True Game and Chronicles of Prydaine

[samvara]

King's Blood Four, Necromancer Nine, Wizard's Eleven, The Song of Mavin Manyshaped, The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped, The Search for Mavin Manyshaped, Jinian Footseer, Dervish Daughter and Jinian Star-Eye by Sheri Tepper. Re-reading for comfort. There are a lot of ideas I like in these earlier books and I like reading books about women and their choices. I was particularly struck by Mavin explaining rape to Mertyn and how she covered some of the complexity of the social dynamic.

When she had done, he whispered, "You know, the boys … they say … the ones like Leggy and Janjiver … they say the girls like it. That's what they say. They say that the girls may say no, but they really like it."

Mavin thought a time. "Mertyn child, you like sweet cakes, don't you?"

He nodded, cocking his head at this change of subject.

"Let us suppose I put a basket of sweet cakes here, a big one, and I held your mouth open and I crumbled a cake into your mouth and pushed it down your throat with a piece of wood, the way the crones push corn down the goose's neck to fatten it, so that your throat bled and you choked and gasped, but I went on pushing the crumbled cakes down your throat until they were gone. You could not chew them, or taste them. When I was done and your throat was full of blood and you half dead from it all, I would take the stick away and laugh at you and tell you I would be back on the morrow to do it all again. Then, suppose you came crying to someone and that someone said, 'But Mertyn, you like sweet cakes, you really like sweet cakes … ' "

The Song of Mavin Manyshaped

The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer and The High King by Lloyd Alexander. Re-reading also for comfort, my brain is tired. Gentle, heroic and probably very good for young-ish boys. Darn, this was one of the series I loved when I was a child and now I read it and it still has many fine qualities but it’s so obviously a story about boys, as if their story is the only one worth telling.

Comments

[callistra]

That is beautiful writing and vision.

[delicious_irony]

I have always loved Sheri S Tepper's writing.