(no subject)

[skygiants]

So I was trying to explain to genarti why I thought she would appreciate Hild and provided her with this summary:

Hild: "I JUST WANT TO GO SIT QUIETLY BY A POND AND STARE AT BIRDS ugh I guess I need to make a prophecy FINE HERE'S SOMETHING I LEARNED FROM WATCHING NATURE THAT SOUNDS VAGUELY MYSTICAL"

I mean, I was only halfway through the book at this point, so I had not yet hit the point at which young Hild's favorite activities expand out from 'sitting quietly by a pond and staring at birds' to include 'ruthlessly manipulating kings,' 'grimly slaughtering bandits,' and 'incestuous pining.'

So: Hild! It's the first part of a set of biographical novels about the future Abbess Hilda of Whitby, about which I knew nothing going in and ... still know very little now, except presumably she was influential and hardcore, facts I have extrapolated from reading Hild. Hild is not an abbess in this book; she's an extremely intelligent young girl whose mother has decided to mold her daughter into a prophetess, because prophetesses are generally in excellent positions to get shit done.

There's a certain kind of historical novel that throws you into the middle of a very complex, enormously political historical moment and expects you to be able to find your feet. The hallmarks of this kind of book are an exceptionally brilliant and morally ambiguous protagonist who is attempting to manipulate twelve different political threads at once, a lot of small but highly emotionally weighted interactions that are only semi-comprehensible unless you really understand ALL of the politics involved, and the occasional REALLY SPECTACULAR AND DRAMATIC historical set piece. Also, a family tree in the frontispiece. There is ALWAYS a family tree in the frontispiece. Dorothy Dunnett's books are all a bit like this but most especially King Hereafter, and so are all of Hilary Mantel's historical novels but most especially Wolf Hall. I'm sure there are also fantasy authors who write like this, but the only one I can think of at the moment is John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting, who was basically writing this sort of historical novel anyway except AU history.

Anyway, Hild falls pretty squarely in the middle of this tradition, with two major differences from the abovementioned books: Hild's early medieval world is significantly more distant from and foreign to our own than any of the above, and Hild is female. I love this sort of book, overwrought and unnecessarily opaque as they often are, and I also love explorations of the complex ways that women can exert power in situations that are not designed particularly well to allow women to exert power, so there was no way I was not going to be super into this book (even with the awkward incest subplot, which, there is an incest subplot, now you are warned.)

I haven't read other Nicola Griffith; should I read other Nicola Griffith?

Comments

[ambyr]

The only other Nicola Griffith I have read is Slow River, about which I will say: how much did the awkward incest subplot bother you? Because it is apparently A Recurring Theme.

[skygiants]

hahaha I don't know how to answer this! I mean it's more a facepalm/eyeroll than a specific point of avoidance...?

[kate_nepveu]

Well, thank you for the warning, anyway; I found the first chapter way more than I could cope with at the time so fluttered off to read _Three Parts Dead_ (which is, indeed, delightful).

[skygiants]

Hee, I'm glad you liked it! :D I'm super curious -- how does the lawyering look, from the perspective of an actual lawyer?

[kate_nepveu]

Cannily avoids tripping my "uh, NO" triggers by having it being very magical! But the general outlines, the mutability and subjectivity of Justice and the importance of persuasion, that was fun.

(Though in the list of treatises early--Contracts, Remedies, Corpse--I found an interview saying he misheard his now-wife talking about Torts when she was in law school, and it's a cute pun, but he really should have killed that darling and made it Corpses, plural, because it's jarring.)

[skygiants]

I think my favorite part was DEAD GOD CORPSE as document review. So much fun!

[kate_nepveu]

Yes indeed! I think the pacing might be a little wonky, but it has enough good bits that I was carried through.

[cahn]

I would characterize it as, "Here's something I learned from watching nature AND paying really close attention to other people's interpersonal relationships even though I kind of suck at my own!"

I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH. And books like this, in general. And yes, I hadn't thought to compare it to Dragon Waiting, but yeah, it engages the same circuits in my brain.

C.J. Cherryh writes a lot like this, only more her SF than her fantasy, I think. (I was never able to get through any of her fantasy books, though, so maybe I"m not the right person to ask.) Dorothy Dunnett, huh? I'll have to check that out. (Now that you have been proven SERIOUSLY RIGHT about FMA...)

[skygiants]

Hahahaha um I mean, I SHOULD ALSO PROVIDE SOME CAVEATS ABOUT DUNNETT. I cannot unleash Dunnett on anybody without warnings. I mean, I personally love Dunnett -- and super love watching people read through Dunnett, because it's inevitably hilarious -- and I grew up on her Lymond books; there are certainly many pleasures to be found in her historical writing! However, the Lymond chronicles also feature AS MUCH OVER-THE-TOP ANGST as has ever been thrown onto a fictional character, ever, in history.

King Hereafter, which is a standalone, is probably worth trying out, though! While it's probably the most dense, my memory is that it's also the most solidly historical and least, uh, overwrought. And reminds me most of Hild!

[thistleingrey]

More grist: I couldn't get into King Hereafter, possibly because what makes Dunnett's fiction work for me is the carefully layered overwrought angst (plus I read Sayers first; looking towards Peter Wimsey's chief antecedent is a small game in its own right). But it's not KH's fault that its setting was smack in the middle of my orals prep, both re: when I tried reading it and re: its time period (I was responsible for lit in England till 1500, more or less).

From what other friends have said, the Lymond books and the Niccolò books tend to attract non-overlapping sets of appreciative readers; I don't know many who love both.

Thus it's worth giving multiple Dunnett books a try. :))

[skygiants]

Haha, count me among the not-many, though. I do love both! I mean, in some cases with a deep shame and/or horrified peering at the text through my fingers, but I really do. The most significant difference for me is that you spend so much less of Niccolo's first book wanting to beat Nicholas over the head with his own smugness than you do Francis in his first book. Though Nicholas gets there eventually.

[antisoppist]

Oh! I've written her off entirely on the basis of the first three chapters of Lymond*, so that is useful information.

*To the extent that a friend now uses "may give you a touch of the Lymonds" as a warning when lending me books with annoyingly smug bouncy men in. I feel the same way about early Miles Vorkosigan and, at times, Peter Wimsey.

[thistleingrey]

All three made it in under the wire age-wise for me, in that I was 22 at most upon trying the Lymond books and younger for the other two; I don't think they'd fly as well now, and I keep not quite nerving myself into a Lymond reread. But it does seem worthwhile to sample the variation!

[skygiants]

I was fifteen. They should not let fifteen-year-olds read Lymond, it takes YEARS to be cured of wanting all your characters be superintelligent douchebags who sprinkle everything they say with random quotes in Latin, she said morosely, and even then the disease really only goes into remission.

[thistleingrey]

ha! Yes, I can see how that'd pose a bit of a problem.

[minutia_r]

I was also coming here to mention CJ Cherryh. I do like some of her fantasy, particularly the Russian Stories, but it does tend to be less political than her SF.

[skygiants]

I am happy with both political and not-political! It's just there's so MUCH Cherryh and I've never been sure where to start.

[minutia_r]

Cherryh is EXTREMELY PROLIFIC. I have a shelf and a half of her books and I am a fan and I have not read most of her stuff.

But! I suppose if you are wondering where to start with Cherryh the question is how well do you cope with a)rape (mostly but not exclusively female-on-male) and b)long infodumps at the beginning of the book and sprinkled liberally throughout.

If the answer is "not at all" then the good news is you have a much shorter list of books to chose from.

If the answer is "absolutely no problem!" then you start with Cyteen.

(If the answer is "it depends" then . . . it depends.)

[rachelmanija]

Yes! Read the Aud Torvingen series. They're contemporary suspense novels which are also character studies of the peculiar Aud, who is extremely attuned to her body and her senses but not so much to her emotions or social interactions. Very well-written and I find Aud interesting: physically flawless and deeply weird. I'm not sure if I should warn you or not for something spoilery that happens at the end of the first book. (It's not incest.)

Rot13.com: Ure yrfovna ybire vf gentvpnyyl zheqrerq. Gur erfg bs gur frevrf vf ynetryl ure pbzvat gb grezf jvgu tevrs naq, riraghnyyl, ybivat ntnva.

I also like Ammonite, which is anthropological sf about a Terran scientist who visits a world which is now all-female after a plague killed all the men... generations ago.

[skygiants]

Oh, cool, thank you for the recs! And for the warning (which I appreciate knowing in advance.)

[hebethen]

I do enjoy Old English history, my very phrasing of which ought to be a clue that I approached it from the linguistic side of things. Most unfortunately, the one class I took in college on the topic did not at all have a cultural-historian sort of a focus.

[skygiants]

I also enjoy it! But all my studies in it were long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, so I really knew nothing to give me a grounding in this book. Which I don't think was a problem really! Although I suspect people who were already into the politics and cultures of the time had even more fun than I did.

[troisroyaumes]

Wow, you've sold me. I love this kind of fiction but with a female protagonist? /puts on wishlist

[skygiants]

Not just a female protagonist, either, but a whole complex web of interesting female characters for her to have relationships with! Sometimes the sexy kind of relationship!

[laceblade]

I haven't read other Nicola Griffith; should I read other Nicola Griffith?

READ ALL OF THE NICOLA GRIFFITH!!

[skygiants]

YOUR RECOMMENDATION HAS BEEN NOTED

[dimestore_romeo]

This has been on my bookshelf for ages after I read the review on The Toast, and I am steadily getting more tempted to pick it up. After I finish my latest Phryne Fisher book, Murder and Mendelssohn, in which she matchmakes a thinly veiled Sherlock and Watson to the point where they finally declare their passionate gay love for each other while she also solves the murders of a series of choir conductors and maybe kills people.

[skygiants]

omg, I've never read Prhyne Fisher, but I HEARD ABOUT THAT ONE AND I LAUGHED FOR LIKE AN HOUR.

[dimestore_romeo]

I only got into them recently, after feeling quite blah about the tv series, and it turns out that they are a thousand times better! Phryne is fabulous, clever, and forever seducing innocent young men and ravishing them until they can't stand up straight. In the tv series they have given her a slow-burning love affair, but in the books she has a long-time lover, Lin Chung, but neither of them feel like being tied down. She basically gets to do everything that male detectives and spies usually get to do, with no recriminations. <3

[kate_nepveu]

I was unhappy with the way the first one treated the murderer; was that something that bothered you and then the books got better, or was it not an issue for you (which is fine, it's just not a useful data point for me!).

[genarti]

SHOCKINGLY I am still highly intrigued by this description. *laughing* The more so the more details I hear!

I mean, except for the incest subplot, but I am forewarned and willing to read that for all the rest of this stuff.

[skygiants]

I mean to be fair to the incest subplot, the other major sexual relationship in the book is ... not less designed to be deliberately uncomfortable ... in its own way?

.... that probably doesn't really help, does it. BUT NO YOU SHOULD READ IT FOR SURE.

[genarti]

NOT NOTABLY, helpfully reassuring though that icon is.

But I will take your word for it on the basis of general trust plus all the rest of the evidence!

[opusculasedfera]

Hild's grumpiness about having to make everything be a prophecy all the time, gee whiz, is fabulous. I'm only about halfway through so far, but I've really been enjoying it. I cannot follow all the names, but I'm just rolling around in the historical details and how good Griffiths is at both showing us how much work it was to live in that era, while still normalising it. Also, she understands that a protagonist who sometimes doesn't want to card wool because it's hot and sticky and there are other things to do, isn't the same as a protagonist who doesn't want to do any textiles at all despite the fact that every single woman she has ever known has made textiles and it's well-regarded work! :D

[skygiants]

Hee, yes! I mean I simultaneously admire how clever she is at making things sound like prophecies, and share her frustration that she can't just be like "UM DUH IT'S OBVIOUS WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE MYSTICAL."

Also, yes, yes. Hild feels and acts differently from the women around her, but that's not because she mysteriously got a 1970s Grrl Power attitude transplanted into her brain through time travel rays!

[opusculasedfera]

Yes! I love that we're never really talking down to everyone around her for believing in prophecy, but we're still firmly in the head of someone who knows that she's not actually magic and needs to think through all this stuff very carefully and is a bit resentful of having to do all this extra work.

Plus we get hints of other women also having different feelings about the work they have to do, even while everyone is pretty damn sure that all that work still needs to be done always, so you're never getting out of it. It's almost like there's variation even among people who aren't considered in any way unusual by those around them!

[skygiants]

Right! And, like, the people around her aren't stupid either -- the king knows very well it's as much observation and political manipulation as prophecy, but for the sake of appearances it needs to sound like prophecy. And everyone knows that, and is capable of using it.

AND YES. It's like everyone reacts to their environment in different and individual ways, even! WHAT A CONCEPT.

[ladysingsthe]

This is just to say that I was at Elliott Bay the other day and saw Hild, so I flipped to a random page

and it was deep half-overheard conversations about ~keeping her safe~ and ~playing your games~


So as far as I can tell, this review is 1000% accurate.

[skygiants]

EVERY PAGE IS LIKE THAT.

(OK, not every page, some pages are Hild sitting and staring grumpily at birds.)

[metaphortunate]

I bounced hard off the Aud book I read, but Ammonite and Slow River are the best. Seriously. Two of my favorite books in the world.

I kind of love the Lymond books and kind of hate them because, seriously, almost everyone in the books actually has a worse time than Lymond himself, and yet whose manpain do we hear about?

[skygiants]

RIGHT? Like, especially in the last book, which -- I love Philippa, my inner fifteen-year-old will always ship Philippa/Lymond, and yet, wow, PHILIPPA'S PTSD IS REALLY TOUGH FOR LYMOND DON'T YOU THINK?

[metaphortunate]

Also, I loved Hild for much the same reason I loved the Steerswoman books. I guess I love characters who spend their time paying attention to the world around them and making connections I would myself miss entirely because of spending all my time with my nose in a book.

[skygiants]

That is ... such an apt comparison, and I don't know why I hadn't thought to make it! I mean, the books feel very different to me mostly because Rowan's attitude about the way she puts her observations to play in the world around her is SO DIFFERENT from Hild's, but you're right, they're making the same kind of observations and they're both equally fascinating.