sunlit_stone

the first time we see Miles as a protagonist, in the opening of Warrior's Appretice, he fails yes! And it's such a strong failure, the failure of everything he's been working on in his life up till now... and then he has to rebuild from there! It's really something.

Pondering that, my hook into the Penric stories is, initially, Desdemona, who is much more fallible, and after a few novellas we get to my actual favorite character in this strand, Adelis, who is certainly very fallible That makes sense--I think I just don't like Desdemona as much, as a character. I do like Adelis a lot, and Nikys (though I was very annoyed by how much she vanished as a character after marrying Penric--seriously, again? It makes me think ironically of Kareen's reluctance to marry Mark for that very reason... I'm not sure what to make of it. It's not as if Bujold can't write a heterosexual romance where we get a good sense of character and involvement from both members, because look at Aral and Cordelia... actually this is kind of making me want to try The Sharing Knife series again, and see how she handles it there). But I really do like Nikys and Adelis, and Adelis' fiancé and her servant whom she's in love with/who loves her, though I can't remember either of their names right now--I really liked the adventure featuring them and Adelis/Nikys' mother, and then I was annoyed by the extent to which the resolution was just Penric calling down his higher authority, both magical and spiritual... Mind you, I do actually mean to catch up on the Penric at some point, so we'll see what I think of the new ones then.

The worst is when contemporary politics are pasted on and don't flow naturally from the world the author has created. Honestly! I admit I like stranger worlds but I have no objection to contemporary politics when they actually make sense with the story. (Actually, when they make sense with the story, it's kind of more awkward when they aren't there, honestly.) But so often the worlds people want to use just don't work with the actual stories they seem to want to tell, or at least with the commentary they want their stories to offer...

yeah, and that feels very fanficcy to me Yeah, agreed--I noticed this tendency a LOT in Harry Potter fiction, and as someone who theoretically enjoys Harry Potter fiction it drives me to distraction. Actually though, and ironically, I think my current favourite example of fictional nobility which actually deals with it seriously, politically, is....more Harry Potter fanfiction, but really really good stuff! It's actually really incredibly historically grounded (the author is I think studying history though not English history specifically). But for example--okay, another of my incredible Harry Potter pet peeves is the Traditional English Wizarding Culture Is Pagan trope. The Statute of Secrecy happened in SIXTEEN-EIGHTY-NINE. If wizards were integrated with the Muggle world before that, then Traditional English Wizarding Culture would have been predominantly CHRISTIAN. 1689 is very recent!!!!!! And in this fic/worldbuilding that is in fact the case--most traditional Wizarding families belong to the Wizarding Church, some of the families are Catholic or protestant, and some of course are also Jewish. (Hermione is also Jewish, in a way I think is done really naturally.) And there is nobility, and it's broadly kind of horrible, but not in a way that makes it feel like it's just making stuff look horrible to drive a point home--in the way, you know, those kinds of tight family power structures are genuinely horrible... The author has different interpretations of a lot of the characters than is fandom norm, but honestly I think it's a lot more backed up by the text. It's all very well done!! (Fair warning the author doesn't much like Ron, and the endgame isn't Ron/Hermione--though it's not Harmony either, at all--but I don't think they bash him at all; I feel like a lot of the time when an author doesn't like a character they write out all their virtues and reduce them substantially but that's really not the case here, he has his own talents and his own plot beats and so forth.) Anyway I am happy to link you if you've ever interested, the author is slashmarks on AO3; the biggest fic is the brilliant difficulty series but there's a lot of works with the worldbuilding that are a lot shorter but still very good (and don't feature any Ron). Sorry for taking the opportunity to babble about this, but it's so well done, and it feels so simultaneously historically grounded, and actually dealing with actual modern and liberal values, in a way I almost never see, and now pine for constantly...

I think I've read the Children of Blood and Bone but I can't remember the Red, White, and Royal Blue one--I'm curious either way!