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Sep. 3rd, 2017 12:46 pmFor 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??)
( Spoilers: Baby Anthropologist Aaron Spenser was just Too Handsome not to impact the culture he was studying )
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.
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??)
( Spoilers: Baby Anthropologist Aaron Spenser was just Too Handsome not to impact the culture he was studying )
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.
