(no subject)
Aug. 20th, 2020 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI was four books into the Mallorean when the quarantimes hit and the libraries shut down, and I absolutely refused to purchase a.) any of the Mallorean but especially b.) just the last book of the Mallorean, so I had to wait several months until a handoff from sandrylene could be arranged to complete my self-assigned labors.
What I remembered about The Mallorean, from my childhood, is that it was more or less The Belgariad all over again except a little bit better and funnier. Also, that 'Zakath the mildly reformed sociopathic emperor and Cyradis the eternally obfuscating blind seer had a beautiful romance that Teen Becca cared about very, very deeply.
Here, now, in the year 2020, I bring the sad tidings that 'Zakath/Cyradis is extremely boring and reads exactly like every other destined David Eddings romance, which is to say it has not a single thing to do with either party's personality and involves a lot of fairly tired sexist jokes.
Instead, the ONLY Mallorean relationship I care about, here in this year 2020, is Sadi (the manipulative eunuch from the Culture of Drugs, Snakes and Sensuality that is Definitely Not a Racist Caricature) and Liselle (the Beautiful Undercover Spy from the Culture Where Everyone Is Spies) coparenting a tiny adorable poisonous snake and her newborn even tinier snake babies!!! I'm VERY invested in this. I absolutely reject the canonical ending that Sadi and his snake family end up in a different country from Liselle at the end of the book. Family is important! Liselle and this snake are bonded, you can't separate them now!
(Liselle/Sadi is not a canonical romance, because David Eddings does not think eunuchs can have romance. Liselle is instead the canonical romance for Silk, the original Spy From the Culture Where Everyone Is Spies; as you might be able to guess, she's exactly like him, but female and half his age. This is a little disquieting but also still gives them more to build a relationship on than literally any other canonical Eddings couple, and therefore as a result I will graciously allow Silk to make a triad with Liselle and Sadi if he wishes, but only on the condition that he act as equal coparent to the poisonous snake.)
Anyway. In other thoughts, the Mallorean is probably very slightly better than the Belgariad, in that it is mildly less racist (half the cultures written off as One Hundred Percent Evil in the last book get one sympathetic representative this time around! though I'm not sure the King of the Murgos counts when he's literally only likeable because he's secretly illegitimate and half from a Traditionally Good Culture, thus dodging the Hereditary Evil bullet! oh boy) and also several of the new characters are better than the old characters. However, it also loses some points against the original, for the following:
- I'm not sure I have made it clear enough how much the Eddingses revel in the fact that they are really just writing the same book series, all over again, and getting paid lots of money for it? The entire last book is just a long sequence of Garion running into NPCs and thinking profound thooughts about how much they resemble the last round of NPCs from the first series, because the Eddingses have a pallet of maybe five stock characters to choose from and they have just decided to act like this is a feature rather than a bug. One does respect the chutzpah!
- there's a sequence in the third book in which a deadly plague breaks out. Our Heroes, who are currently prisoners of 'Zakath, advise 'Zakath that for the good of his realm he must immediately impose an quarantine on the city. "At least 50% of the people trapped here will die," they explain, sympathetically, "but this is the way it's got to be! For the greater good!"
Then they decide ... to take advantage of the fact that 'Zakath is distracted by the quarantine ... to sneak out of town and continue their quest ...
I read this book back in December 2019 and our protags blithely breaking quarantine made me angrier than literally anything else in the series. Shockingly, I don't feel better about it now!
- ok, let me just share this bit of Garion dialogue, from the buildup to the end of the quest:
"We -- and Zandramas, of course -- have been trying to find Korim and to keep the other side from finding out where it is so that we can win by default. It was never going to happen that way, though. The meeting absolutely has to take place before Cyradis can choose. The prophecies weren't going to let it happen any other way. Both sides have wasted a great deal of effort trying to do something that simply could not be done. We should all have realized that from the very beginning. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble."
David Eddings, I knew, I knew that this whole FIVE BOOK SERIES was a lot of pointless water-treading for no actual purpose, but did you -- did you really just have to come out and say it? Did you have to make us both look like fools that way, David and Leigh Eddings??
(Yeah. I know you did. I brought this fully on myself.)
sandrylene could be arranged to complete my self-assigned labors. What I remembered about The Mallorean, from my childhood, is that it was more or less The Belgariad all over again except a little bit better and funnier. Also, that 'Zakath the mildly reformed sociopathic emperor and Cyradis the eternally obfuscating blind seer had a beautiful romance that Teen Becca cared about very, very deeply.
Here, now, in the year 2020, I bring the sad tidings that 'Zakath/Cyradis is extremely boring and reads exactly like every other destined David Eddings romance, which is to say it has not a single thing to do with either party's personality and involves a lot of fairly tired sexist jokes.
Instead, the ONLY Mallorean relationship I care about, here in this year 2020, is Sadi (the manipulative eunuch from the Culture of Drugs, Snakes and Sensuality that is Definitely Not a Racist Caricature) and Liselle (the Beautiful Undercover Spy from the Culture Where Everyone Is Spies) coparenting a tiny adorable poisonous snake and her newborn even tinier snake babies!!! I'm VERY invested in this. I absolutely reject the canonical ending that Sadi and his snake family end up in a different country from Liselle at the end of the book. Family is important! Liselle and this snake are bonded, you can't separate them now!
(Liselle/Sadi is not a canonical romance, because David Eddings does not think eunuchs can have romance. Liselle is instead the canonical romance for Silk, the original Spy From the Culture Where Everyone Is Spies; as you might be able to guess, she's exactly like him, but female and half his age. This is a little disquieting but also still gives them more to build a relationship on than literally any other canonical Eddings couple, and therefore as a result I will graciously allow Silk to make a triad with Liselle and Sadi if he wishes, but only on the condition that he act as equal coparent to the poisonous snake.)
Anyway. In other thoughts, the Mallorean is probably very slightly better than the Belgariad, in that it is mildly less racist (half the cultures written off as One Hundred Percent Evil in the last book get one sympathetic representative this time around! though I'm not sure the King of the Murgos counts when he's literally only likeable because he's secretly illegitimate and half from a Traditionally Good Culture, thus dodging the Hereditary Evil bullet! oh boy) and also several of the new characters are better than the old characters. However, it also loses some points against the original, for the following:
- I'm not sure I have made it clear enough how much the Eddingses revel in the fact that they are really just writing the same book series, all over again, and getting paid lots of money for it? The entire last book is just a long sequence of Garion running into NPCs and thinking profound thooughts about how much they resemble the last round of NPCs from the first series, because the Eddingses have a pallet of maybe five stock characters to choose from and they have just decided to act like this is a feature rather than a bug. One does respect the chutzpah!
- there's a sequence in the third book in which a deadly plague breaks out. Our Heroes, who are currently prisoners of 'Zakath, advise 'Zakath that for the good of his realm he must immediately impose an quarantine on the city. "At least 50% of the people trapped here will die," they explain, sympathetically, "but this is the way it's got to be! For the greater good!"
Then they decide ... to take advantage of the fact that 'Zakath is distracted by the quarantine ... to sneak out of town and continue their quest ...
I read this book back in December 2019 and our protags blithely breaking quarantine made me angrier than literally anything else in the series. Shockingly, I don't feel better about it now!
- ok, let me just share this bit of Garion dialogue, from the buildup to the end of the quest:
"We -- and Zandramas, of course -- have been trying to find Korim and to keep the other side from finding out where it is so that we can win by default. It was never going to happen that way, though. The meeting absolutely has to take place before Cyradis can choose. The prophecies weren't going to let it happen any other way. Both sides have wasted a great deal of effort trying to do something that simply could not be done. We should all have realized that from the very beginning. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble."
David Eddings, I knew, I knew that this whole FIVE BOOK SERIES was a lot of pointless water-treading for no actual purpose, but did you -- did you really just have to come out and say it? Did you have to make us both look like fools that way, David and Leigh Eddings??
(Yeah. I know you did. I brought this fully on myself.)
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 03:25 am (UTC)But their dialogue is so darn catchy.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 03:30 am (UTC)Please write this fic. I do not remember having any particular feelings about Liselle, I suspect because so much of her plot was tied up in being a love interest for Silk, but I am deeply fond of Sadi and I had forgotten that Zith bonded with Liselle, so now I'm here for it.
though I'm not sure the King of the Murgos counts when he's literally only likeable because he's secretly illegitimate and half from a Traditionally Good Culture, thus dodging the Hereditary Evil bullet! oh boy
Hey! I liked him because he canonically looks like a ferret and is nervous and sarcastic and kind of crap at being a king!
Then they decide ... to take advantage of the fact that 'Zakath is distracted by the quarantine ... to sneak out of town and continue their quest ...
Oh, yeah, that did happen, that was terrible.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 12:55 pm (UTC)Also: okay, that's very fair, there are lots of reasons he is likeable; what I meant to say was that, in a Doylian sense, the Eddingses only allow him to be likeable, in their writing, because he's half Drasnian and dodged the Hereditary Evil bullet .... couldn't be that sometimes people are just different from their abusive parents!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 07:44 pm (UTC)She spies and she likes snakes! That's two more personality characteristics than most Eddings women get beyond romance!
in a Doylian sense, the Eddingses only allow him to be likeable, in their writing, because he's half Drasnian and dodged the Hereditary Evil bullet .... couldn't be that sometimes people are just different from their abusive parents!
No, that's fair, Doylistically it is a complete cop-out. I understand the hereditary madness of the Urga dynasty came built-in from the Belgariad, but if they really needed to get Urgit out of it with genetics rather than inherited patterns of abusive family which, indeed, people sometimes break out of, he could just have been Oskatat's son.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:08 am (UTC)(The fact that the Eddingses did not think eunuchs can have romance is probably why Sadi/Liselle is comparatively interesting! I still remember him complaining about her seducing his snake.)
I think the King of the Murgos had a sympathetic mom and... general? stepfather-candidate? Who are both sympathetic for reasons unrelated to secretly being Silk's half-brother or whatever. Mostly unrelated, I mean, since the mom did obviously sleep with a Good Foreigner.
As a teenager I thought breaking quarantine to run away from Zakath was a dick move. I feel, um, more strongly these days.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 07:39 am (UTC)The Lady Tamazin and the Seneschal Oskatat. I can't remember if they actually marry by the end of the series, but I am also here for their years-in-the-slow-burn later-life romance.
There's also Prala of the House of Cthan, who becomes Urgit's wife, but my recollection is that most of her personality is "going to marry Urgit whether he likes it or not," because Eddings romance.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:01 pm (UTC)They are sympathetic for mostly unrelated reasons, it's true! I only half count the mom, because I believe Angarak women might have been allowed to be Beautiful Sympathetic Victims even in the Belgariad as they operated on different evil danger rules than men, but that may not actually be true; I'm now struggling to think of any examples ...
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 05:54 pm (UTC)I think the only named Angarak woman in the first series was Vella, who had a walk-on to demonstrate Nadrak gender roles and scandalize Garion and that was it. (In the Malloreon... I was not completely onboard with her romance with Beldin, but I remember very little of the usual Designated Eddings Romance stuff? Mostly just "Damnit, I want to be a hawk.")
There is the thing with Thull women constantly getting pregnant to be temporarily safe from human sacrifice, but the Thulls are generally allowed to be... not characters at all, but definitely victims. Their situation is horrific and the characters occasionally even think enough about them to recognize this. (I remember a thing about Thulls surrendering to Ce'nedra's army because hey, no human sacrifice there, and do not remember what happened to them after that army inevitably left.)
no subject
Date: 2020-08-23 03:51 am (UTC)God, the whole treatment of the Thulls is SO awful and the way it's a running joke more than anything else is even worse. :(((
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 07:48 am (UTC)Didn't care for Liselle/Silk, because younger woman/older man romances never quite appealed to young merit. Also, after Liselle and the snake fulfilled their plot function, Eddings dropped any sort of character arc (characters developing? in an Eddings book??) or plot significance for her. Up for Liselle/Sadi and their snake family!
'Zakath/Cyradis could have been interesting. Could have. But tee hee women love baths I guess.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:10 pm (UTC)TEE HEE WOMEN LOVE BATHS >:(
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:48 pm (UTC)From Wikipedia: "The couple adopted one boy in 1966, Scott David.[9][10] They adopted a younger girl between 1966 and 1969.[10] In 1969 they lost custody of both children and each were sentenced to a year in jail from separate trials after pleading guilty to child abuse.[11][12] Though the nature of the abuse, the trial and the sentencing were all extensively reported in North Dakota newspapers at the time, these details did not resurface during their successful joint career as fantasy authors, only coming to light several years after both had died."
No details are in the Wiki article, you have to click through the links, which are, naturally, disturbing.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 06:35 pm (UTC)I'm surprised it didn't come out in the wake of Marion Zimmer Bradley!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-24 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-30 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 06:26 pm (UTC)I had no idea and I am not happy to hear it.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 11:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:31 pm (UTC)I will graciously allow Silk to make a triad with Liselle and Sadi if he wishes, but only on the condition that he act as equal coparent to the poisonous snake.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 03:41 pm (UTC)Sadi/Liselle and Sadi/Liselle/Silk both sound delightful, and I'm sad that I can't read about them and their snakebabies/snakegrandbabies.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 07:00 pm (UTC)Rekhmire' in Mary Gentle's Ilario: The Lion's Eye (2006) is a well-written major character and also the romantic hero of the narrative, but I had other problems with that book.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-23 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-23 06:59 am (UTC)Rekhmire' is a wonderful character: he is a royal book-buyer for the Library of Alexandria-in-Exile, an occupation which entails a great deal of travel, diplomacy, and visiting other archives; he is also an intelligence agent, which goes so much without saying that it is a non-revelation when he actually admits it. He is built like a brick shithouse and has a lovely deep-chested contralto and is the object of the novel's best line, shouted at battlefield volume across the lagoon of Venice when Ilario's father gets a lot of biology wrong: "How dare you get my son PREGNANT!" I wound up saying to people that I wanted more novels with non-binary protagonists and their genderqueer lovers, just minus, indeed, the crippling misogyny. I bet I could find novels like that now.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-29 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-27 09:54 am (UTC)The novella's a sequel to Penric's Misson and Mira's Last Dance, but I think it stands alone OK.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 06:32 pm (UTC)Based on your write-ups, I have a feeling I also noticed that the characters didn't act appreciably different from how they had in The Belgariad, when I would have expected significant maturation in the ones who had been teens in that series. And flaws I could forgive fellow teens were not, I found, things about which I was as understanding in adults. As I recall, I also thought everybody was just a bit more thoughtless and callous, using destiny or the prophecy as excuses for some horrible behavior. I think that might have been the evolution of my preference for characters who gave destiny the finger and acted instead according to the dictates of well-developed consciences.
I also remember a disinterest in all the romances, but especially Velvet/Silk. It skirted what I didn't know to call a trigger at the time. Meanwhile, I was beginning to realize there was no there there with everybody else, because I think my ratio of good books to bad—at least in terms of relationship dynamics and chemistry—had begun to tilt toward good, making the remaining bad more noticeable.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:45 pm (UTC)Also you are absolutely correct that not a single character actually develops between the course of the two different series.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-29 01:52 pm (UTC)Instead, the ONLY Mallorean relationship I care about, here in this year 2020, is Sadi (the manipulative eunuch from the Culture of Drugs, Snakes and Sensuality that is Definitely Not a Racist Caricature) and Liselle (the Beautiful Undercover Spy from the Culture Where Everyone Is Spies) coparenting a tiny adorable poisonous snake and her newborn even tinier snake babies!!! I'm VERY invested in this. I absolutely reject the canonical ending that Sadi and his snake family end up in a different country from Liselle at the end of the book. Family is important! Liselle and this snake are bonded, you can't separate them now!
I would read an entire book about a manipulative eunuch and a spy co-parenting venemous bby sneks. Possibly an entire trilogy.