skygiants | (no subject)

For some reason I was under the impression that Cards of Grief, which I picked up in the Open Road Media ebook sale last year, is a collection of Jane Yolen short stories. This is not the case. Cards of Grief is a rather peculiar novel that reads sort of like what would happen if you mixed an Ursula K. LeGuin-esque story about the inevitable impact of anthropological study on a complex alien culture up with a really id-ficcy 1980s fantasy book about the sexual entanglements of manipulative magical royals.

The premise is this: a bunch of human anthropologists have set up a study of Henderson’s IV, or L’Lal’lor, a planet full of conveniently humanoid aliens with a matriarchal culture focused around elaborate grieving rituals. They also have a strict caste and possibly subspecies split between royals and non-royals. The royals are (of course) tall and graceful and slim and fair and clever but have a very low birth rate; the non-royals, which the anthropologists very rudely label 'trogs' for 'troglodytes,' are short and broad and not particularly bright or creative but more fertile! (Thanks for reinforcing those particular tropes, Jane Yolen!)

Otherwise they're all basically human except that the royal princes (and maybe all men?) are only fertile for about five years before their sexy bits retreat back up into their innards. As a result, the royal princes spend most of those five years essentially as part of the Queen's harem, but before that they spend their first year on tour wandering around in the lowlands, banging as many non-royals as they can and also picking up any half-royal teenagers they happen to discover from previous princely banging tours to bring them back to the capital so they can bring their superior intellectual gifts into the service of the royals.

Due to kind of mumblety temporal science, five years on the anthropologist's ship is equal to fifty years on-planet, so the whole ten-year study of Henderson's IV covers 100 years of story time. The book is the final report on an Embarrassing Incident related to the study that Changed The Culture Forever and is composed of oral history transcripts, interviews and tape recordings, some gathered 'with permission' and some without, focused on a few key figures:

B'OREMOS, a prince who (we are told early on) later becomes Henderson IV's first-ever king
LINNI, a teenage artistic prodigy discovered by B'oremos on his banging tour who then becomes personal Griever to the Queen
THE QUEEN, beautiful, powerful, carelessly cruel, etc.
AARON SPENSER, an unfortunately handsome blue-eyed baby anthropologist (22! even in the future I find it hard to believe you can be a full-fledged anthropologist with 5 years' experience at TWENTY-TWO, when did you go to GRAD SCHOOL, Aaron Spenser??)

The problem of course is that everyone, from the Queen to B'oremos to Linni, all now want to bang Aaron Spenser. The Queen tries to order him into her harem and then, when his boss says no, tries to order the death of his boss; B'oremos tries to date-rape him and then gets called away at an inconvenient moment before he can take advantage of it; Linni ... what's the ethics on banging someone that you know was drugged into a state of advanced intoxication by someone else for the purpose of date-rape? Probably still date-rape, I think, though we're supposed to take Linni as a tragic and romantic figure because of the ways in which she was manipulated and betrayed over the course of her life by B'oremos and the Queen.

Anyway, Linni gets pregnant, because 'alien biological incompatibilities' are not really a thing Jane Yolen is interested in and this is basically a fantasy book with some science fictional trappings, and then Aaron Spenser and the kid go back up to the spaceship for five years and come back fifty years later to a Serious Impact on the culture that is really only sort of sketched out at the very end. Jane Yolen is more interested in the moment and the mythmaking of change than the concrete results of it.

Jane Yolen is also very interested in sexy manipulative bisexual alien princes, and in Aaron Spenser finding true love and happiness with Linni's successor who is basically Linni 2.0

Overall, I find myself left with a a lot that's interesting (Jane Yolen is good at culture-building and mythmaking!), a fair-bit to side-eye, and one overwhelming question: how do any of these anthropologists think that sending a bunch of mysterious aliens down on a spaceship onto a planet in a burst of ceremony aren't going to have an impact on the culture they're studying? I mean I'm no expert in anthropology but this must happen literally all the time.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

katherine

It is a collection of short stories, that form without really a name where one squidges a number of stories together into a book-length thing. (Or so I thought, but on actually looking in my copy found it's in fact just two pieces that were previously published.)

I'm still found of the bits of various things mixed into a thing for declaiming aloud. On the topic of squidging together.

Edited Date: 2017-09-03 08:05 pm (UTC)

From:

luzula

That's...uh, well. I'm quite fond of alien anthropology-type stories, but a story where class is turned into a biological division in an iddy way is probably not up my alley.

From:

rachelmanija

My favorite parts were all the details of the art and culture of grieving. I thought that was very well done. Especially the tension between sincere emotion and careful crafting. Very metaphoric of writing (or any art, I guess).

I admit, the iddy bits appealed a lot to my id too. I also like sexy manipulative bisexual alien princes (and queens!) whose skin is burning hot and who crumble to dust when they die. The quasi-scientific explanations for bits straight out of fairytales were a lot of fun.

Aaron Spenser's advisor was a great character.

From:

thistleingrey

I think I read it when I was too young to understand it properly, TBH, but like

rachelmanija, I liked the art and culture of grieving. Indeed, I have forgotten most of the rest of it but remember finding that part fascinating. (Smaller me: also a worldbuilding fiend, probably at smaller scale.)

how do any of these anthropologists think

This is not a thing that most anthropologists seem to have worried about much. :(

From:

affreca

I'm trying to make a list of the books that use the tall and pretty vs. short and fertile aliens trope. You mention Le Guin (and her Rocannon's World) and there's Julian May's Pliocene books. Do you know of any other science fiction books that use the trope?

The movie Wizards fits somewhere in there, not sure how yet.

From:

bookblather

.....huh.

Is it bad that I really want to read this for the worldbuilding things? I'm definitely reading the Song of Ice and Fire worldbuilding book despite having zero interest in the series.

From:

cyphomandra

I remember this one for the ideas and for the way it was told, but I had actually completely forgotten about its being a first contact story! This has also reminded me that I keep meaning to go back to Yolen's Pit Dragon trilogy; I loved and obsessively reread the first one when small, read the second maybe twice, and the third not at all...

From:

pedanther

"Fix-up novel" is the traditional term for a novel composed by stitching together bits that were originally published as a series of short stories.

From:

pedanther

what's the ethics on banging someone that you know was drugged into a state of advanced intoxication by someone else for the purpose of date-rape?

I guess this was a rhetorical question, but I think it bears stating for the record that banging someone who you know to be in a state of advanced intoxication and incapable of giving informed consent is rape regardless of who got them intoxicated in the first place.

From:

sovay

Jane Yolen is also very interested in sexy manipulative bisexual alien princes, and in Aaron Spenser finding true love and happiness with Linni's successor who is basically Linni 2.0

Despite being able to visualize the cover of the edition I own, it appears that all I remember of Cards of Grief is the idficcy bisexual alien royals and nothing about the anthropology, which is not the way this usually goes with my brain.

From:

rachelmanija

Same here. There is also a fourth, which is best never read at all.

From:

vass

The first one in that trilogy was a Lost Book for me. You know, when you've read a book once and can't remember enough of the details to find it again (and this was before book-finding forums on the net) but the details you do remember are so compelling you long to reread it? That. I was so glad when I caught up with it again.

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I can't imagine some of the stories (especially the myth-bits) standing alone without context, although a couple of them clearly could and did. The whole thing is interesting structurally -- there's a lot of repetition-from-different-points-of-view, especially in the beginning.

From:

skygiants

Yeah, 'our heroine is biologically destined to be special!' is usually not my favorite trope; all of the narrators were obviously biased, but when the anthropologists were also like 'well, the proles are obviously inferior' is when I started going 'RUDE.'

From:

skygiants

Yeah, the art and the culture and the cultural anthropology were all extremely cool! Starting from the bit at the beginning where Linni explains how she came up with the innovation of Goth Grieving Fingernails. :D

I also wanted more of the advisor, who shone brilliantly when she appeared and did not appear often enough, and who was so excited to play fairy-tale queen. A WOMAN WHO LOVES HER JOB. I would have eaten hundreds more pages of mythological power plays between the Queen and the advisor up with a spoon.

From:

skygiants

The art and culture of grieving -- and how it shifts over the span of the story according to trends and cultural events -- is definitely the coolest part of the story.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY BAFFLES ME.

From:

skygiants

Hmm, I can't think of any other tall-pretty/short-fertile aliens specifically; I was thinking about the more broadly pervasive issue of 'taller, slimmer, fairer people are genetically superior to shorter, rounder, darker ones and destined to rule them.' :/

(I mean, also in a broad fantastical sense, it's elves vs. humans, but.)

From:

skygiants

The worldbuilding is very cool! I definitely think it's worth reading for that -- there's a lot to like about the book.

From:

skygiants

The First Contact-ness is simultaneously huge AND ALSO almost lost in all the other drama going on! Like, is it a bigger deal for the people of L'lal'lor that aliens exist, or that the Queen's favorite griever banged one of those aliens? DEFINITELY THE LATTER.

I also loved the first Pit Dragon book so much! ...and I don't remember anything that happens in the later ones.

From:

skygiants

Yep.

From:

skygiants

Admittedly, the idficcy bisexual alien royals are extremely memorable!

From:

sovay

There is also a fourth, which is best never read at all.

Seconded.

I came around to appreciating the third one on the grounds of sheer batshit, but I hated it when I read it for the first time and it's true that it's still a completely different genre than the rest.

From:

katherine

Thanks! So it does have a name.

From:

coffeeandink

See, I remember the exact opposite parts and I am also usually the other way around. I now feel a little bad about all the people I have recommended this to for the cool anthropology without any warnings about the sexual assault.

From:

sovay

I was thinking about the more broadly pervasive issue of 'taller, slimmer, fairer people are genetically superior to shorter, rounder, darker ones and destined to rule them.'

Le Guin does flip this a little in Rocannon's World and I think consciously: the tall, beautiful, humanoid Liuar come in multiple colors, of which the dark-skinned, light-haired Angyar are the ruling class over the pale-skinned, dark-haired Olgyior; the small, elflike Fiia are never ethnically described that I can remember, beyond looking like children of the Liuar; and the deep-dwelling Gdemiar, called Clayfolk by the Angyar and troglodytes by the offworld anthropologists, have the most technologically complex society on the planet despite being short and squat and pallid and generally looking like the cliché of something pulled out from under a rock. Which I didn't much notice the first time I read it, but, like the ethnicities of Earthsea, appreciate now.

From:

luzula

Well, there are the Eloi and Morlocks in Well's The Time Machine, which are also class turned into biological divisions...

From:

cyphomandra

Hmm, this and other comments are making a re-read less appealing! It's odd because I can think of rather a lot of other series I ploughed on through at a similar age despite decreasing quality (paging Piers Anthony).