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Jan. 15th, 2013 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsNext up in Books I Read for Yuletide And Therefore Technically Could Not Talk About Until January: Diane Duane's super eighties fantasy series The Door Into Fire, The Door Into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset, which I read in order to beta genarti's excellent fic Outdwelling.
I think I should mention that all I knew about these books going in was that they are dearly beloved by many of my friends, and that the series as it currently stands culminates in an epic polyamorous marriage between five people, a dragon, a fire elemental, and possibly also a goddess, because WHY NOT.
I did not know in advance about the undead dragon mpreg, but that is also a thing that happens. SO NOW YOU KNOW.
Anyway, the first book follows Herewiss, a dude who is on a quest to tap into his latent magical powers and also rescue his prince-in-exile boyfriend from the various consequences of his own stupidity. Along the way he bumps into an amoral fire elemental who eventually falls in love with him and love triangle ensues, but not really, because polyamory; also he overcomes his backstory angst.
Then in the second book it turns out that this is actually an EPIC about how the prince-in-exile boyfriend really needs to retake the throne to stop the LONE POWER -- er, sorry, I mean THE DARK -- from destroying the world, in a vague and amorphously entropic fashion. I do not care much about this. But I do like the protagonist of this one, a lady sorceress who abruptly finds herself the unwilling mental host of a whole bunch of UNDEAD DRAGONS, after which culture clash ensues. (Warnings, though, for an unexpectedly graphic and disturbing sequence in Segnbora's backstory angst, and also for one of those no-longer-anything-but-hilarious-to-me scenes in which a character realizes their love for another person only to have that other person immediately plummet off a cliff to his doom.)
The third book is mostly epic battles and discussions of the responsibility of ruling. At the end of it I remain slightly confused about several things. First of all, I am puzzled by how the whole marriage-reproductive system works! (It's mentioned offhand in the first book that everyone is required by law to reproduce before they can get married? Possibly reproduce twice? But this is never brought up again, unless I missed something, and seems like . . . a strange rule . . .) Also: IS HASAI STILL PREGNANT AT THE END seriously I'm really confused by this I need to know!
But MOSTLY I am just full of fond nostalgia for super eighties fantasy epics set in sexually Utopian fantasy worlds where no one had homophobic hangups and all the plots featured some kind of cheerful pansexual polyamory. I kind of want to compile a master list, but for this I need assistance!
The ones that spring initially to mind:
- these books
- Tanya Huff's Quarter series
Which doesn't seem like much, but I know there are more! I know there are more that I've read! BRAIN.
genarti's excellent fic Outdwelling.I think I should mention that all I knew about these books going in was that they are dearly beloved by many of my friends, and that the series as it currently stands culminates in an epic polyamorous marriage between five people, a dragon, a fire elemental, and possibly also a goddess, because WHY NOT.
I did not know in advance about the undead dragon mpreg, but that is also a thing that happens. SO NOW YOU KNOW.
Anyway, the first book follows Herewiss, a dude who is on a quest to tap into his latent magical powers and also rescue his prince-in-exile boyfriend from the various consequences of his own stupidity. Along the way he bumps into an amoral fire elemental who eventually falls in love with him and love triangle ensues, but not really, because polyamory; also he overcomes his backstory angst.
Then in the second book it turns out that this is actually an EPIC about how the prince-in-exile boyfriend really needs to retake the throne to stop the LONE POWER -- er, sorry, I mean THE DARK -- from destroying the world, in a vague and amorphously entropic fashion. I do not care much about this. But I do like the protagonist of this one, a lady sorceress who abruptly finds herself the unwilling mental host of a whole bunch of UNDEAD DRAGONS, after which culture clash ensues. (Warnings, though, for an unexpectedly graphic and disturbing sequence in Segnbora's backstory angst, and also for one of those no-longer-anything-but-hilarious-to-me scenes in which a character realizes their love for another person only to have that other person immediately plummet off a cliff to his doom.)
The third book is mostly epic battles and discussions of the responsibility of ruling. At the end of it I remain slightly confused about several things. First of all, I am puzzled by how the whole marriage-reproductive system works! (It's mentioned offhand in the first book that everyone is required by law to reproduce before they can get married? Possibly reproduce twice? But this is never brought up again, unless I missed something, and seems like . . . a strange rule . . .) Also: IS HASAI STILL PREGNANT AT THE END seriously I'm really confused by this I need to know!
But MOSTLY I am just full of fond nostalgia for super eighties fantasy epics set in sexually Utopian fantasy worlds where no one had homophobic hangups and all the plots featured some kind of cheerful pansexual polyamory. I kind of want to compile a master list, but for this I need assistance!
The ones that spring initially to mind:
- these books
- Tanya Huff's Quarter series
Which doesn't seem like much, but I know there are more! I know there are more that I've read! BRAIN.
