In The Hand of the Goddess

[osprey_archer]

The great Tortall reread continues! I've finished In the Hand of the Goddess, and naturally enough, I've been thinking about Pierce's handling of the gods. Her gods peaked in Alanna: The First Adventure: there's a sense that of the gods are distant, unknowable, powerful and perhaps benevolent but still terrifying.

Whereas In the Hand of the Goddess begins with the Goddess showing up to act as Alanna's life coach, which rather drains the mystery and the terror from her. And the gods only become more knowable from here on out; by the Trickster books, they simply seem like extremely powerful, but ultimately petty and fallible humans.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that - the Greek gods are much like that in myths - except that, 1) Pierce doesn't seem to want to take this to its logical conclusion - she seems to have these fuzzy ideas about these gods being just and benevolent and wise that she can't quite shake, even though they don't really play out in practice; and 2) the characters don't find the gods nearly as terrifying as they should, given that the gods are just petty humans who happen to have the ability to toss around thunderbolts.

...my thoughts on this issue are still fuzzy. I think I'll have more to say once I've reread In the Realms of the Gods, which I barely remember, because I never reread it, because I was so displeased by the (to my eyes) utter out-of-left-fieldness of Daine/Numair.

A:TFA also has the best sense of the Gift as something powerful but precarious. In the later Tortall books - indeed, in a lot of fantasy books - people talk a lot about magic going wrong and backfiring spectacularly, but we never see it happen. Magic seems about as dangerous as electricity.

And electricity can be very dangerous, I know, but no one worries that they're going to set their house on fire every time they flip a light switch. I suppose for magic to be really useful, it would need to be pretty reliable...but that makes it seem much less, well, magical.

(A lot of worldbuilding advice suggests that a good fantasy world needs to have strict rules for magic, which I don't agree with. I think it's important for magic to have limits - and for authors to stick to those limits - but for magic to have specific rules, like laws of physics, that it follows every time, makes it so much less numinous or mysterious or interesting.)

On a completely different note, Pierce's take on romance is skeevier than I remembered it being, and I was never really big on her romances. There's this line, about George's pursuit of Alanna: “He hadn’t kissed her since Jon’s birthday almost a year ago; but he let her know - with little touches, with softness in his eyes when he looked at her - that he was stalking her.”

Stalking her? Maybe that word didn't have all the negative connotations in the 1980s as it does today? But...even without extra negative baggage, a hunter stalking a deer is not really an attractive image.

And this isn't even getting into Jon. (I'm going to discuss Jon more after reading Woman Who Rides Like a Man.) What strikes me about Jon, in this book, is how perfunctory his characterization is: he's more of a character space on which readers can project their fantasies about princes, than a fully realized character in his own right.

Comments

[anait.livejournal.com]

Whew! Lots to talk about in here.

Okaaay. The Gods. I really like the mystery and power of the gods and the elementals in the Alanna books: the Goddess, the Chamber of the Ordeal, Chitral. I do like the wider pantheon she creates in the Daine and the Aly books: The Hag, Kyprioth. Different gods for different lands: different peoples and cultures have their own myths and beliefs. Not all stories are Tortallan stories! We got a tiny glimpse of this in the Alanna books with the K'miri and The Horse Lords. I always wanted WAY more about the K'miri: their history, culture, stories and beliefs. Ditto for the Shang. And the Bazhir: which, if any, deity do they believe in??? I never enjoyed very much the animal gods she introduced in the Daine books. Yawn. ...I guess because they weren't tied to any cultural or spiritual practices or the worldview of any people.

I don't have a problem with her gods becoming up-close and petty, Greek-style, as long as she's doing interesting things with them. I like the way The Hag fits into the Carthak story-arc. She's a great character -- almost funny at times, but also terrifying! Kyprioth's a good characer, but his role in the Copper Isles books is more problematic, due to some of her choices...

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I've finished reading SotL since writing this, and I agree that the gods become nice and scary again in the later books in the series (as does the Gift. The part in LR when the Gift is burning Thom alive from the inside...ack!) Chitral is especially fun.

And YES to more K'Mir history! It would have been so easy to introduce, too, at least a little of it, through Thayet or Buri...especially Buri. Thayet seems to shed a lot of her K'Miri identity when she becomes queen (which is probably politically sensible), but Buri, not so much.

Yes, the Hag! I loved the Hag. The difference between the Hag and Kyprioth, for me, is that the Hag is much more terrifying (despite being funny), while Kyprioth is never really frightening. He's very entertaining as a character, but unsatisfying as a god.

Also, he helps Aly too darn much, and it takes a lot of the danger out of the books. But this is a rant for when I get to the Trickster books.

[anait.livejournal.com]

Magic. The Gift.

I always liked the idea of personalized coloured auras for magic users. Fun! But The Gift itself wasn't as satisfying as it could have been for me. The characters concentrate really hard, strain, sometimes invoke a god with words, and... That's it. I wanted more about how the magic itself worked. Not necessarily the physic of magic- though that would have been cool, because it would have been specific to her books and her world- but... Diana Wynne Jones did such wonderful magic. You always got a sense of how her characters did the magic, with clear descriptions of process. It could be sort of like following a recipe, it could be words and intent made reality, it could be slipping sideways through the dimensions between worlds or universes, it could be traps laid by words and contracts binding the unwary.

Magic is fantastic! It should be the coolest! The only limit is the writer's imagination.

I did like better her descriptions of Wild Magic, and the hierarchy of the different colours of Robes for the University-trained Carthaki mages. But that's already the Daine books.

What strikes me about Jon, in this book, is how perfunctory his characterization is: he's more of a character space on which readers can project their fantasies about princes, than a fully realized character in his own right.

This made me laugh a little! Perhaps. I saw him, I think as a character. The stuff about his relationship to his father's legacy, the encroaching war and other events that pressure him into adulthood very quickly. And his huge ambition that you can see developing. Through Alanna's dreamy, perfect prince, you can see the sharper edges and seriousness of the man he's becoming. His ability to think for himself, rely on his own judgement, and take action, nevermind the consequences (of which he's fully aware)... Remember, he's only a teenager.

I'm completely incapable of finding George creepy, sorry! though I agree that the word choice is very poor. George is a fluffy bunny. ;)

Also: I really like this book. Still! Some of that's nostalgia, but not all.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

The Daine books have the most interesting magic, in many ways (although Daine's basically unlimited powers sometimes cause problems). I want a book set at the University of Cathak sooooo badly...

There's supposed to be a Numair book coming out eventually, right? Surely some of that will be set at the University.

George is a fluffy bunny kind of like the fluffy bunny in Monty Python. He looks so sweet and fluffy...but cross him and he'll cut your ears off! (But he is very good for Alanna.)

[anait.livejournal.com]

I want a book set at the University of Cathak sooooo badly...

Me toooooooo!

Academia + magic + student life FTW!!