Myth, the Universe, and Everything

These links have been keeping tabs open in my browser until I wrote about them, so here's me clearing off my desktop:

• My review of Grave Dance by Kalayna Price is up over at Black Gate. Spoiler: I loved it.


• Target has decided that selling Amazon's kindle is a conflict of interest, Bryan Bishop reported over at The Verge. So, what's going on between Amazon and Target? I suppose we'll known in a few weeks – or it'll fade from the news and we won't figure it out.


• Penelope Trunk wrote a really interesting post on Venture Beat on "Why Smart Authors Are Cutting Amazon Out." She's advocating what ends up being even more self-publishing than I usually see: effectively, be your own publisher and bookstore. I'm not sure I'm 100% behind her sentiment, but I do think it's a well-written and well-reasoned argument.


• Tor/Forge e-books are getting rid of DRM, as announced on Tor.com and at PW. Thank you, Tor! I'd not actually noticed your DRM before, so at least you made it the kind that wasn't annoying previously. But I appreciate that you're getting rid of it entirely! (Especially as it's in time for me to buy Safehold 5 when it drops to mm price this fall, and, of course, Three Parts Dead, which is not yet listed as a nook book, but I'm assured will be.)


• The success of Fifty Shades of Grey (the slightly-edited-to-not-be-Twilight-fanfic bestseller) is somewhat baffling to me -- PW reports that it was the top fiction seller in the country the last week of April. Smart Bitch Sarah Wendell posted with other recommendations over at Kirkus, and one of her comments made me suspect something: Fifty Shades of Grey may well be appealing to people who don't usually read or didn't previously read romance. I was reminded how I was relatively unimpressed with The Da Vinci Code when it came out, but it had huge, widespread appeal, perhaps also among people who were not typical readers or book buyers. I've nothing to back that up other than its just being a random thought. I've not read, nor do I intend to read, Fifty Shades of Grey.


• PW also reported that B&N has just gotten into bed with Microsoft for their digital initiatives. If this means I will eventually be able to play Jade Empire on my nook (rather than my X-box), I am completely doomed.

• Speaking of B&N, the nook's new advertising campaign (reported on by Lauren Indvik on mashable) is amusing.


• And last, PW's coverage of the upcoming ruling on Authors Guild v. Google.

I wanted to post this on Monday, but, well, I had a deadline yesterday and had to finish reading a few series of review books at different grade levels before I could justify posting. So, just pretend this is my Valentine's Day post, ok?

You know that I read a lot of romance novels, and that I love the genre. You may also remember that we're reading the Safehold series as a family, and we're currently in the middle of By Schism Rent Asunder, the second book in the series. As I'm sure you've guessed, the Safehold books are not romance novels. However, like a lot of my favorite SF and F books, there's definitely romance inside the rest of the court intrigue and derring-do. But I think this is one of the first times I've seen compelling romance minus the angst that normally accompanies it.

I don't use angst as a pejorative here. As I posted on one of sartorias's recent Book View Cafe entries, I love me some romantic angst. My two top favorite novels of all time are both YA, and both involve the main character loving someone who she can't believe actually loves her back (which causes a heart-wrenching moment or two along the way!). In one case, the heroine doesn't actually know she's in love -- and that he might return her affections -- until she realizes she's put herself in a situation where it looks like she's betraying him utterly, and she might lose him after all. In the other, the girl knows very well that she's in love, but due to the hero's sudden absence, and his return in the company of her sister, she believes that, like in everything else in her life, her sister has proven better than she has. This opens her up to temptation by a faerie queen -- because how else will she win her heart's desire? And, of course, both have happy endings. (I'm not revealing the titles here, because these moments happen right at the end of both books, and they're complete spoilers as such. Some of you, of course, may recognize the moments. Or remember my listings of top books from earlier posts.)

Graceling by Kristin Cashore has some moments like this, also, with the exception that heroine Katsa thinks that, to have the life she wants, she has to reject all romance. Po, the hero who loves her, has to convince her that she can have romance without sacrificing herself. This may seem like a completely different moment, but the reconciling that Katsa goes through to decide what being in love would mean for her selfhood had that same kind of poignancy for me that the other stories did.

As much as I love those moments, there's no denying that they're angsty. They're full on teen torment, questioning of the self and one's relationship with the world. But that kind of angst isn't reserved for teens or YA novels. What would a good romance novel be without that same kind of questioning? If the hero and heroine knew from the very beginning that they were going to reach their happily ever after -- the way we readers do -- romance novels would be a lot shorter. The barriers that get thrown up between the hero and the heroine could be battled together, because hey, that's what teamwork is for! There are rare romance novels where this happens, but most of the fun in the romance novels I read is the will-they, won't-they push and pull, especially when it's driven by concerns that make a lot of sense -- or the world threatening to implode -- rather than miscommunication and stupid decisions.

Of course, in a SF or F epic, the romance isn't the center, and it doesn't need to take up the same amount of space. It can happen in small moments (there's a gorgeous moment in The Lord of the Rings when Aragorn notices that Eowyn is in love with him and he realizes that he has to reject her -- it's slipped in there, very quietly, and amounts to about one line of text; the love story between Eowyn and Faramir is equally quiet and lovely). It can be the hinge around which the final happy ending swings. Relationships can go through various possible incarnations or progress from fresh young love to passion to comfort (the Inda books follow a lot of relationships through various incarnations and succeed at showing love at many stages, for example).

Or romance can be a digression from the major plot that enhances the lives of the characters -- and makes readers like me squee just a little bit. This is the case with the romance currently transpiring in By Schism Rent Asunder. Two characters (unnamed for those who haven't read the series) have decided on a political marriage before meeting. There's already initial mutual respect, or the marriage would not have been the preferred form of alliance. When the characters do meet, there's instant attraction -- and, thus, relief. The marriage is the right thing to do: there's a new hope that they may actually enjoy it, as well. They each brooch the potential for romance a little tentatively -- the hesitation and uncertainty that the other may not feel the same spark -- but it's quickly acknowledged that, yes, the spark is there. And thus they can progress, without all of the will-they, won't-they push and pull, because the relationship has already been committed to. I don't think I've ever seen a romance done quite this way before, and while I'm sure that there may be quarrels and tempests in the future (they've only just begun on the relationship where I am in the story), I think the way their relationship has been presented thus far makes me as a reader fall in love with them just a little bit. And that, to me, is a great mark of success, whether or not the happily ever after is looming at the end.

Reminder: Tomorrow's guest blog is Alayna Williams, who will have a contest along with her post. Pop back by!

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David Weber (who I've mentioned here before) writes the "Safehold" series, a really excellent set of books (if the first is a representative example) that poses all sorts of questions about religion, faith, gender identity, technology, politics, and the nature of men and kings. It's science fiction, but it feels like high fantasy, in no small part due to the Arthuriana that gets wrapped in. There's a lot to talk about in Off Armageddon Reef, the first novel, alone, and I have a feeling if I were still in college, I'd probably try to see how the book could get worked into a paper. But as I'm a blogger, my musings here are pretty off-the-cuff, far less formal, and deal with just one aspect of the book (until something else comes up that sparks my bloggerly interest).

So I've picked just one thing I've been thinking about as we've been reading the novel (as I mentioned, this is our current family read-aloud at Casa Abbott) to discuss in this entry. The main character of the novel is, arguably, Merlin Athrawes. To give a brief explanation (instead of the detailed one), Merlin is effectively a robot in the pass-for-a-human style who contains the personality and memories of a now-deceased biological human. That human was Nimue Alban. Nimue, as the name would imply, is a female, and in order to be able to accomplish her mission on Safehold, Nimue-as-a-robot took on the role of Merlin, a male (whose form the robot's hardware does, in fact, make anatomically accurate). In many ways, Merlin and Nimue are the same – only Merlin can't think of himself as Nimue (despite remembering to be her, and having her sexual preference, for example). In order to believe that he is who he says he is – who he's become – he has to think of himself as Merlin.

And yet, Nimue is still relevant to the story, because it's Nimue's mission that Merlin is enacting. The circle this forms in the narrative is brilliantly done, and the gender work is really interesting. Nimue was a soldier – a tactics officer – and someone who studied military history and kendo. She has a lot of knowledge that might be considered traditionally in the masculine interest range – and those references crop up in the way she thinks, both as herself and as Merlin. Nimue was also a woman of faith, and that aspect of her personality – and her seeking to redeem the truth – provides as much frame of reference as her military background. As Merlin, she's emotionally attached to the people she's become friends with, even as she knows she has to use them to accomplish her own mission – which she believes is to their betterment as well. So, even while she's Merlin, thinking of herself as male and interacting with the world as a male character, her frame of reference is from her former, female personality.

We talk a lot about "men with boobs" as a female archetype in a lot of SF/F, and I think Nimue is a brilliant example of how not to write a man with boobs type character. Even while she's interacting with the world as her male persona – and sometimes it's easy to just think of Merlin as Merlin, without thinking of him as Nimue – that female identity is providing the framework within which the male persona works. But there's also a potentially interesting comment lurking here – one that got covered in real life by Norah Vincent in her research for her book Self Made Man, and is a trope of those great hero journeys I grew up with in Tamora Pierce's "Song of the Lioness" books. Nimue Alban is easily able to pass for male. Granted, she has what are considered a male skill set and knowledge, in the world of the novel, and she has the advantage of being able to actually have a male body, courtesy of the robot's hardware. But there's never any question, from any of the characters (who do question other aspects of her abilities and knowledge) that she's a man. To me, that says something very interesting about assigned gender identity – that it's more a way of interacting with the world, and of the role that other people expect you to take on, than it is about anatomy, or even personality.

I don't know if I think that's true, but I do think it's an interesting way to present the idea, and I'm having fun pondering it.