review in F&SF

[truepenny]

Robert K. J. Killheffer reviews The Hallowed Hunt, Mélusine, and Firethorn, in the context of one of my favorite Le Guin essays, "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" (in The Language of the Night). (So, in other words, yes, the stuff Killheffer is pointing to is deliberate on my part.)

Comments

[libskrat]

Oo. Really want to read the Micklem book now.

Did this reviewer read or review either of the first two Chalion books? Because my sense is that either is noticeably stronger than the third -- in nomenclature as well as in other respects. Doesn't necessarily mean I'm right; I'd just be interested to know if other people share that impression.

I do think that this reviewer is a tad too invested in an "otherworldly" register being an elevated one. The success of Mildmay's voice shouldn't be a surprise. Mildmay scribbled Roman graffiti, and Ginevra might have been found trading rhymes with the Goliards. It isn't really any harder (though certainly no easier) to make an otherworld slum feel right than an otherworld palace.

Or, at least, it shouldn't be. Perhaps it is, because palaces figure so strongly in fantasy (Poughkeepsie-esque and otherwise) that they bring their own set of conventions along.

"From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" is the main reason I don't write fiction for publication. The world may thank Ms. LeGuin for knocking another talentless hack out of the business.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Oh, lovely, and quite deserved. (Except the critical parts, of course!)

[libskrat]

Gah. I hate English syntax sometimes. Of course Ursula K. LeGuin is not a talentless hack. There just happen to be a lot of 'em in the biz, and I would merely have been another one.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

I doubt he did read the rest of Chalion, since he missed the Nordic and Spanish nature of most of the names he complained about. And complaining about her dialogue style strikes me as a bit odd, since she really only has one... Regency English crossed with modern English. I guess he's allergic to Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer?

I'm looking forward to the paperback of Melusine...

[vass]

I doubt he did read the rest of Chalion, since he missed the Nordic and Spanish nature of most of the names he complained about.

Exactly. It was the names, right from the beginning of The Curse of Chalion, that got me in. Cazaril. Ingrey. Martou. Bergon. And then, of course, the theology hit and I couldn't have pulled free if I tried.

And complaining about her dialogue style strikes me as a bit odd, since she really only has one... Regency English crossed with modern English.

I will say this, he touched on the one part of the dialogue that really grated with me, Ijada's and Hallana's interactions. In fact, I could have done without Hallana entirely, but she was definitely at her worst in combination with Ijada, and their 'cries of feminine recognition'.

I too look forward to Melusine in paperback.

[libskrat]

I liked Hallana on her own. I liked the idea of her. But yes, her interactions with Ijada left me with a lot of WTF.

A number of writers -- FEMALE writers, even -- seem to try too hard to pass the DTWOF test sometimes. I would argue that LeGuin falls into a remarkably similar trap in the Tenar-Seserakh (lack of) interaction in The Other Wind.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

DTWOF?

[libskrat]

Sorry, Dykes To Watch Out For. The test in question is whether any particular bit of entertainment (the original was movies, but the test is often applied to other media also) contains 1) more than one woman, 2) interacting with each other, 3) about something other than some guy.