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Feb. 28th, 2020 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsFoz Meadows' An Accident of Stars truly does feel exactly like an eighties fantasy novel if the eighties in fantasy had been less straight and white, and if it had been around for me to read as a teenager I would have eaten it up with a spoon.
The book is a portal fantasy, in that two of the protagonists are Australian teen Saffron and the Earth-native world-walker Gwen she follows into fantasyland, although the portal stuff doesn't actually have much to do with the plot for most of the book except to provide the opportunity to explain stuff to Saffron and, by proxy, the reader. After an early-book dramatic injury, Saffron accepts with relative equanimity that she's stuck in fantasyland for a few months until a reasonable amount of healing time has passed, so the plot is free to focus on her new pals -- an orphan with magical powers and a mysterious background, and a bratty preteen queen fleeing her evil spouses -- as they deal with classic fantasy issues like The New King Is Bad Actually and Who Will Be Our Allies In The Rebellion, Is It The Mean Matriarchal Priestesses Up North Or What?
The book was a very slow start for me -- in part due to the large amount of infodumping, in part due to some editing issues with my copy that didn't properly separate some dialogue tags and POV breaks and made it difficult to always tell who was thinking or saying what -- but by midway through the fantasy plot had picked up momentum and I really enjoyed a number of the back half developments! But I sort of wish I hadn't gone in thinking 'ah, a portal fantasy!' because it doesn't really function in the ways that most interest me about portal fantasy -- which is to say, I'm interested in portal fantasy because I like culture clash and ironic juxtapositions and meta-narrative. I want to feel like the character who's portaling from our world has a life and background in their own world that means something to them, that informs the way they interact with the fantasy, and that impacts the things that happen there.
In An Accident of Stars, it's important to the narrative that Saffron is Not From Here, but I don't really know anything about her background specifically other than that she has parents and a sister and she goes to high school and she's a Kinsey 4ish. She's a window on the world as much as she is a character -- and that's definitely a common mode for portal fantasy, just not my favorite among them. On the other hand, it did get me thinking about the kind of portal fantasy tropes I do find really interesting, so here is a short list!
- portaler has no destiny but their mundane knowledge and experience comes in unexpectedly useful in fantasyland
- portaler does have a destiny, but their destiny is somehow complicated or subverted
- portaler is genre savvy and it's funny
- multiple people portal (siblings, school friends, school enemies, etc.) and their adventures change their relationships and dynamics
- portal world is weird and metafictional
What about you? Tell me of your favorite portal fantasy tropes!
The book is a portal fantasy, in that two of the protagonists are Australian teen Saffron and the Earth-native world-walker Gwen she follows into fantasyland, although the portal stuff doesn't actually have much to do with the plot for most of the book except to provide the opportunity to explain stuff to Saffron and, by proxy, the reader. After an early-book dramatic injury, Saffron accepts with relative equanimity that she's stuck in fantasyland for a few months until a reasonable amount of healing time has passed, so the plot is free to focus on her new pals -- an orphan with magical powers and a mysterious background, and a bratty preteen queen fleeing her evil spouses -- as they deal with classic fantasy issues like The New King Is Bad Actually and Who Will Be Our Allies In The Rebellion, Is It The Mean Matriarchal Priestesses Up North Or What?
The book was a very slow start for me -- in part due to the large amount of infodumping, in part due to some editing issues with my copy that didn't properly separate some dialogue tags and POV breaks and made it difficult to always tell who was thinking or saying what -- but by midway through the fantasy plot had picked up momentum and I really enjoyed a number of the back half developments! But I sort of wish I hadn't gone in thinking 'ah, a portal fantasy!' because it doesn't really function in the ways that most interest me about portal fantasy -- which is to say, I'm interested in portal fantasy because I like culture clash and ironic juxtapositions and meta-narrative. I want to feel like the character who's portaling from our world has a life and background in their own world that means something to them, that informs the way they interact with the fantasy, and that impacts the things that happen there.
In An Accident of Stars, it's important to the narrative that Saffron is Not From Here, but I don't really know anything about her background specifically other than that she has parents and a sister and she goes to high school and she's a Kinsey 4ish. She's a window on the world as much as she is a character -- and that's definitely a common mode for portal fantasy, just not my favorite among them. On the other hand, it did get me thinking about the kind of portal fantasy tropes I do find really interesting, so here is a short list!
- portaler has no destiny but their mundane knowledge and experience comes in unexpectedly useful in fantasyland
- portaler does have a destiny, but their destiny is somehow complicated or subverted
- portaler is genre savvy and it's funny
- multiple people portal (siblings, school friends, school enemies, etc.) and their adventures change their relationships and dynamics
- portal world is weird and metafictional
What about you? Tell me of your favorite portal fantasy tropes!
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Date: 2020-02-29 02:49 am (UTC)I also definitely like it best when the worlds spill over, and inform each other, and the connections between them end up mattering to more people than just the protagonist. I remember reading a Vivian Vande Velde book some years back about a kid who gets transported into a video game and has real-feeling adventures, and the kid went on this whole journey but because there was never any sense that the characters that this kid met were anything more than real-feeling video game avatars, nothing that happened really felt like it mattered in a way that was satisfying to me. (As compared with the recent Jumanji movies, where the world isn't any more real, but because there are multiple kids in there, the interactions between the kids has a long-term impact that makes it feel worth it.)
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Date: 2020-02-29 03:17 am (UTC)That is TOTALLY the arc of the characters in The Beginning Place, especially the girl (who's wonderfully prickly).
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Date: 2020-02-29 04:05 am (UTC)They get the most character development, although I remain struck by Edmund's line in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: "You were only an ass, but I was a traitor."
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Date: 2020-02-29 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-29 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-01 02:43 am (UTC)I loved the islands and the strange seas and the fish-herdess in that instant of friendship with Lucy on either side of the dazzling water at the end of the world. My favorite book the last time I thought about it was The Magician's Nephew and that may still be true. It's completely nuts.
It's so fascinating to see Edmund transition into a mentor role.
Agreed.
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Date: 2020-02-29 08:46 pm (UTC)Susan kind of gets character un-development, I guess. >:-(