Daaaaaaaaine!

[osprey_archer]

Oh, Daine. Daine, Daine, Daine. Daine was my favorite, favorite TP heroine back when I first read the Tortall books; I have LOTS OF FEELINGS about her and her world and will probably carpet you with posts.

What's awesome about Daine? EVERYTHING. She had a wonderful angsty past! Which included a period of living with the wolves! Because she could TALK TO ANIMALS! And not just talk to animals, but transform into them and heal them and resurrect dinosaur skeletons in order to go on a palace-destroying rampage!!! I reread the first three books in the series approximately a million times.

The fourth book in the quartet, however, I read only once. Daine and Numair's sudden romantic entanglement disturbed me. He was her teacher! And kind of a father figure! Maybe an older brother figure. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason they're making out on a ledge and pledging eternal devotion!

It's something of a let-down, thus, to realize that Daine/Numair was more than adequately foreshadowed in Wild Magic. Daine has a painfully obvious crush on Numair from the first. She blushes and won't look at him the first time they chat; she nearly starts crying when he leaves her and Onua at the palace.

(Numair, I feel constrained to add, doesn't appear to return her feelings at this point - after all, she's thirteen! - but that doesn't really matter; their eventual romance is adequately foreshadowed by Daine's feelings. Whoever heard of a YA book where the heroine doesn't get the guy, after all? Protector of the Small aside!)

This doesn't mean I've changed my opinions on Daine/Numair - I still find it massively displeasing - but at least it isn't completely random.

Comments

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

And now we have SOLID PROOF that you and Ankhiale/zodaical_light are not the same person! :-P

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Not a Daine fan, is she?

I can see how Daine would be...irritating...if you read her books at any age after eleven.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

She likes Daine as a concept, and in her later cameos, but has issues with her ethics and the lack of consequences for her actions in the later Daine books, and other aspects of how she's written. (I actually do too, especially in Emperor Mage. I keep wanting to write a "Daine says fuck the humans and accepts Ozorne's offer" AU.)

[ladyherenya]

I had suspicious as to how Daine and Numair's relationship would develop because friends who read the books well before I did had - unintentionally - dropped vague hints. So I was on the lookout for the evidence from the very beginning...

I'm looking forward to the rest of your Daine posts!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Did you like Daine/Numair better, because you'd known it was coming?

There will be MANY DAINE POSTS.

[ladyherenya]

I liked Daine/Numair because I had hoped it was coming ... and because at 17, I derived a certain amount of amusement from correctly guessing - long before there was any (to my mind) conclusive evidence - who would be the ultimate romantic interest.

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

I loved the Immortals books, too - I read them when I was 12 or so, and remember drawing pictures of hurrocks and dragons. All the "child of a god" thing irritated me more in the last book, though, more than Daine/Numair.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

The child of a god thing frustrated me, too. I mean, really? She's already practically omnipotent, and now she's the child of a god too? Overkill much?

None of this drove me as crazy as Cleon in the Kel books, though. Cleon was my bete noir and I frothed whenever he appeared on the page.

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

Aw, I quite liked Cleon. I think TP felt she had to write some romantic interest for Kel.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

See, I was a Neal girl through and through, so I would have hated any character who got in the way of my OTP. (Though oddly enough I quite liked Yuki.) I suspect rereading it now that I'm more mature, I'll have more appreciation of Cleon's merits.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

Heh. Daine being a demigod is what made her animal-whisperer omnipotence sensical to me. In retrospect, it also makes me better able to stomach her nasty fit in EM - demigods are traditionally not known for being ... stable.

(Drive-by commenting on a post only two months late, this time! I have made progress!)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought about the general instability of demigods, but this is true.