bloodygranuaile | Entries tagged with tortall

I went to this year’s Murderbooze with not a lot of reading material, because I had been intending on writing instead (which did not happen; thanks, body). This resulted in me resorting to reading stuff on the Kindle app on my actual phone, a thing I do relatively rarely even when I have taken Twitter off the stupid thing, because apparently I’d rather fuck around on social media when waiting for the bus instead of doing any of the million other things one can do on a phone, many of which I specifically downloaded as alternatives to fucking around on social media (apologies to my flashcard apps).

I don’t remember when I’d actually started reading The Queen’s Readers: A Collection of Essays on the Words and Worlds of Tamora Pierce, but I do remember deciding to make it the iPhone book because it was a compilation of short essays and I didn’t want to risk getting too lost if I went months or years without opening it in between reading sessions, which I did on several occasions.

I remember when this book was first being put together and I didn’t get around to coming up with an essay to contribute, possibly in part because I wasn’t sure I had anything good enough to say. To be entirely honest, I regret my shyness here, because the quality of the essays that were accepted is pretty uneven, and I’m reasonably sure that if I had drafted off a quick ramble about something it still would have ended up in the middle of the pack. I could also have offered to line edit, or copy edit, or at least proofread, since there are a lot of language errors, ranging from dropped words to one essay where every single dependent clause has been turned into a sentence fragment.

While some of the essays are analytical, others are personal, and still others are essentially book reports, listing data on a specific character or theme and not doing a whole lot with the information. For some essays, the fact that they’re short is therefore a blessing; for the more interesting ones, though, a bit more length would have allowed them to develop their arguments in more depth. The result, essentially, is that this is an amateur work, and therefore it was frustrating as a publishing professional to experience it as something already published and therefore that I can’t fix. On the other hand, as a member of the Tamora Pierce fandom, a lot of the personal essays were very heartwarming and it was nice to see how much of a mark these books have made on so many people.

The essays were split about evenly between ones about the Tortall books and ones about the Emelan books, which, despite my being a lifelong devotee of the Tortall series, I’ve never gotten around to reading. I read one of them, once, but I am under the impression they’re pitched to a slightly younger audience, and I didn’t really feel like reading younger for a while. I’m actually now considering that it might be worth checking them out, which goes to show how mentally and emotionally exhausted I am lately.

Oh man oh man oh man. Despite having a list of things to do as long as my arm, I squeezed out some illicit spare time this week to read the new Tamora Pierce book, Tempests and Slaughter, the one I waited five hours in line to get signed. I did not dare take it out of my room at any point and I probably never will.

Tempests and Slaughter covers the early schooling of the boy who will eventually become Numair Salmalin, the mightiest mage in Tortall and awkwardly older lover of Daine the wildmage. But for now, we meet him as Arram Draper, a sensitive ten-year-old with an inquisitive mind and less than great control over his Gift, in the unenviable social situation of being the youngest student at the Lower Academy of the great mage school in Carthak. Ten-year-old Arram gets up to such adventures as lying about his age, accidentally falling into a gladiatorial arena, and flooding a classroom before he is mercifully bumped up to a semi-independent study level and the fun stuff can start. The fun stuff here largely consists of him finally making friends, because the power of friendship is a common theme in Pierce's books. His friends are two other gifted mages (in the "very talented" sense; obviously all mages are Gifted in this universe) who are also on semi-independent study tracks: the lovely and charming uber-kitchen-witch Varice Kingsford, and the seventh-in-line-to-the-throne imperial heir Prince Ozorne. You might remember them from Emperor Mage, as you might remember a whole bunch of other places and characters and gods in this book.

Little Arram is a very particular type of earnest, easily distracted, troublesomely smart kid that I think a lot of the folks who read Tamora Pierce books identify with a lot, even if for the first time ever in the Tortall books our viewpoint character is A BOY, which occasionally makes things a bit different than our usual Tortall viewpoint characters in ways that were apparently very embarrassing for Pierce to find technical consultants for (at the event at Booksmith, she talked about Bruce Coville basically laughing his way through all her drafts after her husband refused to answer any questions, claiming that he was old and didn't remember being a teenage boy very well). Teenage Varice is very charming and skilled and it's clear why Arram is in love with her, as is everyone else. Arram's BFF Ozorne is kind of a jerk already, being virulently racist against Sirajits because a bit of the state violence his dad was enacting upon them blew back in his face, and imperial logic dictates that the empire has a monopoly on brutality and fighting back is both illegitimate and proof that Those People need to be kept in line.

Arram also makes another friend about halfway through the book, which is the obligatory Adorable Magical Animal Companion. This one is a fledgling sunbird in disguise, "accidentally" stowed away on the back of a crocodile god from the Divine Realms. Her name is Preet and she is apparently just the essence of every adorable birb floof I have seen on Tumblr in the past two years. Preet is feel uncomfortable when we are not about me? but other than that is protective and charming.

Like most of the Tortall books, this book alternates its adorable wholesome content with pervasive violence. Social justice themes explored in this book include the commercialization of suffering (in this case, via gladiatorial combat), slavery (also, in part, via gladiatorial combat), the violence of imperialism (see: Ozorne's daddy getting what he deserved and everyone pretending it reflects badly on the Sirajit), and, to a lesser extent than some of her other books, the violence of poverty. Arram is training to be a healer, which takes him into such scenes of human suffering as a plague of typhoid in the city slums, and an intense stint as a resident healer for the fighters during a set of gladiatorial games. In an interesting serendipity of media consumption, I've also spent much of my commute time this week listening to the latest Hardcore History episode, "Painfotainment," which is also about violent spectacle, including Roman gladiatorial games and other popular public executions. (Fun fact: I can't spell "gladiatorial" correctly. Embarrassing for a copy editor! Good thing they aren't around anymore or I'd have to report on people betting on them.)

The plot is still a bit murky since we are only in Book 1 of the series but it does seem to be barreling inexorably toward Ozorne becoming Emperor, as the other heirs are picked off via horrible accident at an unlikely pace. Ozorne is surrounded by terrible people who do much to explain how Ozorne winds up terrible too, and it's actually quite impressive that he's not a bigger shit than he is at this point. Arram's teachers at school are mostly pretty awesome and terrifying, except for Master Lindhall, who is great but not terrifying at all. The power fantasy element of this book is very strong if you were an awkward bookish gifted kid, I'll tell you. Training in powerful magic via personalized instruction by multiple powerful mentors--baby me, sitting bored in the back of a classroom acing standardized tests, is jealous across twenty years. Of course, adult me can't be arsed to memorize her tarot card meanings and I've been reading the stupid things for fifteen years, so clearly magic isn't my forte; reading Tamora Pierce books is.

This probably isn't the strongest Tortall book but I really can't be objective about these things. I'm too delighted by all the call-outs to other books, including a couple of references to books written by Farmer Cooper and some of his and Beka's descendants. There are fun little things like Ozorne saying he wishes he had a Stormwing, which will make anyone who remembers In the Realms of the Gods chuckle knowingly. We're also clearly laying the groundwork for Numair's expertise in various kinds of non-Gift magic, a fairly taboo subject at the university.

Anyway, the problem with getting and reading this book within a reasonable amount of time is that now I have to wait the entire window between books for the sequel. I already waited seven years since Mastiff was published for this one, and now I gotta start waiting again! I don't know what I shall do with myself.

Wait, yes I do. I will dedicate my time to social justice activism and studying witchcraft. I think Numair would approve of that.

Reading along with Mark Does Stuff, I've just finished rereading what might be my favorite Tamora Pierce book, Bloodhound. Predictably, the stuff I thought was the most awesome was precisely the stuff that bored some other people, and the stuff that irritated other people did not irritate me at all, and the few things that I did dislike basically bugged only me.

Whatever. I still think Bloodhound is fabulous. The main plot is about counterfeiting, which I think is amazing because economics are awesome, and it really fits in well with the “doggy books'” exploration of class, being the only Tortall subseries about people who aren't noble (or live closely with the aristocracy) and who live paycheck to paycheck. I also love the exploration of Port Caynn, because port cities are fun, and having Beka, who is so tied to Corus and whose identity is very much bound up in her home and her neighborhood and her people, have to adjust to working in a whole different environment and try on a whole new identity while she's at it.

Pearl Skinner is also a great villain because, in a refreshing departure from the sympathetic genius villains we see so much of, she is thoroughly unlikeable in every way, and she is stupid. And honestly, don't mean and stupid people often seem to rise to the top in the real world? Charisma certainly helps, and the charismatic villain is someone we should all read lots of stories about and learn to watch out for, but there really are quite a surprising number of people who seem to acquire and keep power through sheer assholitude, despite a total lack of ability to actually manage it or to get anyone to like them. And with those kinds of people, having that power seems to further insulate them from having to ever get a fucking clue, and they just get dumber and meaner until, in the real world, they're writing whiny Wall St. Journal op-eds about how those lazy peasants are so meeean and ungrateful these days, just because we crashed the entire world economy to the ground, like that has anything to do with someone being unemployed or losing their house, where do they get these crazy Communist ideas? ...Ahem. Anyway, in Pearl Skinner's case, she's mean and vicious and stupid and irresponsible, and surprise surprise, she'd rather kill herself then actually face up to the consequences of her actions. Also she abuses her minions and kills off co-conspirators until the remaining ones are chomping at the bit to turn on her the second it looks like they might get away with it, which is one of the elementary Evil Overlord mistakes on that list that was popular around these here Internets a few years ago.

There is, of course, more to this conspiracy than Pearl, because Pearl is too stupid to have come up with it on her own; just stupid enough to go along with it.

The bulk of this books seems to be Beka Learning Things, even though she's not in training anymore like she was in Terrier. She learns how to handle her adorable scent hound, Achoo, and she learns about Port Caynn, obviously. She learns more about detective-ing and continues to conquer her shyness and learn the “soft skills” needed in a people-facing job like Dog work. She also learns How To Flirt, which is a subplot of the book that I have very strong but also somewhat contradictory feelings about.

One the one hand, I do appreciate that How To Flirt is presented as stuff Beka must learn and think about, that it is awkward and uncomfortable when she just applies the usual Stuff Is Happening sorts of mental processing to it, and that she has to decide to deliberately employ certain maneuvers that she has copied from other people. I appreciate this because God damn do I hate it when people act like flirting is just a naturally occurring consequence of being older than 13 and like there is no social learning or construction going on. I mean, it's one of my pet peeves when people act like any kind of knowledge is naturally occurring and does not have to be learned, but stuff involving sex and romance pisses me off the most, most likely because if you actually start paying attention and looking at who thinks what and where are you getting your knowledge or basically apply any form of metacognitive or critical awareness, it becomes screamingly obvious that finding two people who actually have the same ideas about How It Works Obviously is next to impossible. And yet most people seem really certain that there is a universally understood Way It Works and apparently no amount of endless miscommunication will convince them that this is actually a confusing and ambiguous subject, and, for all the lip service given to The Importance of Communicating in Relationships, it's next to impossible to get someone to actually identify their expectations and tell them to you in plain English so that you can compare your ideas about How It Works. So I like that Beka is not automagically on the same page as everyone else just by existing.

On the other hand, the text still sort of presents Beka as the odd one out and all third parties as being fully on the same page about what is in the body of knowledge that Beka has to acquire in order to pursue romantic relationships. This is bollocks. Also, I really hate Dale. I never particularly liked him—I thought he was sort of boring and I used to kind of breeze through his sections without thinking about it very much like I do with most other Obligatory Romantic Subplots in fiction—but reading along with the MR community really made me hate him more. This is because in the MR community there was a lot of discussion about who liked what and what wasn't working for whom etc. etc., and generally the only thing that occurred universally was that everyone in the commentariat is a relatively sensible and aware-of-other-persons-existing sort of person and, as such, we all agreed that people's mileage may vary greatly in what they do and do not find sexy or annoying. This, for me, threw into sharp relief how much not a single person in the cast of Bloodhound thinks that anybody's mileage may vary, and Dale is the worst of the lot. It's not that Dale is a bad person. It's just that Dale is a rake, and so I hate him for the same reason I hate most rakes, which is that they get into a particular groove of this is their rakey way of doing things, and they forget that their personal groove is not an immutable law of the universe and human nature. And I realize that having the whole conversation about what individual people do and do not like and what each person's expectations are and etc etc etc all that stuff that most dudes won't even arse themselves to talk about with supposedly serious partners (I say “supposedly” because of the number of times I've seen—and, once, been subjected to—“serious” being assumed out of a certain length of time without any discussion of what it means or whether the other party wishes to take the relationship to some sort of “next level”) isn't fun, and the whole point of being a rake is to just have fun without the serious bits, but the result tends to be self-absorbed, oblivious people who expect pretty members of their preferred gender to just automatically and seamlessly slot themselves into the rake's preferred modus operandi, and apparently they somehow manage to shield themselves from ever even learning that not everyone is guaranteed to be playing their game the way they're playing it, and they act all shocked and confused and surprised like they've never heard of such a thing when one of their marks has some sort of personal like or dislike or quirk or history or, you know, anything. I think they might block it out on purpose because it would require effort to remember. Dale is not only not an exception to this, he's pretty much the quintessential embodiment of oblivious lazy rakish assumption-making. I mean, if a dude in his twenties who's supposedly met oh so very very many ladies in his day tells you he's never met a woman who doesn't like being snuck up on and grabbed from behind in the street at night, that dude is either deeply, deeply stupid, or he's lying and he thinks you're deeply, deeply stupid, because it is wildly statistically unlikely that that is actually the case.

Dale also makes Beka sit around and watch while he plays games. This is a practice that needs to die in a fire.

Unfortunately, the book rather comes down on the side of Here Is What Flirting Is, Everyone Agrees On It, You Will Like It Once You Learn Because It Is Fun, Period. Which, sorry, Tamora Pierce, 99% of what you write is pure genius, but that's the most stupid lie about human sexuality I've heard since Cassandra Clare had someone dead seriously describe Jace Wayland as “everyone's type” and had another character use him as a test for whether or not she was a lesbian. I understand it's important to have books for teens that don't shame female characters for being sexual but everyone needs to stop portraying shit as universal when it isn't universal. (This goes double for whoever wrote Blood and Chocolate; I still have a headache from trying to follow the characters' thought processes in that book.)

Luckily, Beka's being unthinkingly groped by Dale is only part of what she spends her time in Port Caynn doing. She meets a lot of characters who are actually intelligent and interesting, from Master Finer, the cranky genius silversmith, to Amber Orchid, a nightclub performer and a transwoman who lives by day as a dude named Okha in a relationship with a gay man (apparently Port Caynn's queer scene doesn't have their terminology sorted out nearly as neatly as the modern world does) and who also gathers information on Pearl Skinner and her court but simultaneously refuses to act as a birdie to her boyfriend, who is a Dog. Amber is a very smart lady and I would read an entire book just about her. Beka also learns a lot about what a really corrupt police force looks like, which I really appreciate—a lot of cop stories show the cops as being pretty unequivocally the good guys, but I feel like the Beka Cooper books do a much better job of simultaneously illustrating how cops can be the good guys and why it is that societies need well-functioning police forces, but also not shying away from the fact that well-functioning police forces are actually pretty rare and difficult to achieve, and at least as often what you get is a bunch of venal bullies with power issues demanding respect without doing much to earn it. (Although even in Port Caynn it looks like none of the corrupt Dogs have been casually choking random civilians to death. Also, can the news go away this week?) And there's a rather heartbreaking bit about one of the Cage dogs in particular, how she left the street beat and became a Cage dog (that's the professional torturers, basically) for the sake of her kids, in order to stay safe so she could raise them without worrying that she was going to die, but the job has inured her to enacting violence upon the helpless so much that she's started hitting her kids.

Also, the action scenes are great. Tamora Pierce has always been fabulous about writing action scenes, but these are extra-great, because they are so visceral and gross and I really get the feeling that with Beka's books she's leaving the “YA” idea behind as anything other than a marketing designation—Beka is an adult and these are adult action scenes. Also, I think it's very important to have violent visceral action scenes in a book that's mostly about money, in order to ground it. So we get the bread riot, a solid punch in the gut to bring home what's really so bad about crop loss and rising food costs, and this is effectively placed at the beginning of the book in and among a lot of conversations about the chaos that could occur from runaway inflation, which is a thing that is basically also all the prices rising, just with different money theory stuff behind it. Also, the climax isn't just, like, smashing up all the counterfeit monies; it involves literal swimming in shit, which I think serves as a nice metaphor for a country being awash in money that isn't even worth shit.

In short, COUNTERFEITING YAY.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: blessed quiet

So I reread Terrier last year and now I have just reread it again, this time with Mark Reads. And it was glorious! The Beka Cooper books may be my favorite Tortall subseries; despite being the most recent and therefore having the least place of nostalgia and importance to my childhood, they are super up my alley. Beka is the Tortall heroine I probably most relate to—she’s shy, she looks the most like me, she wears a lot of black, she is fifty million billion percent uncomfortable with flirting and gets hostile when people try to engage her in it, she has a tendency to take things super seriously, and she’s kind of morbid—although in her case, it’s because she’s able to hear the dead and is an informal priestess of the Black God, whereas I am just a regular sort of morbid gothy person. Also, I’m pretty sure I’d be a terrible police officer.

Like all the best crime novels, this story actually focuses on two cases, which are related. In a deviation from the usual formula, we actually find out how these cases are related pretty early on: the Shadow Snake, the child murderer who kidnaps small children to extort treasures from their families, has killed the grandson of Crookshank, a neighborhood crime lord who seems to be doing some sort of hidden mining operation involving fire opals, and killing off his diggers. It’s the murder of baby Rolond that kicks off investigations into both of these plotlines.

Beka Cooper is just starting out as a trainee member of the Provost’s Guard, which is basically the city watch/rudimentary police force. She is assigned to the two very best and most well-known and awesome pair of Dogs (as they call themselves) on the Evening Watch, which is the interesting one. These are Mattes Tunstall, the laid-back goofy one, and Clary Goodwin, the hardass sarcastic one. They are both great, great characters as well as great Dogs. Beka, having moved out of Lord Gershwin’s house where her family lives, is also living in her very first own apartment (which is apparently a one-bedroom, as there are other people in her lodging-house but they’re not in her “rooms”, which makes me super jealous! My first apartment was an eight-bedroom. I would love a one-person apartment. On the other hand, apparently medieval apartments do not have kitchens, which would make me sad). She makes FRIENDS!! with a bunch of other Puppies (trainee police) and also some “rushers” (persons on the other side of the law) from Scanra, who are all darlings despite two of them being professional killers. Rosto in particular is like a bizarre mashup of Jamie Campbell Bower as Jace Wayland in the terrible TMI movie and Jamie Campbell Bower as Slutty Playboy King Arthur in that terrible Camelot show. He’d definitely be bad news for Beka but as a character he’s hilarious and weird and there is lots of very bizarre UST between him and Beka and it’s just gloriously awkward.

The journal format seems to have bugged a lot of people, but I have a giant soft spot for journal format books. I also love the extra-old-fashioned language—I remember it throwing me off a bit the first time I read the book, but it’s just so fun! The swears in particular! Every time I read a Beka Cooper book I remember that I have to call more people terrible medieval names like “sarden cankerblossom” in real life instead of just being like “What an asshole” every time someone’s an asshole, but alas, I keep forgetting.

Reading this with the MR commentariat also meant I learned a lot of interesting stuff along the way, including recipes, and that twilsey is a real thing that you can make with fruit vinegar because fruit vinegars are also a real thing. (My foodieism needs serious work. I must become a proper foodie; they know how to have fun. Especially in Paris.) (By the way, does anyone know what you actually do with vanilla butter? I bought some…)
Thumbs up A+ would read again, I freaking love Tamora Pierce.