Jun. 3rd, 2020

chomiji: Doa from Blade of the Immortal can read! Who knew? (Doa - books)

Long ago, when I was a single cho, working my first full-time "permanent" job, involved with the SCA and first dating the man who would become my husband, there was The Sword of Winter, a fantasy that involved no plot coupon quest, no demonic Dark Lord, no mighty hero, just Rider Lyeth, a prickly woman whose job challenged her sense of ethics daily. The story included a rich tapestry of everyday life in a place that was not here, a locked room mystery, some weirdly unvillainous pedophilia (which nevertheless makes me squirm), some hilarious and some beautiful set pieces (the forfeit race, the bathhouse/greenhouse), and an equally prickly young boy who turned out to be (perhaps the only cliche) a long-lost prince. I re-read the book a number of times.

The year of publication was 1983, and a female author (hell, maybe even a male one) in a niche market didn't argue too much with her editor.

Fast forward to 2019. Marta Randall obtained the rights to the book and set about returning it to the story she'd intended, where Lyeth's real ambitions to explore and to map are given their due, and we discover that there's a reason that the cliche plot about the boy's ancestry stuck out so much,.

Mapping Winter is about Rider Kieve, and the boy is Pyrs. Some minor characters keep their names, but the outline of the plot is much the same. I will say, though, that in some small ways the baby got thrown out with the bathwater. Minor interactions that nevertheless enriched the story are gone, the largest being the scene where the rider and the boy disguise themselves as sex workers to elude a tail while fleeing through town. I used to enjoy that scene because of Emrys' improvised dialog and Lyeth's reactions. Kieve and Pyrs make the same evasive journey, but it's very cut and dried.

However, remembering my own reactions to some would-be humorous changes made to one of my RPG packages for Iron Crown, I can't blame Randall for putting things back to just the way she had them.

The River South tells the story of Shrug (real name: Iset), Kieve's daughter, whom she abandoned in the Riders Guild Hall. As the story opens, Shrug is 13, prickly and opaque, and someone seems to be after her with bad intentions. She flees south via river boat with a couple of characters who knew her mother back in the day. The section on the river is both wonderful and painful: Shrug is an adolescent who was raised in an institution, and she does some hideously (and realistically) stupid things, one of which causes a rift between her ad hoc guardians. The next part of the journey is like a weird dream, as Shrug and her guardian take refuge with a traveling medicine show (!). Finally, the mystery of the attempts on Shrug's life is solved, and she has to apply her hard-won maturity to a very changed life.

I'm going to have to re-read this to know my full opinion. It was compelling enough that I read about 65% of it when I should have been asleep, and I'm sure I didn't take it all in. Another reviewer suggests that there will be a third volume; it seems likely.

May 2025

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