Fantasy novels by young women make me suspicious. There are so many bad ones, shelf upon shelf of sprightly books saturated with sentimentality, childish notions of romance, and utter ignorance about both the actual past and the grand traditions of myth. But I keep trying, driven by a hunger for wonder and a desire to give all these young, earnest writers a chance. So when I saw Uprooted (2015) on a "Staff Recommendations" shelf in an old and beloved bookstore that I like to support, I took a look. The first few pages displayed a rather remarkable array of endorsements, including one from from Ursula LeGuin. So I bought it.
Somewhat to my surprise, I liked it. The plot begins in fairytale territory. A wizard lives in a tower, from which he defends the villagers of The Valley against the encroachments of The Wood. Every ten years he chooses a 17-year-old girl from the neighborhood to be his servant. She is freed after ten years, but all the women thus freed leave the valley and never come back. Our heroine, despite being of middling appearance and accomplishments, is chosen. Begin the adventure.
The remarkable thing about Uprooted – as LeGuin said in her blurb – is the magic. Probably 20 percent of the whole book is descriptions of spell-making. When magic first appears in the story, it irritated me, because our tower-dwelling wizard can do things like transform bland stew into excellent roast chicken with a wave of his hand. But we have to blow past little things like transforming kilograms of matter at the molecular level because we have to make much bigger magic. There is a world to save, after all.
Spells, it seems, are written in books where you can read them, but unless you are the right reader, nothing happens. That means you must have the basic talent for magic, but there is much more: the spell must be of the right style to match your own, and the performance must be done in the correct way, in the right circumstances, and so on. Sometimes it is done in pairs, which is described as extremely powerful and dangerously erotic. It is, I thought, something like music.
The story ends the only way a modern story about a war against a corrupted wood can end, but the journey was well worth it to me.
Addendum: After writing this, I looked up Naomi Novik, and it turns out she is older than she looks in her book-back photo. She was born in 1973, so she was about 40 when she wrote this. Which explains a lot. Interesting to me that I almost put this back because I thought she was much younger than she is, so, ladies, consider that when pondering whether to use a photograph that makes you look young.
2 comments:
Interesting to me that I almost put this back because I thought she was much younger than she is, so, ladies, consider that when pondering whether to use a photograph that makes you look young.
Fairly patronizing, John, particularly given you are not remotely the target demographic for modern fantasy written by women. Those "shelves upon shelves" of "bad books" you describe exist precisely because they are catering to a sizeable audience - just one that doesn't share your tastes.
Given your stated "desire to give all these young, earnest writers a chance", you should perhaps start by giving them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they are doing in NOT catering to the tastes of older men such as yourself. Like it or not, fantasy as a genre has always skewed toward young readers, and fantasy written by women is often intended to appeal to young girls - hence the "sprightly books saturated with sentimentality, childish notions of romance, and utter ignorance about both the actual past and the grand traditions of myth".
When the overwhelming bulk of your intended audience is young girls, naturally an author is going to want the author's photograph (if they even include one) to make them appear young. They would much rather have someone like you put the book back because the photo makes them look too young, rather than risk the intended young readers putting it back for the opposite reason.
“Fairly patronizing”? Why bother with the modifier?
John, it took me several days to write my “are fantasy worlds good places for NPCs?” comment because I could feel my answer falling into a gender stereotype that I knew would weaken my argument for your audience.
I’ll make no secret here of the fact that I personally despise the new romantic fantasy slop (which is certainly presented as being written by an entirely female authorship) publishers are putting out currently, but Verloren has it here, IMO. These books aren’t for you or me, but they sell, and quickly, and the publicist who approved that author photo is 100% reaching out to a different audience.
I remember a few years back taking my son to a reading by Erin Hunter. I knew he loved the warrior series, but hadn’t put a lot of research into it. Going to the reading, filled, Harry Potter-like, with eager young kids and their amused parents who are mostly just learning that Erin Hunter was a collaborative, not a person— Well, no wonder those books were coming Out so quickly, and because there was always a new one for the kids to read….such a successful book-selling model.
Publishers don’t want originality. Except retrospectively.
And your comment about the recommendation from Ursula K. LeGuin— The woman who was forced to market herself as UK LeGuin at the beginning of her career to hide the fact, she was a woman…. That only feeds into the air of condescension that hangs over this post.
This comment is less coherent than I’d like, but I’m not going to spend a week trying to make it perfect.
There is so much to say about the degraded quality of the publishing system these days. AI is solidifying its impact, for example. What kind of female pretender gender novels do you think AI is going to produce? How are the author photos of those books likely to appear?
Naomi Novik’s book sounds old-style interesting with an Eastern European influence. Haven’t picked up new fantasy in ages because to me, the books are pretty much indistinguishable, at least in how they are marketed. I read a vampire story set in Sheffield a bit back— ultimately, the most interesting thing about the book from my perspective was the vandalized 1781 Henry Fuseli painting on the cover.
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