(no subject)

[skygiants]

Yesterday I met up with a friend of mine to talk about Nicola Griffith's Menewood, the second book in her epic historical fiction saga about St. Hild of Whitby.

I had been vaguely meaning to read this since it came out, but I also vaguely wanted to reread Hild, the first book before I did, and since Hild is 640 pages long and Menewood is 670 pages long that meant that in practice that I was not actually getting around to prioritizing either of them on my reading list until my friend gave me a concrete deadline. Given said deadline, I did not reread Hild. My memory of what happens in that book comprised a lot of vibes and exactly two concrete facts: a.) Hild has a complicated lesbian relationship with her maidservant and b.) Hild ends up romancing her secret half-brother.

I did also consult my untrustworthy externalized memory, Becca of 2014. Becca of 2014 absolutely can't be relied upon to either provide useful concrete spoilers or to have opinions that I still agree with; that said having now read Menewood, the old post is a reasonable summary of the Kind of Book that Hild and Menewood both are, i.e. among other things the kind that has an eight-page cast list in the front. Given which, I didn't actually find myself struggling that much with not having reread Hild; yes, there were some characters that I should have remembered from the previous book and did not, but equally frequently there was a character that I should have remembered from the previous scene and did not, and that was fine, because there were about sixty other characters to pay attention to and about twenty of them were people whose names I could consistently remember and whose plotlines I was emotionally invested in and broadly speaking I think that's just how a book of this nature goes.

Anyway. The thing that Hild did very well and that Menewood also continues to do very well is drawing a believable, compelling, immersive medieval world. The book is really interested in and thoughtful about material culture, how things get made and where things come from and what you need them for -- there's a big part of the book that honestly feels a little bit to me like watching Hild play a resource management sim, but I don't mean that in a derogatory way, it's a really well-developed and beautifully written seventh century resource management sim!

I should probably take a lesson from 2014 Becca and provide some more descriptions of plot points here to help guide me if a third book drops in 2034 or so. On the other hand, in 2024, will I really need to know the details of the plot .... there's a complex gameboard, and it's constantly shifting, and Hild is positioning herself within it to keep her people safe; the various little moves are less important than the textural experience of the whole. I did accidentally spoil myself for broad shape of the book before I read it and I rather wish I hadn't, though I do think it is a very bold choice to seed the looming threat of Incest Marriage Discovery throughout the whole front half of the book and then kill off both Cian and their baby in completely unrelated events before Chekhov's Incest Gun ever goes off ... have been trying to decide how I feel about that narratively and I think I have come down on 'respect'. Anyway, I also think I probably would have been hit harder by the way everything goes to shit in the middle of the book if I hadn't known it was coming, but I do think the portrait of grief and recovery is really nicely done, the way that the people she has left are just responsibilities to be resented at first, but that's enough to keep her in the world until she's healed enough to remember how to feel something genuine for other people again for their own sake.

There were only two moments that threw me out of the text completely, which frankly is not bad for a 675 page book. The first is when Hild's formerly-enslaved former-maidservant Gwladus pulls out three boxes of Hild's jewelry and Hild realizes that Gwladus' work has been so invisible to her that she doesn't actually know how much jewelry she has -- the evolving arc of Hild and Gwladus' dynamic is probably one of the most important in the book and for the most part I really like it, but I simply do not believe that Hild has not factored her THREE BOXES OF GOLD JEWELRY into the otherwise carefully detailed resource management sim of ensuring that her land and people survive the major challenges of this period of the book.

The second is when Hild's people are boasting about her to new recruits and one of them says "Cath Llew [one of Hild's many names] doesn't sleep, she waits."

Comments

[sovay]

The second is when Hild's people are boasting about her to new recruits and one of them says "Cath Llew [one of Hild's many names] doesn't sleep, she waits."

Is this a meme?

[skygiants]

It is, to be specific, one of the most classic Chuck Norris jokes, to provide some more context for why hitting this line felt like Chuck Norris' own fist had just reached through the page and punted me twenty years into the past.

[newredshoes]

I am dutifully not looking at the spoilers, but I remember Hild also had two moments that deeply threw me out of the text, which was notable, because the rest of it was so invisible-seams! (One was supposing that "Do Your Ears Hang Low?" existed in 7th-century Britain, and the other was just straight up a Margaret Atwood quote. Nicola Griffith anxiously emailed me after I tweeted about it!)

[skygiants]

adjf;kdj I do not remember EITHER of these (not that I would have recognized the Margaret Atwood quote if I'd found it) but having found the Chuck Norris jokes I'll believe absolutely anything could be hidden in those tomes!

[shadaras]

I gotta get to reading Menewood! I think I have had the same vague thought and blockage about it you did. xD Glad to hear that just jumping into Menewood should work fine.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I thought it was pretty workable! I hope it holds the same for you. :D

[luzula]

I had been vaguely meaning to read this since it came out, but I also vaguely wanted to reread Hild, the first book before I did, and since Hild is 640 pages long and Menewood is 670 pages long that meant that in practice that I was not actually getting around to prioritizing either of them on my reading list
Exactly my feelings.

there's a big part of the book that honestly feels a little bit to me like watching Hild play a resource management sim, but I don't mean that in a derogatory way, it's a really well-developed and beautifully written seventh century resource management sim!
Oooh, I think I'll enjoy that.

[skygiants]

Honestly it's very satisfying to read!

[ursula]

Thanks for mentioning Chekhov's Spoiler! I have been somewhat mystified about the way people rave about this series without discussing this plot point (in contrast to, say, Under the Pendulum Sun, where I feel like every review included a warning for the protagonist's relationship with her brother, while glossing over the shocking murder of a sympathetic character).

[osprey_archer]

I somehow managed to read Under the Pendulum Sun without reading any reviews that mentioned the incest, but the book does announce it in bright blinking lights from their very first Jane Eyre riff of a meeting. "Why is the main character meeting her brother in this very romantic... oh no," I said.

I haven't read Hild but hitherto all the Hild reviews I had read raved about the f/f and did not mention the m/f incest at all.

[ursula]

Meanwhile, I read half of Mitchison's The Conquered on Sunday, and though it does not contain any incest, I do wonder now whether that subplot in Hild was a direct literary allusion.

[luzula]

Oh, interesting--did you also get incest vibes from The Conquered, even if there's no actual incest?

[ursula]

I did! That's partly because "I love my sibling so much I could never think of marriage" is a motif that has now gone out of fashion. And yet.

[skygiants]

I think maybe the difference is that Under the Pendulum Sun is really, really thematically interested in the incest -- the point of the book is the incest in a very real way, for better or worse -- whereas in Hild/Menewood it really doesn't ... seem to resonate with very much of what the book is interested in, to the point where a.) it's shockingly easy to mentally edit it out and b.) I am desperate to figure out what I'm missing as to why it's in. It truly affects the plot in only the most minimal way, and the characters likewise, so why the choice to do it at all? What is the book trying to say with it?

(JUSTICE FOR ARIEL DAVENPORT!)

[ursula]

In both The Conquered and Sutcliff's The Lantern Bearers there's a thing where a brother and tomboyish sister have a very close relationship, but the sister's life is destroyed/upended by conquest and this serves primarily as a motivation for the brother. This makes me wonder if there are several more variations on this theme in historical novels about early Britain (or Brittany, I guess) that I haven't read? And if Hild and Menewood were initially plotted with the thought of "Let's make the subtext of these overly intense sibling relationships into text, but emphasize the way the woman's life keeps on going after conquest"???

(ARIEL DAVENPORT FOREVER!!!)

[bloodygranuaile]

My memory may be faulty but I feel like Hild came out at a time where there was a whole mini-trend of incest stories. The Game of Thrones TV show started in 2011 and was still in full swing in 2014; Crimson Peak was 2015; The Borgias was 2011-2013; the Mortal Instruments: City of Bones movie was 2013; I am sure there were others I am forgetting. But the early 2010s were a weird time for Hot Sibling-On-Sibling Action in pop culture.

[whimsyful]

I had been vaguely meaning to read this since it came out, but I also vaguely wanted to reread Hild, the first book before I did, and since Hild is 640 pages long and Menewood is 670 pages long that meant that in practice that I was not actually getting around to prioritizing either of them on my reading list.


This is me exactly! It's good to know that you still enjoyed Menewood without rereading Hild first, because I definitely don't remember most of the non-major characters anymore, especially the ones involved in politics, and I got really intimidated when I popped open my copy and was hit with the list of characters (who were Æthelfrith vs Æthelburh and how am I supposed to tell them apart??) But I loved all the stuff about resource management and material culture in Hild, so it's great to hear that continues!

[skygiants]

Honestly a good half of the major characters in Hild don't even show up in Menewood, and occasionally Hild thinks or worries about them and I tap my head sagely and go "ah, that must have been someone important from the last book" and then we all move on with our lives.

[chestnut_pod]

This review has not not convinced me that I must reread Hild before I attempt this book ;-;

[skygiants]

that's so fair ... it's just so long .....

[osprey_archer]

Listen, sometimes you just forget about your three boxes of gold jewelry, could happen to anyone! Although maybe yes it does strain disbelief slightly if you are the... abbess?... um, or whatever Hild is, and otherwise know the exact resources of your domain down to the last goose egg.

Seconding sovay's question about whether "Cath Llew doesn't sleep, she waits" is a meme.

[skygiants]

A chapter or two previous they are having a spirited argument about whether they need to chisel all the jewels out of a saddle they've captured to sell them, or if it's more important to have one (1) impressive saddle for future diplomatic situations -- surely this might be the time to remember that you also have A Certain Amount of Fancy Gold that could be donated to the cause?! And several chapters previous to that she was hiding in the marsh and reminding herself never to take having a nice wooden cup for granted again!

"x doesn't sleep, he waits" is not only a meme, it is a TWENTY YEAR OLD meme. Chuck Norris joke circa TWO THOUSAND AND FIVE.

[osprey_archer]

Can't BELIEVE I forgot that was a Chuck Norris joke, when you couldn't walk around my high school in 2005 without stubbing your toes on a Chuck Norris joke.