Then we will be a different sort of friends

[sovay]

So first I read Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor and somehow it was two in the morning. Then there were two kittens asleep on my chest and somehow it was after three. It's after four now. I managed to displace the kittens. I am going to shower.

Some of the reasons I like Maia Drazhar are the reasons I imprinted on Robert Graves' Claudius in tenth grade and liked the historical George VI before he looked to most people like Colin Firth. Some are his own. The worldbuilding of the Ethuveraz is very nice, ditto what we see of Barizhan, and I'd like to see those friends of Vedero's in about a generation. This is the first of Monette's novels I have really enjoyed; I love Kyle Murchison Booth, but he exists only in short stories and I bounced off The Doctrine of Labyrinths with a resounding spang. I started reading this one around midnight and see previous paragraph. It will not surprise anyone who has spent much time around me that I liked Thara Celehar as soon as he appeared; he had a different ending than I expected and I was glad of it. I hope someone other than me wants the stories about Shaleän the sea captain and her wife in Solunee-over-the-water, because seriously.

Anything else should probably go on hold until I've slept, which means it has an even chance of not being written up at all, the way time and pain are going lately. I found it very rare to read a novel which was as much about intrigue and politics as trust and learning; it is not grimdark and it is not a book in which everything is solved by hugging people, either, although sometimes a letter or an informal pronoun is just as good. It has airships and steam-powered bridges and is not our nineteenth century, or anyone else's. Occasional echoes of Gormenghast, although that might just be the density of daily ritual and architecture. If I read more about royal courts of our history, I might draw other comparisons. The style is incisive, graceful, and often dryly, extremely funny. Occasionally horrifying. It is amazing what a kind novel this is, while pulling few of its punches.

I understand there will be no sequels; it says so in the FAQ. Nonetheless, more like this, please?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I posted about it some weeks back, here--and in expressing myself more fumblingly than usual, got an interesting discussion going in the comments.

[sovay]

got an interesting discussion going in the comments.

That's a great discussion. I wouldn't have thought of Maia's perspective in terms of female rather than male gaze, but it is true that the novel's close observation of the ways in which politics moves on the nuances of emotions (and damage) reminded me of Megan Whalen Turner and Elizabeth E. Wein, whom I had heretofore classed as the only members of their particular genre; if there are men writing in it, someone should point me their way. Something I've been trying to set aside time for is an examination of the contrasts and similarities of The Crystal Cave and Hild, which I started to think about while re-reading The Hollow Hills; I know they differ partly due to the decades in which they were written, but I think also because of the genders of their protagonists. I'm not sure my critical faculties are functioning well enough for that right now, which is frustrating.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

*nodding*

I think this is a discussion that would reward different approaches over time.