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May. 12th, 2024 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsBefore I got derailed by Nebula homework, I was on a project of rereading/reading the whole of Fuyumi Ono's Twelve Kingdoms series (as kicked off by jiggit on tumblr) in order to finally hit the last volume in the series. I have currently gotten through ... two of them. But I do intend to get back to it now!
The first book in the series is Shadow of the Moon, A Sea of Shadows (published in English as The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow but apparently not in print anywhere now? good lord, I own every volume in this series that was published in English and could apparently make a mint if I wanted to sell them). It's a Japanese portal fantasy from before the advent of the word isekai, about a quiet, shy, unhappy girl who gets pulled by a mysterious man into a fantasy world while pursued by monsters, immediately loses said mysterious man, continues being pursued by monsters, and has an incredibly bad time before pulling herself painfully out of the pit of despair and self-loathing and rediscovering who she is as a person, with the eventual help of one (1) trustworthy ally (a hobbit-sized humanoid rat who's facing institutional discrimination at the national exams) (romantic).
Also eventually she learns that she's the magically destined ruler of a country, but in this book that's in many ways a complete afterthought except inasmuch as it forces her to face up against the question "would I literally rather die than take this much responsibility."
The first time I read this book, I was much younger and I identified with Youko to an almost painful degree; honestly a relief to realize how much happier I am with myself as a person now than I was then, an era that simultaneously does not feel that long ago and also feels like a century ago. But this book remains very important to me, and rereading it now was not just an exercise in how much I internalized from it generally but how many worldbuilding elements I have specifically stolen for the current portal fantasy project I'm noodling with that I'd completely forgotten came from 12K first -- the book is so interested in being specific about language and translation and how meaning does and doesn't cross a cultural gap even with a magic translation effect, and it is also really interested in the vast gulf that can exist even between people who have had what seem to be the same experience [portal fantasied against your will into a foreign land] when they come from different backgrounds and starting points, and none of this is the plot per se but in many ways I think it is the point, or at least one of the points. Really interesting, deeply formative book.
Conversely I had never previously read Ono's Demon Child because a.) it's never officially been printed in English and b.) it's technically not part of the series; it's a horror novel about a character who will become a major part of the series, but was written before any of the rest of it existed.
This book is told from the point of view of a young man who was, at one point, an isolated kid who felt like he didn't belong, and now upon returning to school as a student teacher forms a bond with another isolated kid, Takasoto. In the way he interacts with the world, Takasoto is something of a blank slate: easy to project things onto, easy to make assumptions about. At one point in his childhood, he disappeared for a year and returned with no memories of what happened during that time; now he's rumored to be cursed or capable of placing curses -- anyone who injures him or says anything that hurts him, whether accidentally or on purpose, suffers some kind of injury in return. As a result, most of the other students play it safe by just not interacting with him in any way whatsoever.
Eventually, one kid decides to try and prove the curse isn't real, and things start to spiral from there. It's a slow and effective build made more brutal because it kicks off from broadly good intentions, with no easy culprit, but I think my favorite element is the way the book engages with the fantasy of 'this isn't my world/I don't belong in it' via the contrast between Takasoto, who genuinely does not belong in this world, and the people who project things onto him, including and especially the protagonist, who has to live with the reality that you can be just as alienated from a world that you do in fact belong to.
jiggit on tumblr) in order to finally hit the last volume in the series. I have currently gotten through ... two of them. But I do intend to get back to it now! The first book in the series is Shadow of the Moon, A Sea of Shadows (published in English as The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow but apparently not in print anywhere now? good lord, I own every volume in this series that was published in English and could apparently make a mint if I wanted to sell them). It's a Japanese portal fantasy from before the advent of the word isekai, about a quiet, shy, unhappy girl who gets pulled by a mysterious man into a fantasy world while pursued by monsters, immediately loses said mysterious man, continues being pursued by monsters, and has an incredibly bad time before pulling herself painfully out of the pit of despair and self-loathing and rediscovering who she is as a person, with the eventual help of one (1) trustworthy ally (a hobbit-sized humanoid rat who's facing institutional discrimination at the national exams) (romantic).
Also eventually she learns that she's the magically destined ruler of a country, but in this book that's in many ways a complete afterthought except inasmuch as it forces her to face up against the question "would I literally rather die than take this much responsibility."
The first time I read this book, I was much younger and I identified with Youko to an almost painful degree; honestly a relief to realize how much happier I am with myself as a person now than I was then, an era that simultaneously does not feel that long ago and also feels like a century ago. But this book remains very important to me, and rereading it now was not just an exercise in how much I internalized from it generally but how many worldbuilding elements I have specifically stolen for the current portal fantasy project I'm noodling with that I'd completely forgotten came from 12K first -- the book is so interested in being specific about language and translation and how meaning does and doesn't cross a cultural gap even with a magic translation effect, and it is also really interested in the vast gulf that can exist even between people who have had what seem to be the same experience [portal fantasied against your will into a foreign land] when they come from different backgrounds and starting points, and none of this is the plot per se but in many ways I think it is the point, or at least one of the points. Really interesting, deeply formative book.
Conversely I had never previously read Ono's Demon Child because a.) it's never officially been printed in English and b.) it's technically not part of the series; it's a horror novel about a character who will become a major part of the series, but was written before any of the rest of it existed.
This book is told from the point of view of a young man who was, at one point, an isolated kid who felt like he didn't belong, and now upon returning to school as a student teacher forms a bond with another isolated kid, Takasoto. In the way he interacts with the world, Takasoto is something of a blank slate: easy to project things onto, easy to make assumptions about. At one point in his childhood, he disappeared for a year and returned with no memories of what happened during that time; now he's rumored to be cursed or capable of placing curses -- anyone who injures him or says anything that hurts him, whether accidentally or on purpose, suffers some kind of injury in return. As a result, most of the other students play it safe by just not interacting with him in any way whatsoever.
Eventually, one kid decides to try and prove the curse isn't real, and things start to spiral from there. It's a slow and effective build made more brutal because it kicks off from broadly good intentions, with no easy culprit, but I think my favorite element is the way the book engages with the fantasy of 'this isn't my world/I don't belong in it' via the contrast between Takasoto, who genuinely does not belong in this world, and the people who project things onto him, including and especially the protagonist, who has to live with the reality that you can be just as alienated from a world that you do in fact belong to.
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Date: 2024-05-12 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2024-05-12 04:37 pm (UTC)I strongly endorse rereading at least Sea of Wind, Shore of the Labyrinth and The Shore in Twilight, the Sky at Daybreak before reading the final book. I did not do this and regretted it.
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Date: 2024-05-20 09:28 pm (UTC)Unfortunately we needed to make room for a Kid and their concommitant Stuff ...