate history based on the Arthurian legend, and it looks to be the beginning of a worthy addition to the genre. I am, of course, delighted with the fact that the tale is set in a world where there is a good deal of gender equity and that the POV character (who appears to be fulfilling the Lancelot/Bedwyr function, at least so far) is a woman. A good historical fantasy read in general, and a treat for fans of the Arthurian material.


Empire of Bones - Liz Williams

Another new author (to me, anyway) and another novel I enjoyed very much. An original take on the classic star-seeding idea, with a well-realised alien culture, a non-Anglo protagonist and earth-based setting, and (minor but enjoyable to me) an honest look at issues of teleporter technology. I also liked the fact that the story line dealt with issues of disability and medical care. Worth reading.


Consider Her Ways and Others - John Wyndham

Another of my classic re-reads. Some thought-provoking stories, including the dystopic title story. I’ve always had problems with “Consider her Ways,” and the years haven’t changed that. The analysis of the role of romantic love in the social control of women remains solid after all these years, but Wyndham’s insectoid vision of sexless worker drones and brainless mothers in an all-female future makes for a terrifying alternative. I don’t believe that Wyndham lacked the ability to imagine a third alternative, so I must assume that this is some kind of cautionary tale to feminists, to be careful not to (in a deliberately maternalist image) throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Don’t Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children’s Literature by Alison Lurie

Lurie’s book is a collection of essays on classic children’s authors and their works, with some excursions into fairy tales and folklore. Her featured authors – primarily Victorian and early modern writers based in England – are nonetheless a diverse group, among them Beatrix Potter, Kate Greenaway, E. Nesbitt, James Barrie, A.A. Milne, T.H. White and J.R.R. Tolkien. Having read her essays, I am seriously moved to hunt down and read a goodly number of the books I didn’t read as a child or adolescent, and re-read several of those that I did read. Lurie’s sketches of the authors’ lives and discussions of their key works were tantalizing in the extreme.

What I found interesting about the topic as a whole is her thesis (not necessarily a new one, but a well argued and illustrated one), based on her own memories of children’s books as well as her research, that there are two broad categories of children’s books:

1. The conventional books that “told me what grown-ups had decided I ought to know or believe about the world,” that encourage deference for and dependence on authority and try to teach children how to become “responsible adults,” and

2. Books that speak from the perspective of the child, that celebrate daydreaming, questioning, disobeying, running away from home, having adventures, rebelling, stretching wings and pushing boundaries.

Lurie argues that the great works of children’s literature, the ones that survive and pass on from generation to generation, are mostly the latter sort, the subversive sort, and that they are a necessary part of a child’s learning experience – and an adult’s interior life.

I think we should… take children’s literature seriously because it is sometimes subversive: because its values are not always those of the conventional adult world. Of course, in a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination and truth. In what we call the real world, on the other hand, what usually counts is money, power and public success.

The great subversive works of children’s literature suggest that there are other views of human life besides those of the shopping mall and the corporation. They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy and act as a force for change, This is why such literature is worthy of our attention and will endure long after more conventional tales have been forgotten.

Everyone needs a little subversion - ot a lot - in their lives.