Kathleen Jennings’ excellent Dalek game continues apace, and she recently produced a new favourite for me – daleks rocking the romanpunk with an I, Claudius parody.

An eye-opening post about the kind of hardcore harassment experienced by women in tech industries, and those who blog about geek feminism.

Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray calls bullshit about the troubling behaviour of Amazon as they launch their new publishing imprints, and how the spin that publishers are “running scared” of Amazon’s attempt at a publishing monopoly serve to underplay some of the important author rights that are being eroded, and deliberately left out of the equation.

Sarah Rees Brennan goes Gothic, and talks about how she stopped worrying and learned to love the spooky houses, plucky protagonists and turns her inimitable parody summary style on Gothic classic novel The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe.

YOUR BOYFRIEND: is tall, dark, sinister, looming, maybe trying to kill you, definitely has secrets
YOUR BOYFRIEND: is a house, which is just another of many problems in your relationship

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Day 22 – Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)

Oh, I do love me some platonics!

There are three kinds of relationship that really draw me into a story.

1) Siblings. I am just crazy about awesome sibling relationships in fiction – possibly because I never had a sibling myself, growing up. I never especially wanted one, but I loved reading about them in books. The Melendys from The Saturdays and other books are probably my favourites from childhood, a bunch of creative and very different kids who nonetheless genuinely enjoyed hanging out with each other. More recently I fell hard for Scarlett and her sibs in Maureen Johnson’s Suite Scarlett series. My favourite kind of sibling relationships in fiction are the ones where there is a balance of friendship and love and tensions, because of course that’s a lot more interesting than the ones who just pal around with no spiky bits.

I recently read ‘Are We There Yet’ by David Levithan, which I have been meaning to blog review for ages (along with a bunch of other books!) – the brother relationship in that book is astounding. It’s about two young men 7 years apart who have grown apart in recent years. Elijah is 17-18 and has just left school, and Danny is wrapped up in the world of the workforce. They have no trauma in their history, no big fight, they just stopped getting each other a while ago, and pretty much stopped talking. Their parents, worried about their relationship, trick them into taking a 9 day holiday in Italy to sort themselves out. I really loved reading about these brothers, and how easily they had fallen out of the habit of liking each other, and how different they thought they were, and how badly they failed to understand how the other thought. It’s a really gorgeous story which feels realistic rather than sappy, plus ITALY.

2) Just friends, no, seriously. It’s possible. There’s something really seductive for me in fiction which is about two people of the opposite gender (or of corresponding sexualities) who COULD hook up, but don’t. And in fact don’t actually fancy each other at all. It’s incredibly rare, but I love it when it’s well done. Heh of course I used to ship the two platonic friend characters LIKE CRAZY but now I appreciate the lack of sexual interest. Because you know, the world is not When Harry Met Sally, and it’s entirely possible to be friends with someone of the corresponding sexuality without fancying them.

After being all inclusive and all, the examples that come to mind are all het and girl-boy. I’m thinking about Gracie and Flemming from the Gracie Faltrain books, Alanna and Gary from Tamora Pierce, and Mara and Arakasi from the Daughter of the Empire books. My best example, though, is probably Anita Blake and Edward. From Book 1, Edward was the guy I was most interested in from the Anita Blake books, and while in my teens I shipped those two quite desperately, now I can really appreciate the fact that they don’t find each other attractive, and that he’s the one she hasn’t gone there with.

There’s a scene in (I think) Guilty Pleasures where Anita has been bitten and she needs Edward to help her cleanse the wounds with holy water. It hurts like hell, she’s in pain and vulnerable and I think probably naked, and he helps her with cool detachment, as he would help any comrade. The guy who we first saw threatening to kill her if she didn’t hand over the information he wanted, is also her best and most trusted friend in that circumstance. I love the fact that these two have always been comrades, always have each other’s back, and don’t actually think about each other naked.

I want to find some examples of gay characters who have similar relationships, but it’s so rare to find books with more than one gay character! The best example I can think of right now are T.C and Augie from My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger – they are best friends, and Augie is gay (though he doesn’t know it yet – everyone else does) and they completely love each other, having decided when they were kids that they were brothers. Maybe this fits more in the siblings section! (and PS Kaia, Augie may be the gay best friend, but he’s one of 3 protags in this book, not a supporting character, hooray. Did I mention you need to read this book?)

c) GIRLPOWER Nothing like the girl best friends, or gang of girls, who are actually good to each other instead of tearing each other down. My favourite recent example of this is Astrid and her fellow unicorn hunters in Rampant by Diana Peterfreund, particularly Phil (who I completely forgot to add to my list of favourite fictional characters EVER). Princess Mia and Tina in the Princess Diaries books also get a mention, but there are zillions of great ones out there.

And yes, these three kinds of relationships are particularly prevalent in YA fiction. Which explains a lot about why I like it so much.

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Day 15 – Your “comfort” book

It’s probably time that I talked about Tamora Pierce, and the Tortall books. I discovered Alanna of Trebond at the perfect time – my early teens – with the second book of four. I have read every book Tamora Pierce has written since. One of my favourite comfort reading routines was to read through all the Alanna books, then the Daine books, and finally the Kel books. Each heroine is my favourite, when I am reading her.

When I’m not actually reading the Alanna books, it’s easy to be critical of her. There’s something about an author’s first hero – and I did this too – that tends to smack of self-indulgence. She’s a teenager with red hair and purple eyes who becomes a knight AND has magic AND has all the boys in love with her AND has a cat who talks to her. We should all be hating her and hurling Mary Sue accusations in her general direction…

And yet.

There is so much brilliance in these books. Long before YA fantasy became the powerhouse genre it now is, Tamora Pierce was writing about these amazing, capable young women who blew the expectations of female roles in fantasy fiction out of the water. And every time I go back to them, I remember just what made Alanna great.

(some spoilers below)
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For some reason I thought that the Small Beer Press edition of The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner was an older, “classic” fantasy novel, reprinted in a pretty edition for the sake of posterity. It turns out that I was wrong – this novel was published for the first time in 2006, in this special hardback edition simultaneously with a paperback release by Bantam Spectra. My misapprehension comes from this being a sequel and indeed a prequel to previous books in the same setting, featuring many of the same characters – so it’s still a fairly new book, but part of a set of books I have heard about for many years prior.

I have not read Swordspoint (1987), the book about swordsman Richard St. Vier – it’s one I bounced off when I tried it a couple of years ago, and now can’t wait to get back to. Neither have I read The Fall of the Kings (2002) by Kushner and Delia Sherman, set after this volume. I have read one short story of Richard’s childhood, published last year, which I loved.

As, indeed, I loved The Privilege of the Sword. This is a masterfully written novel that turns out to be not a fantasy at all, but a swashbuckling historical from another world. There are point where it feels very much like a book between other books – references to events from the past not quite relevant to this story, and at least one major plot twist that disappears into the aether, without revelation or resolution.

This is an epic, complex and rich woman’s coming of age story such as rarely appears in genre fiction. (more…)

For the record, I didn’t intend for yesterday’s post to be particularly negative! I was hoping for more evidence that there were in fact whole slews of fantasy fiction which centres around more than one female character, and their interactions. Thanks to comments here and on LJ, I have a few more to add to the list:

Thoraiya Dyer reminded me that while big chunks of the Mists of Avalon are about Morgaine-Arthur-Lancelot-Gwenhyfar with the women being the only ones not really having a relationship, Morgaine does have relationships with Viviane and Morgause and basically the whole book is about women talking to each other. Sometimes not even about men. Which is true, and my only excuse for not remembering is that I read it in my teens and the book represents my first ever literary experience with an Arthurian threesome.

[in addition I'd like to shout out to Merlin, which looks on the surface to be a Boys Own show but does have Gwen and Morgana who are, though very very divergent from the traditional versions of said characters, are at least two girls who talk to each other, and this is much better than poor old Marian in Robin Hood who was only allowed to talk to smelly men in armour. I haven't got to see the second season yet but I just read Sarah Rees Brennan's summary about sensible girls and the romantic boys who love them, and sadly it looks like there isn't nearly enough Morgana in season 2...]

This discussion of Mists of Avalon reminded me of The Firebrand, which I think is a magnificent and much better book than MoA (basically does everything Bradley did in MoA but with TROY which is infinitely cooler than the Arthurian cycle imho) which gave me Kassandra and Andromache and Hekuba and Amazons and the wimpiest most annoying Paris ever and is basically awesome and stacked with womenfolk.

Rowan mentioned The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey, which features two women from widely different backgrounds who become blood sisters, work together in everything and generally appear on the covers together. Mercedes Lackey! I definitely should have remembered her, and it makes me sad that I didn’t read enough of her books in my teens when I think they would have been at their best. I have quite liked her recent fairy tale books especially The Fairy Godmother.
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I’ve had a tab open to this post by Jim C Hines on Girly Books and gender stereotyping all week, pretty sure that I wanted to say something about it, but not sure what.

I understand his bafflement at male readers being hesitant to pick up his new books, the ones with girls on the cover. I remember the almost physical blow I felt the first time an acquaintance told me to my face that he wasn’t going to read my books because he didn’t read anything with female protagonists. (ten years later I’m still going, seriously? Seriously?)

Looking at Hines’ covers, which are gorgeous, it occurs to me how unusual they are in the fantasy genre. Having a female character on the cover, even a female and no male character, is not that unusual – but three women, with no man in sight? I can’t think of another fantasy cover ever that has had such a composition.

Fantasy fiction is not short of female characters, even memorable and important female characters, but it’s hard to escape the fact that so many of the sourceworks, the deeply respected historical texts that helped to form people’s idea of fantasy fiction, tend to place female characters in a vacuum.

From fairy tales through the pulp stories and Tolkien to the epic fantasies of the 1980′s – whether women are crunchy protagonists and point-of-view characters or cardboard love-interests and prizes, what they most have in common is feminine isolation. The princess’s most important relationship is with her potential prince, and her value is often calculated on how well she gets along with male characters. Often this is well meaning – an awesome female character stands out very effectively when surrounded by blokes. Also her awesomeness is often created by an unflattering contrast with other women – she is special, they are drips.

(I do this too, I’m horrified to realise, most of my female relationships in novels are based on conflict, and the best friendships represented are male-female)

These traditions bleed through to modern storytelling, and I can think of so few examples of fantasy fiction which has an emphasis on family or friendship relationships or even teamwork between women. I have to admit, when I first heard about Hines’ Stepsister Scheme my first thoughts were very cynical, that the idea of fairy tale princesses ganging up together and kicking arse/fighting crime was a bit of an old cliche. But thinking about it again – no, it isn’t. It’s horribly original. There just aren’t that many fantasy stories out there that are predominantly about women – and women plural, not just one really great woman.
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 tammy212 sums up some of the reaction to the recent all-male top 10 by Publisher’s Weekly, and adds some thoughts of her own on the glorification of Great Male Writers.