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Dec. 20th, 2010 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsYo, epic fantasy authors. I'm real happy for you, and I'mma let you finish (uh, sorry, George R. R. Martin, I swear that was not a dig) but Sherwood Smith has already written one of the best epic fantasies of all time. OF ALL TIME.
- okay, this may seem a fulsome statement, but I'm actually serious. The Inda quartet (starting with Inda and ending with Treason's Shore, which I just finished after holding off for a year until I had time to devour all four at a go) is gigantic brick fantasy done right, or at least done in a way that engages with all the stuff that I find most interesting.
Ostensibly, the series is an epic about the titular Inda, sweetheart and trategic genius, who undergoes lots of adventures, strategically swashbuckles, fights pirates, becomes the accidental focus of a highly complex love polygon, saves his kingdom several times and a few other kingdoms to boot, and makes a number of extremely dramatic moral choices. And all of this is awesome! But Inda himself isn't what makes the series stand out for me.
What the books really do amazingly well is portray, above all, culture in flux. This isn't an epic about defeating evil, although evil does exist and does need to be defeated; it's an epic about compromise, about understanding different mindsets, about dealing with inevitable cultural change. It's about the small political and personal necessities that end up altering the way the world works. I was impressed with the complexity and depth of the worldbuilding in the books from the beginning, when all we see is Inda's Marlovan culture (I was actually dorking out straight from the beginning during a discussion of the two different languages used by the Marlovans and their different uses), and I was even more impressed as the scope broadened to show us more of the completely different cultures encompassed by the world, but when, in the second book, I realized that Sherwood Smith was actually showing the long-term cultural consequences of the things that happened in the first book - that's when I fell in love.
It's not just the culture-building! The cast of characters is also fantastic and unique and three-dimensional. Everyone (even super-genius Inda) has important flaws, sympathetic people often dislike each other both for good reasons and for really stupid reasons, and with one possible exception antagonists are always portrayed as human beings. One of my favorite characters is Queen Wisthia, who spends the first book sitting in her chambers and doing embroidery and being generally useless while all our sympathetic, badass Marlovan characters regard her with a sort of gentle patronization at best - and then gets to go back to her own cultural context in the second book, and is ridiculously awesome. (On a related note, there are tons and tons and tons of awesome ladies doing a variety of awesome things, from defending castles to captaining ships to fulfilling marriage alliances with dignity to being lesbian pirates, and all of these things are shown as being equally important in their own way.) Even extremely minor characters have their own goals and motivations, and very few ever get dropped (which I will admit can be confusing sometimes, when, for example, there is a dramatic re-entrance of a character who last appeared for two pages two books ago. WELCOME BACK, WOOF, I had sort of forgotten you were missing. But I appreciate the idea behind it at least!)
Also, unlike in many epic fantasy series, the questions that these books bring up of loyalty and power and obligation and trust are real and valid ones that are carefully and thoughtfully engaged with. It also has one of the few epically complex love polygons that doesn't irritate me, because the book is very much aware that a.) there is always something else more important than your bleeding heart and b.) no matter how much you love someone, it doesn't mean they're obligated to love you back. (Also I think it's kind of funny how Tau's solution to love polygons is just to wander into the middle of them and sleep with EVERYONE. Sometimes it helps!)
Caveats: as mentioned, the books really are bricks, there are are an epic ton of characters (most of whom have multiple names to boot), and you kind of have to devour them in a gulp or you will never remember what all the plot developments were. Also - I am sorry, Inda, you really are a sweetheart, but I sometimes have problems taking your angst seriously when peeing dogs send you off into a stoic fit of woe. Also also, Sherwood Smith has a terrible habit of KILLING OFF MY FAVORITES, but I mostly forgive her for this because she never kills a character lightly, and because everything is so amazing.
- okay, this may seem a fulsome statement, but I'm actually serious. The Inda quartet (starting with Inda and ending with Treason's Shore, which I just finished after holding off for a year until I had time to devour all four at a go) is gigantic brick fantasy done right, or at least done in a way that engages with all the stuff that I find most interesting.
Ostensibly, the series is an epic about the titular Inda, sweetheart and trategic genius, who undergoes lots of adventures, strategically swashbuckles, fights pirates, becomes the accidental focus of a highly complex love polygon, saves his kingdom several times and a few other kingdoms to boot, and makes a number of extremely dramatic moral choices. And all of this is awesome! But Inda himself isn't what makes the series stand out for me.
What the books really do amazingly well is portray, above all, culture in flux. This isn't an epic about defeating evil, although evil does exist and does need to be defeated; it's an epic about compromise, about understanding different mindsets, about dealing with inevitable cultural change. It's about the small political and personal necessities that end up altering the way the world works. I was impressed with the complexity and depth of the worldbuilding in the books from the beginning, when all we see is Inda's Marlovan culture (I was actually dorking out straight from the beginning during a discussion of the two different languages used by the Marlovans and their different uses), and I was even more impressed as the scope broadened to show us more of the completely different cultures encompassed by the world, but when, in the second book, I realized that Sherwood Smith was actually showing the long-term cultural consequences of the things that happened in the first book - that's when I fell in love.
It's not just the culture-building! The cast of characters is also fantastic and unique and three-dimensional. Everyone (even super-genius Inda) has important flaws, sympathetic people often dislike each other both for good reasons and for really stupid reasons, and with one possible exception antagonists are always portrayed as human beings. One of my favorite characters is Queen Wisthia, who spends the first book sitting in her chambers and doing embroidery and being generally useless while all our sympathetic, badass Marlovan characters regard her with a sort of gentle patronization at best - and then gets to go back to her own cultural context in the second book, and is ridiculously awesome. (On a related note, there are tons and tons and tons of awesome ladies doing a variety of awesome things, from defending castles to captaining ships to fulfilling marriage alliances with dignity to being lesbian pirates, and all of these things are shown as being equally important in their own way.) Even extremely minor characters have their own goals and motivations, and very few ever get dropped (which I will admit can be confusing sometimes, when, for example, there is a dramatic re-entrance of a character who last appeared for two pages two books ago. WELCOME BACK, WOOF, I had sort of forgotten you were missing. But I appreciate the idea behind it at least!)
Also, unlike in many epic fantasy series, the questions that these books bring up of loyalty and power and obligation and trust are real and valid ones that are carefully and thoughtfully engaged with. It also has one of the few epically complex love polygons that doesn't irritate me, because the book is very much aware that a.) there is always something else more important than your bleeding heart and b.) no matter how much you love someone, it doesn't mean they're obligated to love you back. (Also I think it's kind of funny how Tau's solution to love polygons is just to wander into the middle of them and sleep with EVERYONE. Sometimes it helps!)
Caveats: as mentioned, the books really are bricks, there are are an epic ton of characters (most of whom have multiple names to boot), and you kind of have to devour them in a gulp or you will never remember what all the plot developments were. Also - I am sorry, Inda, you really are a sweetheart, but I sometimes have problems taking your angst seriously when peeing dogs send you off into a stoic fit of woe. Also also, Sherwood Smith has a terrible habit of KILLING OFF MY FAVORITES, but I mostly forgive her for this because she never kills a character lightly, and because everything is so amazing.
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Date: 2010-12-20 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 06:40 pm (UTC)I love complex world-building and casts of thousands in my epic fantasy, so all that's for the good. The biggest problem I have with it, other than the million extremely similar titles for everyone (thank you, glossary!) is a stylistic issue: I cannot stand the way she shifts POV within the same section, paragraph, sentence, etc. Drives me up the wall and pulls me out of the story, every time. Other, than that, though, looking forward to sitting down with it over Christmas and getting some serious reading done.
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Date: 2010-12-20 07:07 pm (UTC)- you know, it's funny, I hadn't even noticed the POV-shift? Hope it doesn't end up being too big a problem for you! (The titles thing did get easier after a couple of hundred pages of story to drill them into my brain.)
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Date: 2010-12-20 07:17 pm (UTC)Still, I like the story enough to keep going. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 11:47 pm (UTC)(Re: large casts and brick books: HAHAH. I read LotR and the Silm, I THINK I CAN MANAGE...unless, unless the cast is BIGGER THAN THAT? And the words brickier?)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-21 05:11 am (UTC)I realize that was not actually a great plot summary! So to make up for it I am going to list for you some of my favorite awesome ladies in this story.
HADAND: Inda's sister; engaged to the heir, who is kind of a tool, but resigned to it. Short, curvy, cheerful, and also basically the most badass woman in the kingdom. At one point she singlehandedly stops a revolution.
TDOR: Inda's betrothed and childhood BFF. The sensible moral compass for the series. Good at reminding people that war is not a game.
JORET: Betrothed to Inda's older brother. Drop-dead gorgeous and really unhappy about the attention it gets her, because usually it just makes her life harder. The quiet, stoic type.
QUEEN WISTHIA: Married to the Marlovan king by treaty, and puts up with it for precisely as long as she has to until she can go home and enjoy real food, real music, and, by the way, being an awesome hardcore diplomat.
JEJE: Possibly my favorite character, a born sailor who's never really happy except when she's captaining her boat. Other defining trait: she finds kings REALLY STUPID AND ANNOYING. Democracy for Jeje!
THOG: Does not ask for anything out of life except the opportunity to kill some pirates.
EFLIS: A pirate. (Fortunately not one of the ones Thog wants to kill.)
HAN: An eleven-year-old girl who manages to keep a horde of small children alive in the wilderness for several weeks, despite extreme temptation to throw the whiny three-year-old off a cliff.
NUGGET: Tiny enthusiastic cabin girl; loud, often annoying, convinced she is the most important person in the story. At one point saves the day by swooping down on a rope and bopping an evildoer over the head.
I am missing out dozens and dozens of awesome women here but I should probably end this comment!
(The cast . . . may well be bigger, um. But the words are probably less bricky!)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-21 12:11 pm (UTC)Right now I have a lot of admiration for Han! THANKS FOR AVERTING ANOTHER LORD OF THE FLIES. <3
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Date: 2010-12-21 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-21 05:13 am (UTC)