The stories that stay

[dolorosa_12]

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 19: Still can't stop talking about it

I mean, most of the things I'm fannish about are books, and most of those books are old! In the case of some of my most beloved fandoms of the heart, I've been thinking and talking about those books for close to twenty-five years, and show no signs of stopping. I posted a not completely exhaustive list at the last friending meme I ran:

I'm both extremely multifannish, but extremely loyal to the fandoms in which I'm invested. Most of my fandoms are small, Yuletide-eligible book fandoms: Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and Sally Lockhart Mysteries books, The Pagan Chronicles series by Catherine Jinks, Galax Arena and the Space Demons trilogy by Gillian Rubinstein, pretty much everything Victor Kelleher has ever written, the Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon, the Romanitas trilogy by Sophia McDougall, the books of Kate Elliott, Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows duology, Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle, S. A. Chakraborty's Daevabad series, Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy, The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton, Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver and Uprooted, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and a whole lot of mythology, folk tales and fairytales.

Talk to me about any of those books, and I'll keep talking!


20. Favorite cover.
21. Summer read.
22. Out of print.
23. Made to read at school.
24. Hooked me into reading.
25. Never finished it.
26. Should have sold more copies.
27. Want to be one of the characters.
28. Bought at my fave independent bookshop.
29. The one I have reread most often.
30. Would save if my house burned down.

Comments

[orcofnewyork]

I still remember picking up the first His Dark Materials book at a book fair the year it was first published in America and I have that copy to this day. Do you have a favorite scene in the series? Are there any concepts from the series you enjoy seeing as a fusion elements in fic like daemons or the subtle knife?

Please, please, please sell me on the rest of the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliott! The first book I wanted to love so badly and many parts I really did, but the mixed black heroine experiencing most of the book in slavery and raped left me so uncomfortable (especially since the world wasn't our world and had no historical basis for that trope of black female suffering plus I'm a bookish mixed black reader myself). But I loved the world and I want to see how things shake out! But none of my other friends have read it so I have no one to say "don't worry, keep going, it gets amazing." (Please don't take this as a criticism of Elliott, I know the series is old and the awareness and culture of writing POC characters was very different than it is today!) Sell me! I want to embrace the rest of the world! <3

I could talk Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell for HOURS! It's definitely in my top five desert island books.

[dolorosa_12]

I have a couple of favourite scenes in the His Dark Materials books — all those in the first book that involve Lyra travelling to the North, the different communities she meets and interacts with, and in particular all the instances where she's travelling through those harsh landscapes, under the beautiful aurora, listening to people talk about multiverses, dæmons, philosophy and so on. I also love her and Will's descent to the land of the dead — heartbreaking, and painful, and powerful — and the final chapters in the land of the mulefa, when Lyra is 'tempted' by Mary's story, and she and Will come of age.

I'm not a fan of crossovers or fusions and particularly dislike dæmon AUs, especially since they're often mistagged as HDM fic, but I know they're very popular in fandom.

Now, when it comes to Crown of Stars, bear in mind that I have only read the series once, and that was over fifteen years ago. It's not my favourite of Elliott's works, although I still enjoyed reading it. You're right to note that the framing of Liath's story is troubling, and I can certainly see why it would be painful for you to read (and I've always found it the most illogical part of the worldbuilding — the series is meant to be set in a matriarchy, and yet the only described instance of rape and abuse is by a man against a woman. I think Elliott was trying to make a point about abuse victims not being believed if their abusers held societal power and privilege, and slavery being a context in which consent is, anyway, impossible, but I can also see that it's troubling that she would choose the sole mixed, and black, character in the series to do so). If I recall correctly, Liath's fortunes do pick up later in the series, and her story has a happy ending, but I'm not sure it's worth ploughing through seven very long books just to get to that point.

All Elliott's works are secondary world fantasy, and all of her heroines are women of colour. In some of her imagined worlds, this means they experience discrimination and structural racism of a similar kind to that in our world (Court of Fives is based on Ptolemaic Egypt, and looks at issues of colonialism, although it ends in a successful revolution lead by the (black) mother of the series' heroine), whereas in others pretty much everyone is a person of colour and so the racism of our own world isn't mapped onto the experiences of the books' characters (this is the case for the Crossroads trilogy, and the Spiritwalker books). I'm not of the opinion that white authors should never write from the perspective of characters of colour — particularly in a secondary-world setting — but I leave it up to you as to whether you consider this to be a dealbreaker.