fierce believers afraid to fall
25 Aug 2009 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouThis is a review for a series I can't review.
The first book came out maybe two years ago, now? And the second book came out last fall, with the third arriving in stores this summer, I think it was. (And if anyone wanted to get me a signed copy of the third book, I might even admit in public that tomorrow's my birthday.) I've re-read the first book twice, and the second book about five times now, maybe six. And I just can't review them. I've tried several times, and I can't.
But the past few weeks while I've been working on a major application, one of my downtime points has been while running errands and listening to the iPod's latest randomness. Somewhere in there, I started thinking about songs that remind me of certain voices. Not stories, mind you, but the voices of the story, the narrative voice, even -- but also the theme, the sense of the story. So the lyrics don't always fit, but something in the music's cadence makes me think of the way a certain person writes. I've been bandying about these odd connections, and one song keeps popping up, and every time, it reminds me of this particular series.
This is the accompanied version, and it's the instrumental aspect that contains a big reason (I suspect) as to why it's so strongly reminiscent for me. (If you want to really hear something amazing, the same song is done a capella, and what looks like rather off-the-cuff and informal, and it's amazing just how powerfully clear her voice is, even in what are probably less than perfect circumstances for singing. I honestly can't think of too many other singers, even among professionals, who could pull something like this out of their hats. Not the best quality -- recorded off a TV, I bet, yet it's still phenomenal.)
I will try to avoid anything really specific as a spoiler (if it comes to that), but on the grounds that getting there is really the heart of it all, there are spoilers in here, but in name only, not spirit. In which, thus introduced, I proceed to turn the literary and philosophical meanderings onto an unsuspecting author (disclaimer: who happens to also be someone I count as a friend, but as an academic, I'm hoping she's relatively immune to such things). So now that you've heard the song that keeps coming back at me, I'll hand over the payoff: talking about Diana P Francis' Crosspointe series.
I'd read Francis' first series (the 'Path' books) and enjoyed them as rollicking good action-fantasy reads, as well as for the growing skill and voice-comfortableness I could see as the series progressed (something I just like to see in authors, is all). And the first Crosspointe book, The Cipher, had a lot of good action-y conflict-y ambiguity and unlikeableness mixed with sympathy that I enjoyed it hugely, and the second book, The Black Ship, took me awhile to get (thanks to idiocy of putting book on 'wish list' and not realizing that was not the 'preorder list', moron) -- but I devoured it when I did, and then I had it for dessert, and once digested, had it all over again. I got to read one of the earliest drafts of the third book, The Turning Tide, and I'm fairly certain the crux of what I'm talking about here does remain, because it's true of the series. (It's just that a lot of the general details about Tide are rumored to have been strongly rearranged and expanded during revision, so I'm fully expecting that it will get hooks in me just as well... ahem, once I can get a copy of it. Yes, I know, bad me.)
But my point here isn't about how distractable I can be when I'm crammed for time with a million projects. My point here is about how that song by Cyndi Lauper is possibly the only way I can review these books. See, when I have a bunch of complaints about a book, it's easy. I can list a hundred things, a thousand things, that leave me dissatisfied, or are incomplete, and I can analyze until thecows dogs come home about What Went Wrong. But when I love a book, it's like words fail me: how can I possibly discriminate what part hit it so right, and so perfectly, and what part was damn-near-perfect, or at least more-perfect-than-most, when the standard by which I judge (as we all judge) 'perfect' is so incredibly personal?
Sometimes it seems almost as though to admit such adoration for a work -- let alone to let it be known -- is to reveal something so deeply personal about oneself. It's an avenue into your heart, I think, when you say, "this book kept me up, and I couldn't even think, because I was so busy just being, just experiencing" -- or whatever paltry words chosen to try and express something indefinable. That is, that moment (or series of moments) when a story exists so truly for you that at points, when reading, you feel like you can't even breathe.
The main player in the series, you might say, is actually the ocean that surrounds the island-based city-state of Crosspointe. It's laden with mystery that can kill you, magic that is anything but benevolent, yet being on an island, this near-sentient, lethal sea is the basis for almost all of Crosspointe's industry, but also its religion, its culture, its ways of thinking and being. There is no "wow, how pretty is the magic!", and after listening to Lauper's song probably about as many times all together as times I'd read the books, I think I got that part figured out.
Some of it's because Lauper's accompaniment reminds me of the droning pipes used for the more dolorous sea chantys (sailors' songs), though what you usually hear in samples are the better-known upbeat foot-stompers. Cape Breton, with its large Welsh/Scottish population, retains a lot of that bagpipe-influence in some of its folk music, and maybe that's where the connection comes from. Because those sea chantys aren't always a merry light-heartedness about going sailing, or the joys of being a fisherman -- there are others than mourn lost ones, and rail against the sun setting on the fishing families tradition, and even raise a fist or two against the merciless ocean itself.
In that music, like in the culture/world of Crosspointe, there's a certain element of being outranked and outflanked, but that exists in plenty of fantasy stories. Hell, plenty of stories in and out of genre, so I figured that couldn't be what kept me from articulating what I love. And then I realized Crosspointe is more like the mournful sunset sea chantys than most fantasy stories, because it contains the same kernel of victory and despair as the sailors' songs: the idea that what's beating you will defeat you, and that you're lost. Francis takes the notion of 'adrift' and turns it literal, in both stories, and there's nothing we could ever experience on this planet that (I think) could make us feel quite so small as that of being adrift on the ocean with no land in sight. Intellectually we know we are tiny against the universe, but our miniscule state -- compared to the vast oceans -- is not intellectual, but absolutely visceral.
And all the same, knowing this, the ships continue to head out into that -- but it's not a battle of wills in the classic story-telling sense, because it's not like the ocean is truly sentient. (And even Francis' ocean is possibly only somewhat sentient, but it hasn't yet risen up as a true protagonist in its own right, at least.) That leaves open the classic 'man against nature', but that doesn't seem right to me, either, which meant I fell way short if I tried to approach the story as a pass/fail against that conflict-as-standard. It'd be like trying to insist that a VW Golf is a kind of station wagon, and then failing it on the grounds it can't carry twenty-seven people like an old Country Squire: it's not the conclusions that are wrong, but the premises.
I read my share of boys' adventure stories as a kid (when I wasn't daydreaming about being Han Solo), and there are two great sources of classic adventure stories, it seems. One is the Crusades; the other are the Tall Ships era -- stories like Treasure Island and Captains Courageous and Kidnapped and Robinson Crusoe, up to the borderline-psychological closer-to-adult stories like High Wind to Jamaica. Now, some of those are just straight-up adventure stories, and some have more heft to them, but almost all bring up a certain phrase that just never made sense to me, as a kid. I can't recall it precisely, now, but it was something along the lines of never letting yourself think you're working with the ocean, when you sail it, yet if you don't work with the ocean, it'll be the end of you.
That seemed a contradiction to my mind, as a kid, because how can you work with something and not work with it at the same time? Somewhere in there either it clicked, or I just learned to live with my own interpretation: the ocean is always your enemy, but that sometimes in being your enemy, it may also temporarily be your ally. The warning is against ever deluding yourself, even for a moment, into believing that in this moment when the sea is gentle that this is a truth of the sea -- because it is equally ruthless and vicious. It would destroy you in a heartbeat, and (most importantly) when that time comes, there won't be a damn thing you can do about it, outside of hope your luck holds and do your best to get the hell out of the way.
I mention all that because when you have a major natural existence, like the ocean or the sky, as a huge part of a story, it's going to invariably draw the classification of 'man against nature' -- hello, Moby Dick, anyone? We can stretch that into adventure stories, even disaster stories, where it's a race against the clock! to save everyone! and get the girl! ...and we expect our heroes to come out the other side, knowing they defeated the undefeatable -- or at least were successful in getting the hell out of the way. Or we can go the other path, with mad King Lear railing against the thundering storm, and look on in pity as he deludes himself, or at least tries, into thinking he could command the elements -- and thereby revealing that 'man' can't really command much of anything, let alone something that powerful, and definitely nothing as powerful as the human heart.
Those are some lovely things to take away from stories that are basically boys' adventure stories on the high seas, but what's had me stymied for a long time is that Francis didn't really follow that path, either. In the sense of "good guys come out on top, bad guys go down," the Crosspointe stories are both satisfactory... and yet not, but again only failing in a comparative sense. Sort of like biting into a pastry and expecting blueberries and finding it's mincemeat instead (and I don't mean the fruity version) -- it's good, but it's not what you were expecting, so for a moment there, you can't even recognize the flavor.
In other words, at the end of the stories, the ocean does win, and I think that's where the Tall Ships genre really shows up as a strong influence in the Crosspointe stories. There's no American rugged individualism here, that strives to pit itself against disaster either to save the girl or just to see if it can; it's more of the sailors' worn acceptance of the sea as sometimes lover and perpetual enemy. It's almost like going into a conflict and knowing ahead of time that the good guys won't win, because against that force, nothing could.
Oh, certainly, the series' stories have preeminent antagonists -- if deceptively so, at points -- but behind every antagonist, even behind the protagonists, there's the ocean. It's the backdrop of nearly every scene in every story, even those happening on land, because the language used, the phrasing, the attitudes, even mentions of holidays -- right down to the most basic perception of the passage of time -- is bounded by, marked by, defined by, even experienced within, this concept of being utterly surrounded by an unbeatable opponent... who, at this single point in time, isn't actively trying to kill you, but that doesn't mean it won't in another five minutes. So it's an antagonist that is, and is not, and when the stories end, that antagonist remains undefeated, yet the heroes of each story are able to attain some level of victory. They just don't do it by winning -- not in the sense of 'at the cost of something else losing'.
That was the second part that's stumped me for how to consider the stories, for how to put my finger on what made these work for me, when so many other stories come close, close enough to be bittersweet, but just not quite there. Why these, then? I would try to consider the stories impartially: here is rising action, here is showdown, here is finale, here is denouement, just like I was taught in proper English classes, but stopping shy of actually diagramming anything. In the end, the answer's simple.
Certainly, Francis' heroes achieve victory, but they do it by dying.
If the ocean is unbeatable, undefeated, the main character of each story knows this, even to some degree knows it going into the story, accepts it as much as I would that the sun isn't going to fall from the sky or that heartbeats will continue without concerted effort from me: that is to say, almost taking it for granted. Part of why Lauper's song resonates, too, is because of lines like when I find myself slipping off of my pedestal / I'm a fierce believer afraid to fall. Under their veneers, the characters remain adrift, and anchor themselves -- almost literally -- to this, or that, to cover a lack they've never been fearless enough to confess to another.
The main protagonists are not downtrodden from this, though. In fact, they're all three life-toughened, career-strong on a material level. Success marks the characters at the onset of the stories, and again it echoes the old sailing adventures, because those almost always start out on dry land. Each begins at a point of stability, on dry land, but it's when they venture out (or are thrown out into) the depths beyond their tenuous personal scope, what had been anchors keeping them on solid ground become the means for pulling them under, and destroying them each.
Certainly, we talk -- as writers -- about how a story begins where stability (or constancy) ends, but in this case it's really quite literal. And most stories do revolve around some version of a metaphor of the 'rock' (of Gibralter, of biblical terms, etc) -- you begin where the character loses that safe footing, you watch the character fall, then the character rises up at the critical moment, finds his or her bearing, strikes back. A satisfactory ending is usually determined by some degree of a return to stability, whether a move to what was, or an evolution forward to a new stability.
And again, not going with the flow (so to speak), because Francis seems to have skipped the past fifty years of technology vs. nature and technology winning (or at least making it possible to get the hell out of the way a bit faster). Her stories remind me so much more of the older stories I read as a kid, where the final point of stability might be more aptly expressed as an acceptance that under it all, there is no stability. Or perhaps, to mangle Kierkegaard, the only stability is that there is no stability: her characters end the stories adrift, to a certain degree, yet squarely rooted within this state of being adrift.
And that, I think, has everything to do with the same things the song itself is talking about, which revolves around the connection to other human beings, and having the willingness, or the strength, to allow oneself to confess some kind of crucial weakness. The Crosspointe stories, underneath the guise of having some damn good rollicking action (especially The Black Ship, which should have an alternate title of Love Letter to a Bygone Genre), are stories of transformation, but it's the concept of family, in particular, that drives the transformation. Again, not unusual, you can read that in many stories -- you just don't usually read it in stories where the protagonists are in their early thirties. More often, characters that age are striving to protect their own families: most often offspring, sometimes spouses.
But the characters in the Crosspointe stories begin each at a definite point of singularity, so there's little drive-to-protect other than general human nature (and not even much of that, in Thorn, admittedly). As the protagonists define themselves for (like Lucy) or against (like Thorn) the notion of family, what sends them adrift is in large part due to running into their opposite, more specifically an opposite in terms of family. Frex, Lucy, raised in what appears to be a large and pretty supportive and functional family, has a conflict that's driven to a large degree by a cruel distortion of the concept of family. And I don't mean in general terms, but very specifically: what drives the main characters, and what rips them apart, is grounded in this contradiction between their idea of family versus someone else's idea, and what they do for family, what they suffer for family -- even whether they're willing to die for family.
And eventually the characters realize, in these stories, that their answer is yes.
It's transformation, and I suppose if we were going the really literary-critique route where everything has to come back to whether there's biblical metaphor, these stories would be really easy... again, sort of. But not entirely, because after the transformation there's no message brought back to others, no extending of a glowing hand, no beacon of hope. In fact, the transformation is more akin to the Japanese myth of kamikakushi, the same as that which Miyazaki reshaped/retold via Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away). In stories of kamikakushi, most often a young male adolescent goes missing and is presumed to be "hidden by the gods"; kami being the root-word for god. Not all boys stayed missing; some folklore tells of kamikakushi returning, but they're almost always changed (and this change for the worse is often taken as proof of the truth of their experience as god-hidden): what had once been a bright and friendly boy may now be a sullen adult with barely functional intelligence. It's like such time with the gods does not engender enlightenment, but such horrendous and complete damage that what returns is barely recognizable, and perhaps barely even recognizable as human.
That is almost the opposite of our Western notions (though Eastern myths also have this trope), for stories like changelings or Rip Van Winkle, and the like. In the latter cases, returning to the human world is usually followed almost immediately (or sometimes immediately on sight of a church, natch) by crumbling into dust. In the former, the child is vulnerable to changelingship due to lack of baptism (negligence of the family to protect it), but through various canny housewife stories, the child is eventually returned and all is well, with little lasting damage outside of maybe being just a bit tetched after that, but hardly a social vegetable.
I'm not saying by any stretch that I think Francis sat down and worked up an evil plot to sneak Eastern folklore into a solid Western-based adventure-fantasy framework. There's absolutely not a single shred of evidence in the text to support that theory; I bring up the Japanese mythos only because it's one of the few that I can recall that has such a trip to the underworld (or world of the gods) resulting in -- even upon returning to humanity, as it were -- never truly completely returning. It's as though a big chunk of the person was left behind in the Otherworld, and I'm having trouble thinking of Western myths that illustrate this -- but if that mythic trope is thin on the ground, I'd bet in part that's also possibly because we're a culture with a strong religion-undoes-the-evil streak (compared to the Buddhist/Shinto attitude of accepting good and evil as necessary, uh, evils).
In other words, for the West, returning to humanity is akin to returning to the embrace of 'god', with love equals healing equals happy ending equals civilization, etc (cf the genre-cousin, of the wandering adventurer who returns to Britain, a la Tarzan or Marlow). Which leads into a side-note about the era that really propelled the Tall Ships genre into its heights, and that was the issue of colonialism and Going Native. I won't get into it here, but there are traces of that in Francis' series, as well, if you know where to look. Just think of Tarzan -- the child raised in the jungle, who must be 'remade' into Proper British Lord lest he retain the taint of Deepest Darkest Borneo -- and you've got the general gist. In a lot of paranormal/SFF stories, the character who travels into the Otherworld (becomes a vampire, attains Level 9, whatever), returns but with a concerted, sometimes even explicit, affirmation that s/he "is still human, under it". Something that says, still-one-of-us. And my point is that Francis' characters go native -- and they don't come back.
Okay, it's not unusual to have a character return in such circumstances and be asked, "what are you now? are you still human?" and the response is most often either "yes," or an equivocating, "I'm still me." In the Crosspointe stories, the characters are more honest: "No. I'm not." Which is a far more brutal but intellectually (and viscerally) truthful acknowledgment of transformation: when you are transformed, you are no longer the same. You do not 'come back' from that. You move forward, but you do not ever truly return. For a lot of readers (and writers), I think losing one's humanity on such a base level is a terrifying thing, and we gloss it over with the "I'm still me" replies -- but for someone who has been transformed so deeply, that's not really an answer, and it implies a same-ness that isn't there. The only honest answer is No, I'm not. Which isn't to say that the characters no longer retain some humanity, because if anything it's in such total change that they discover their humanity, but it took becoming something other than wholly human to get there. They had to go native, and never come back.
All that aside, it's obvious from the text that if there is any source of mythos in the Crosspointe stories, it's a mythos grounded (adrift?) entirely in a sailing tradition that was already seeing its setting sun in the late 1840s, and that wasn't exactly yesterday. Granted, two of the Tall Ships' giants are from the latter part of the last century (wow that sounds wierd): the Horatio Hornblower series was written/published in the 1940s, and Master and Commander was published in '70. But that's just two (if big) names when I can think of twenty, forty, or more modern SFF stories that laud the ability of technology (and civilization) to eventually defeat, or at least domesticate, that unruly Mother Nature.
Against that modern perception of us vs nature, every paragraph on every page of the Crosspointe stories has that sense I find in the older stories. Not imitative, but connective, and respectful of the traditions without stooping to faux-homage in-jokes. So, no, absolutely little chance (at least in my mind) that the story is an intentional flip-flop on the Western heroic journey -- with return victorious -- and done so via subverting it with Eastern myth.
No, I think the flip-flop, and what proved to be my own tripping point, was that the Crosspointe stories are simply rooted in a mindset that's not very common in modern genres. Far as I can think, the mindset's not even that common in the 'traditional fantasy' genre -- where the largest touchstone is some kind of never-never Dark Ages, but with soap. It's almost, hrm, dare I say, religious, but that's not the right word -- not 'spiritual', either -- but... what is the phrase?
Ah, now I remember. (It's one I never ran into all that much, growing up in a mainstream Protestant household, and it not getting a huge emphasis.) The archaic use of 'fear': a definition that wraps proper love, and respect, and fear altogether, and declares that to love god is to fear god. It's an Old Testament God, you could say, as though the sea itself is an unjust god, cruel and distant: they may fear me forever, for the good of them and let all the earth fear the lord. (I find it almost ironic that the age of sailing ships tends towards a fiction that weighs heavy on this angry, if ineffable, Old Testament Judge, versus a hundred years fast-forward to the fiction trumpeting the Space Age and technology-wins-all being contemporaries of the Death of God theologians, or maybe I'm just crazy like that.)
Regardless, the point here is that the overriding emphasis is on fear: as a sign of some really healthy respect. Getting back to that bit about the sea being an enemy and don't you forget even when the sea is not your enemy, it's the same kind of respect and fear mingled into this cultural undercurrent in many of the sailing stories -- and again in the Crosspointe series. The gods of Crosspointe, like that of the Old Testament, are cruel, fierce, and loving with one hand while striking with the other, as unpredictable and potentially vicious as the sea itself. In the genre's first go-round of stories focused on sailing ships, there's a constant, if quiet (and sometimes not so) understanding -- like I mentioned above -- that what gets you out is good timing, a lot of luck, and that to lay credit at the feet of technology (or, in Francis' case, magic) would be wrong-headed.
Or, dare I say, it'd be hubris. In the latter part of this past century, technology's often the hero alongside the human hero: the right gadgets, quick thinking, and a bit of back-patting over outwitting that nasty Mother Nature. The heroes are those who glorify out-maneuvering nature (really just a glorified, assisted version of 'getting out of the way'), with a backdrop of at least one character whose skepticism results in being treated like the token freaking luddite (by the heroes, and often by the audience as well). The sailing adventure stories I grew up on were the reverse: the one character in the story who thinks it's possible to be 'good enough' against the sea, who might voice the opinion that the ship escaped sinking solely because of this skill or that engineering, is likely to be the character derided -- if not outright shunned as a conceited fool that's just been voted Most Likely To Buy The Farm.
Because in the face of this cruel mistress, such pride is like putting a big neon sign over your head that says, Lightning Here Please -- but I guess as I've moved away from reading the classics in childhood, I've gotten used to this "technology can domesticate" mindset, and don't really give it too much thought. (The corrollary to this, of course, is the Apocalyptic genre, which usually seems to be positing on some level that technology can domesticate, and then eventually the domesticated beast will turn around and bite you in the ass ten times worse than you ever did to it: a kind of revenge fantasy for the planet.)
In the Crosspointe series, there's no such out: the technology (magical and implied-magical) is just as suspect, because its origins also lie in the sea. Everything of the world, in the world, somehow ties back to Crosspointe's position as an island in the middle of an inland sea roughly about the size of the Mediterranean, from what I gather: right in the middle of trading routes, but also surrounded on all sides by the ultimate enemy. Thus, the need for a constant, borderline-fearful, but definitely respectful perspective -- and also the theme of transformation as a kind of Judgment, with-a-capital-J, passed by a vengeful god.
I guess some of what's had me both reveling in the stories and baffled about expressing what's underneath them is the realization that when it comes to human vs technology, or even technology vs. nature (as opposed to humanity vs nature), is that the contrasting scale doesn't seem quite so great. I mean, sure, there's things like I, Robot where humanity's own creations rise up against their creators, but to me it seems you could characterize that as a situation of humans big, tech getting as-big-as: fighting an equal where before you'd taken it for granted you were superior. Or, in the case of technology vs nature, it often feels as though it's a level playing field, or at least is leveled by technology and it's human inventiveness that stands in for "sheer luck" of days past.
The difference is that the message in many of the sailing-era genre is that you can't beat it, and you're better off not even trying -- the best you can do, and the wisest, is to play your cards safe, hope your luck holds, and when the wind turns northerly, to get the hell out of the way. It's the mad men, and the stupid men -- the Captain Ahabs and the King Lears -- who insist on doing otherwise, and look where they ended up. And you never know what small thing might tip the Judgment against you -- just ask Mr. Ancient Mariner about that score. In general, though, it's a perception of the world as a cruel and violent place, but strangely ambivalent -- maybe even indifferent. The scope is massive: this tiny human adrift in the oceans is a pinprick, not even worthy of note, so minuscule compared to the ocean's vastness. That's what I mean by the contrast: such immense difference.
I think the stories are also so different because for once the real Big Bad of the story isn't really all that bad -- so much as violently indifferent -- but, man, it's not just big, it's freaking awesomely big, and I mean that in the original sense of "awe-inspiring, terrifying." A great and terrible thing, yet such a welcome relief after story and story (including my own!) in which the Big Bad is out to destroy the world, turn humans into zombies, obliterate the planet, etc etc and so on. Over and over, such grandiose, even hubristic, plans ("and along comes someone with ambition," as Spike once said), and somehow our heroes pull it out of a hat and save the day from yet another apocalypse.
Reading the Crosspointe stories, it's more like getting a sense by the third or fourth page -- on some gut level -- that if there is a true antagonist in the stories, it's not some petty human. It's the ocean itself, and you're heading into the story with a fair idea that this antagonist will prevail, and the heroes will not. Sure, there's the old joke about if you can't beat them, join them, and in our real world this would have a more ironic knife-twist, of the sailor who drowned -- probably because he didn't get out of the way fast enough. Couldn't beat it, and now has joined it.
And that's what I mean by transformation, but there's no return from the hero's journey with cute girls throwing flowers and the adulation of hundreds, and possibly a princess or two. The return is marked by, well, not much of a return at all, so much as a recognition that any last humanity (in the sense of 'belonging' to a civilized society) now exists in name only. And that, also, ties into the notion of family, because where death is just a birth elsewhere, then dying from one family means being born into another. For the character who loves her family, breaking those ties is self-destroying; for the character who fears his family, it's equally terrifying, because who knows what will lie beyond, and whether this will all be worth it -- that is, result in the gain of a new/better family? ...because in all cases, it's the idea of family, the ideal even, that drive the characters into the transformation and see them through.
Yet transformation isn't just change, and it's not just a willingness to 'accept' change, as though it were a passive thing. It requires the willingness to self-kill. We've got that phrase about looking death in the face and laughing, but the characters in these stories don't laugh: they embrace death. Because you can't go around, and they make the choice to go through. The heroes don't prevail over this nebulous antagonist; instead, they turn the damage onto themselves, to render themselves allies of that opposition. They don't beat the antagonist; they join the antagonist.
I think compared to the usual metaphoric 'christ-like resurrection-figure' ideas in literature, Francis' heroes do not return as healed, or even quintessentially human, or even the literary more-human-than-human. I'd go so far as to say her Crosspointe heroes return as less than human, but it's in being reduced to nothingness -- one could argue even a literal nothingness -- that each protagonist is able to experience the fullness of existence. Like it has to all be stripped away, reduced to total insignificance, before the character can realize the connections of family -- even if now it is solely of the heart, and not the blood -- that are the source of the character's true humanity.
And all that, my dears, is why I can't review these books. I can tell you to go get a copy and read, but I can't review them. Just can't seem to put it into words *with tongue firmly in cheek*. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's past midnight, so in absence of a final proofed and shelf-ready copy of Francis' next work -- Bitter Night and holy hell is it a ride and a half -- I think I may have to talk myself out of making a grocery run for cookies. Hmm.
The first book came out maybe two years ago, now? And the second book came out last fall, with the third arriving in stores this summer, I think it was. (And if anyone wanted to get me a signed copy of the third book, I might even admit in public that tomorrow's my birthday.) I've re-read the first book twice, and the second book about five times now, maybe six. And I just can't review them. I've tried several times, and I can't.
But the past few weeks while I've been working on a major application, one of my downtime points has been while running errands and listening to the iPod's latest randomness. Somewhere in there, I started thinking about songs that remind me of certain voices. Not stories, mind you, but the voices of the story, the narrative voice, even -- but also the theme, the sense of the story. So the lyrics don't always fit, but something in the music's cadence makes me think of the way a certain person writes. I've been bandying about these odd connections, and one song keeps popping up, and every time, it reminds me of this particular series.
This is the accompanied version, and it's the instrumental aspect that contains a big reason (I suspect) as to why it's so strongly reminiscent for me. (If you want to really hear something amazing, the same song is done a capella, and what looks like rather off-the-cuff and informal, and it's amazing just how powerfully clear her voice is, even in what are probably less than perfect circumstances for singing. I honestly can't think of too many other singers, even among professionals, who could pull something like this out of their hats. Not the best quality -- recorded off a TV, I bet, yet it's still phenomenal.)
I will try to avoid anything really specific as a spoiler (if it comes to that), but on the grounds that getting there is really the heart of it all, there are spoilers in here, but in name only, not spirit. In which, thus introduced, I proceed to turn the literary and philosophical meanderings onto an unsuspecting author (disclaimer: who happens to also be someone I count as a friend, but as an academic, I'm hoping she's relatively immune to such things). So now that you've heard the song that keeps coming back at me, I'll hand over the payoff: talking about Diana P Francis' Crosspointe series.
I'd read Francis' first series (the 'Path' books) and enjoyed them as rollicking good action-fantasy reads, as well as for the growing skill and voice-comfortableness I could see as the series progressed (something I just like to see in authors, is all). And the first Crosspointe book, The Cipher, had a lot of good action-y conflict-y ambiguity and unlikeableness mixed with sympathy that I enjoyed it hugely, and the second book, The Black Ship, took me awhile to get (thanks to idiocy of putting book on 'wish list' and not realizing that was not the 'preorder list', moron) -- but I devoured it when I did, and then I had it for dessert, and once digested, had it all over again. I got to read one of the earliest drafts of the third book, The Turning Tide, and I'm fairly certain the crux of what I'm talking about here does remain, because it's true of the series. (It's just that a lot of the general details about Tide are rumored to have been strongly rearranged and expanded during revision, so I'm fully expecting that it will get hooks in me just as well... ahem, once I can get a copy of it. Yes, I know, bad me.)
But my point here isn't about how distractable I can be when I'm crammed for time with a million projects. My point here is about how that song by Cyndi Lauper is possibly the only way I can review these books. See, when I have a bunch of complaints about a book, it's easy. I can list a hundred things, a thousand things, that leave me dissatisfied, or are incomplete, and I can analyze until the
Sometimes it seems almost as though to admit such adoration for a work -- let alone to let it be known -- is to reveal something so deeply personal about oneself. It's an avenue into your heart, I think, when you say, "this book kept me up, and I couldn't even think, because I was so busy just being, just experiencing" -- or whatever paltry words chosen to try and express something indefinable. That is, that moment (or series of moments) when a story exists so truly for you that at points, when reading, you feel like you can't even breathe.
The main player in the series, you might say, is actually the ocean that surrounds the island-based city-state of Crosspointe. It's laden with mystery that can kill you, magic that is anything but benevolent, yet being on an island, this near-sentient, lethal sea is the basis for almost all of Crosspointe's industry, but also its religion, its culture, its ways of thinking and being. There is no "wow, how pretty is the magic!", and after listening to Lauper's song probably about as many times all together as times I'd read the books, I think I got that part figured out.
Some of it's because Lauper's accompaniment reminds me of the droning pipes used for the more dolorous sea chantys (sailors' songs), though what you usually hear in samples are the better-known upbeat foot-stompers. Cape Breton, with its large Welsh/Scottish population, retains a lot of that bagpipe-influence in some of its folk music, and maybe that's where the connection comes from. Because those sea chantys aren't always a merry light-heartedness about going sailing, or the joys of being a fisherman -- there are others than mourn lost ones, and rail against the sun setting on the fishing families tradition, and even raise a fist or two against the merciless ocean itself.
In that music, like in the culture/world of Crosspointe, there's a certain element of being outranked and outflanked, but that exists in plenty of fantasy stories. Hell, plenty of stories in and out of genre, so I figured that couldn't be what kept me from articulating what I love. And then I realized Crosspointe is more like the mournful sunset sea chantys than most fantasy stories, because it contains the same kernel of victory and despair as the sailors' songs: the idea that what's beating you will defeat you, and that you're lost. Francis takes the notion of 'adrift' and turns it literal, in both stories, and there's nothing we could ever experience on this planet that (I think) could make us feel quite so small as that of being adrift on the ocean with no land in sight. Intellectually we know we are tiny against the universe, but our miniscule state -- compared to the vast oceans -- is not intellectual, but absolutely visceral.
And all the same, knowing this, the ships continue to head out into that -- but it's not a battle of wills in the classic story-telling sense, because it's not like the ocean is truly sentient. (And even Francis' ocean is possibly only somewhat sentient, but it hasn't yet risen up as a true protagonist in its own right, at least.) That leaves open the classic 'man against nature', but that doesn't seem right to me, either, which meant I fell way short if I tried to approach the story as a pass/fail against that conflict-as-standard. It'd be like trying to insist that a VW Golf is a kind of station wagon, and then failing it on the grounds it can't carry twenty-seven people like an old Country Squire: it's not the conclusions that are wrong, but the premises.
I read my share of boys' adventure stories as a kid (when I wasn't daydreaming about being Han Solo), and there are two great sources of classic adventure stories, it seems. One is the Crusades; the other are the Tall Ships era -- stories like Treasure Island and Captains Courageous and Kidnapped and Robinson Crusoe, up to the borderline-psychological closer-to-adult stories like High Wind to Jamaica. Now, some of those are just straight-up adventure stories, and some have more heft to them, but almost all bring up a certain phrase that just never made sense to me, as a kid. I can't recall it precisely, now, but it was something along the lines of never letting yourself think you're working with the ocean, when you sail it, yet if you don't work with the ocean, it'll be the end of you.
That seemed a contradiction to my mind, as a kid, because how can you work with something and not work with it at the same time? Somewhere in there either it clicked, or I just learned to live with my own interpretation: the ocean is always your enemy, but that sometimes in being your enemy, it may also temporarily be your ally. The warning is against ever deluding yourself, even for a moment, into believing that in this moment when the sea is gentle that this is a truth of the sea -- because it is equally ruthless and vicious. It would destroy you in a heartbeat, and (most importantly) when that time comes, there won't be a damn thing you can do about it, outside of hope your luck holds and do your best to get the hell out of the way.
I mention all that because when you have a major natural existence, like the ocean or the sky, as a huge part of a story, it's going to invariably draw the classification of 'man against nature' -- hello, Moby Dick, anyone? We can stretch that into adventure stories, even disaster stories, where it's a race against the clock! to save everyone! and get the girl! ...and we expect our heroes to come out the other side, knowing they defeated the undefeatable -- or at least were successful in getting the hell out of the way. Or we can go the other path, with mad King Lear railing against the thundering storm, and look on in pity as he deludes himself, or at least tries, into thinking he could command the elements -- and thereby revealing that 'man' can't really command much of anything, let alone something that powerful, and definitely nothing as powerful as the human heart.
Those are some lovely things to take away from stories that are basically boys' adventure stories on the high seas, but what's had me stymied for a long time is that Francis didn't really follow that path, either. In the sense of "good guys come out on top, bad guys go down," the Crosspointe stories are both satisfactory... and yet not, but again only failing in a comparative sense. Sort of like biting into a pastry and expecting blueberries and finding it's mincemeat instead (and I don't mean the fruity version) -- it's good, but it's not what you were expecting, so for a moment there, you can't even recognize the flavor.
In other words, at the end of the stories, the ocean does win, and I think that's where the Tall Ships genre really shows up as a strong influence in the Crosspointe stories. There's no American rugged individualism here, that strives to pit itself against disaster either to save the girl or just to see if it can; it's more of the sailors' worn acceptance of the sea as sometimes lover and perpetual enemy. It's almost like going into a conflict and knowing ahead of time that the good guys won't win, because against that force, nothing could.
Oh, certainly, the series' stories have preeminent antagonists -- if deceptively so, at points -- but behind every antagonist, even behind the protagonists, there's the ocean. It's the backdrop of nearly every scene in every story, even those happening on land, because the language used, the phrasing, the attitudes, even mentions of holidays -- right down to the most basic perception of the passage of time -- is bounded by, marked by, defined by, even experienced within, this concept of being utterly surrounded by an unbeatable opponent... who, at this single point in time, isn't actively trying to kill you, but that doesn't mean it won't in another five minutes. So it's an antagonist that is, and is not, and when the stories end, that antagonist remains undefeated, yet the heroes of each story are able to attain some level of victory. They just don't do it by winning -- not in the sense of 'at the cost of something else losing'.
That was the second part that's stumped me for how to consider the stories, for how to put my finger on what made these work for me, when so many other stories come close, close enough to be bittersweet, but just not quite there. Why these, then? I would try to consider the stories impartially: here is rising action, here is showdown, here is finale, here is denouement, just like I was taught in proper English classes, but stopping shy of actually diagramming anything. In the end, the answer's simple.
Certainly, Francis' heroes achieve victory, but they do it by dying.
If the ocean is unbeatable, undefeated, the main character of each story knows this, even to some degree knows it going into the story, accepts it as much as I would that the sun isn't going to fall from the sky or that heartbeats will continue without concerted effort from me: that is to say, almost taking it for granted. Part of why Lauper's song resonates, too, is because of lines like when I find myself slipping off of my pedestal / I'm a fierce believer afraid to fall. Under their veneers, the characters remain adrift, and anchor themselves -- almost literally -- to this, or that, to cover a lack they've never been fearless enough to confess to another.
The main protagonists are not downtrodden from this, though. In fact, they're all three life-toughened, career-strong on a material level. Success marks the characters at the onset of the stories, and again it echoes the old sailing adventures, because those almost always start out on dry land. Each begins at a point of stability, on dry land, but it's when they venture out (or are thrown out into) the depths beyond their tenuous personal scope, what had been anchors keeping them on solid ground become the means for pulling them under, and destroying them each.
Certainly, we talk -- as writers -- about how a story begins where stability (or constancy) ends, but in this case it's really quite literal. And most stories do revolve around some version of a metaphor of the 'rock' (of Gibralter, of biblical terms, etc) -- you begin where the character loses that safe footing, you watch the character fall, then the character rises up at the critical moment, finds his or her bearing, strikes back. A satisfactory ending is usually determined by some degree of a return to stability, whether a move to what was, or an evolution forward to a new stability.
And again, not going with the flow (so to speak), because Francis seems to have skipped the past fifty years of technology vs. nature and technology winning (or at least making it possible to get the hell out of the way a bit faster). Her stories remind me so much more of the older stories I read as a kid, where the final point of stability might be more aptly expressed as an acceptance that under it all, there is no stability. Or perhaps, to mangle Kierkegaard, the only stability is that there is no stability: her characters end the stories adrift, to a certain degree, yet squarely rooted within this state of being adrift.
And that, I think, has everything to do with the same things the song itself is talking about, which revolves around the connection to other human beings, and having the willingness, or the strength, to allow oneself to confess some kind of crucial weakness. The Crosspointe stories, underneath the guise of having some damn good rollicking action (especially The Black Ship, which should have an alternate title of Love Letter to a Bygone Genre), are stories of transformation, but it's the concept of family, in particular, that drives the transformation. Again, not unusual, you can read that in many stories -- you just don't usually read it in stories where the protagonists are in their early thirties. More often, characters that age are striving to protect their own families: most often offspring, sometimes spouses.
But the characters in the Crosspointe stories begin each at a definite point of singularity, so there's little drive-to-protect other than general human nature (and not even much of that, in Thorn, admittedly). As the protagonists define themselves for (like Lucy) or against (like Thorn) the notion of family, what sends them adrift is in large part due to running into their opposite, more specifically an opposite in terms of family. Frex, Lucy, raised in what appears to be a large and pretty supportive and functional family, has a conflict that's driven to a large degree by a cruel distortion of the concept of family. And I don't mean in general terms, but very specifically: what drives the main characters, and what rips them apart, is grounded in this contradiction between their idea of family versus someone else's idea, and what they do for family, what they suffer for family -- even whether they're willing to die for family.
And eventually the characters realize, in these stories, that their answer is yes.
It's transformation, and I suppose if we were going the really literary-critique route where everything has to come back to whether there's biblical metaphor, these stories would be really easy... again, sort of. But not entirely, because after the transformation there's no message brought back to others, no extending of a glowing hand, no beacon of hope. In fact, the transformation is more akin to the Japanese myth of kamikakushi, the same as that which Miyazaki reshaped/retold via Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away). In stories of kamikakushi, most often a young male adolescent goes missing and is presumed to be "hidden by the gods"; kami being the root-word for god. Not all boys stayed missing; some folklore tells of kamikakushi returning, but they're almost always changed (and this change for the worse is often taken as proof of the truth of their experience as god-hidden): what had once been a bright and friendly boy may now be a sullen adult with barely functional intelligence. It's like such time with the gods does not engender enlightenment, but such horrendous and complete damage that what returns is barely recognizable, and perhaps barely even recognizable as human.
That is almost the opposite of our Western notions (though Eastern myths also have this trope), for stories like changelings or Rip Van Winkle, and the like. In the latter cases, returning to the human world is usually followed almost immediately (or sometimes immediately on sight of a church, natch) by crumbling into dust. In the former, the child is vulnerable to changelingship due to lack of baptism (negligence of the family to protect it), but through various canny housewife stories, the child is eventually returned and all is well, with little lasting damage outside of maybe being just a bit tetched after that, but hardly a social vegetable.
I'm not saying by any stretch that I think Francis sat down and worked up an evil plot to sneak Eastern folklore into a solid Western-based adventure-fantasy framework. There's absolutely not a single shred of evidence in the text to support that theory; I bring up the Japanese mythos only because it's one of the few that I can recall that has such a trip to the underworld (or world of the gods) resulting in -- even upon returning to humanity, as it were -- never truly completely returning. It's as though a big chunk of the person was left behind in the Otherworld, and I'm having trouble thinking of Western myths that illustrate this -- but if that mythic trope is thin on the ground, I'd bet in part that's also possibly because we're a culture with a strong religion-undoes-the-evil streak (compared to the Buddhist/Shinto attitude of accepting good and evil as necessary, uh, evils).
In other words, for the West, returning to humanity is akin to returning to the embrace of 'god', with love equals healing equals happy ending equals civilization, etc (cf the genre-cousin, of the wandering adventurer who returns to Britain, a la Tarzan or Marlow). Which leads into a side-note about the era that really propelled the Tall Ships genre into its heights, and that was the issue of colonialism and Going Native. I won't get into it here, but there are traces of that in Francis' series, as well, if you know where to look. Just think of Tarzan -- the child raised in the jungle, who must be 'remade' into Proper British Lord lest he retain the taint of Deepest Darkest Borneo -- and you've got the general gist. In a lot of paranormal/SFF stories, the character who travels into the Otherworld (becomes a vampire, attains Level 9, whatever), returns but with a concerted, sometimes even explicit, affirmation that s/he "is still human, under it". Something that says, still-one-of-us. And my point is that Francis' characters go native -- and they don't come back.
Okay, it's not unusual to have a character return in such circumstances and be asked, "what are you now? are you still human?" and the response is most often either "yes," or an equivocating, "I'm still me." In the Crosspointe stories, the characters are more honest: "No. I'm not." Which is a far more brutal but intellectually (and viscerally) truthful acknowledgment of transformation: when you are transformed, you are no longer the same. You do not 'come back' from that. You move forward, but you do not ever truly return. For a lot of readers (and writers), I think losing one's humanity on such a base level is a terrifying thing, and we gloss it over with the "I'm still me" replies -- but for someone who has been transformed so deeply, that's not really an answer, and it implies a same-ness that isn't there. The only honest answer is No, I'm not. Which isn't to say that the characters no longer retain some humanity, because if anything it's in such total change that they discover their humanity, but it took becoming something other than wholly human to get there. They had to go native, and never come back.
All that aside, it's obvious from the text that if there is any source of mythos in the Crosspointe stories, it's a mythos grounded (adrift?) entirely in a sailing tradition that was already seeing its setting sun in the late 1840s, and that wasn't exactly yesterday. Granted, two of the Tall Ships' giants are from the latter part of the last century (wow that sounds wierd): the Horatio Hornblower series was written/published in the 1940s, and Master and Commander was published in '70. But that's just two (if big) names when I can think of twenty, forty, or more modern SFF stories that laud the ability of technology (and civilization) to eventually defeat, or at least domesticate, that unruly Mother Nature.
Against that modern perception of us vs nature, every paragraph on every page of the Crosspointe stories has that sense I find in the older stories. Not imitative, but connective, and respectful of the traditions without stooping to faux-homage in-jokes. So, no, absolutely little chance (at least in my mind) that the story is an intentional flip-flop on the Western heroic journey -- with return victorious -- and done so via subverting it with Eastern myth.
No, I think the flip-flop, and what proved to be my own tripping point, was that the Crosspointe stories are simply rooted in a mindset that's not very common in modern genres. Far as I can think, the mindset's not even that common in the 'traditional fantasy' genre -- where the largest touchstone is some kind of never-never Dark Ages, but with soap. It's almost, hrm, dare I say, religious, but that's not the right word -- not 'spiritual', either -- but... what is the phrase?
Ah, now I remember. (It's one I never ran into all that much, growing up in a mainstream Protestant household, and it not getting a huge emphasis.) The archaic use of 'fear': a definition that wraps proper love, and respect, and fear altogether, and declares that to love god is to fear god. It's an Old Testament God, you could say, as though the sea itself is an unjust god, cruel and distant: they may fear me forever, for the good of them and let all the earth fear the lord. (I find it almost ironic that the age of sailing ships tends towards a fiction that weighs heavy on this angry, if ineffable, Old Testament Judge, versus a hundred years fast-forward to the fiction trumpeting the Space Age and technology-wins-all being contemporaries of the Death of God theologians, or maybe I'm just crazy like that.)
Regardless, the point here is that the overriding emphasis is on fear: as a sign of some really healthy respect. Getting back to that bit about the sea being an enemy and don't you forget even when the sea is not your enemy, it's the same kind of respect and fear mingled into this cultural undercurrent in many of the sailing stories -- and again in the Crosspointe series. The gods of Crosspointe, like that of the Old Testament, are cruel, fierce, and loving with one hand while striking with the other, as unpredictable and potentially vicious as the sea itself. In the genre's first go-round of stories focused on sailing ships, there's a constant, if quiet (and sometimes not so) understanding -- like I mentioned above -- that what gets you out is good timing, a lot of luck, and that to lay credit at the feet of technology (or, in Francis' case, magic) would be wrong-headed.
Or, dare I say, it'd be hubris. In the latter part of this past century, technology's often the hero alongside the human hero: the right gadgets, quick thinking, and a bit of back-patting over outwitting that nasty Mother Nature. The heroes are those who glorify out-maneuvering nature (really just a glorified, assisted version of 'getting out of the way'), with a backdrop of at least one character whose skepticism results in being treated like the token freaking luddite (by the heroes, and often by the audience as well). The sailing adventure stories I grew up on were the reverse: the one character in the story who thinks it's possible to be 'good enough' against the sea, who might voice the opinion that the ship escaped sinking solely because of this skill or that engineering, is likely to be the character derided -- if not outright shunned as a conceited fool that's just been voted Most Likely To Buy The Farm.
Because in the face of this cruel mistress, such pride is like putting a big neon sign over your head that says, Lightning Here Please -- but I guess as I've moved away from reading the classics in childhood, I've gotten used to this "technology can domesticate" mindset, and don't really give it too much thought. (The corrollary to this, of course, is the Apocalyptic genre, which usually seems to be positing on some level that technology can domesticate, and then eventually the domesticated beast will turn around and bite you in the ass ten times worse than you ever did to it: a kind of revenge fantasy for the planet.)
In the Crosspointe series, there's no such out: the technology (magical and implied-magical) is just as suspect, because its origins also lie in the sea. Everything of the world, in the world, somehow ties back to Crosspointe's position as an island in the middle of an inland sea roughly about the size of the Mediterranean, from what I gather: right in the middle of trading routes, but also surrounded on all sides by the ultimate enemy. Thus, the need for a constant, borderline-fearful, but definitely respectful perspective -- and also the theme of transformation as a kind of Judgment, with-a-capital-J, passed by a vengeful god.
I guess some of what's had me both reveling in the stories and baffled about expressing what's underneath them is the realization that when it comes to human vs technology, or even technology vs. nature (as opposed to humanity vs nature), is that the contrasting scale doesn't seem quite so great. I mean, sure, there's things like I, Robot where humanity's own creations rise up against their creators, but to me it seems you could characterize that as a situation of humans big, tech getting as-big-as: fighting an equal where before you'd taken it for granted you were superior. Or, in the case of technology vs nature, it often feels as though it's a level playing field, or at least is leveled by technology and it's human inventiveness that stands in for "sheer luck" of days past.
The difference is that the message in many of the sailing-era genre is that you can't beat it, and you're better off not even trying -- the best you can do, and the wisest, is to play your cards safe, hope your luck holds, and when the wind turns northerly, to get the hell out of the way. It's the mad men, and the stupid men -- the Captain Ahabs and the King Lears -- who insist on doing otherwise, and look where they ended up. And you never know what small thing might tip the Judgment against you -- just ask Mr. Ancient Mariner about that score. In general, though, it's a perception of the world as a cruel and violent place, but strangely ambivalent -- maybe even indifferent. The scope is massive: this tiny human adrift in the oceans is a pinprick, not even worthy of note, so minuscule compared to the ocean's vastness. That's what I mean by the contrast: such immense difference.
I think the stories are also so different because for once the real Big Bad of the story isn't really all that bad -- so much as violently indifferent -- but, man, it's not just big, it's freaking awesomely big, and I mean that in the original sense of "awe-inspiring, terrifying." A great and terrible thing, yet such a welcome relief after story and story (including my own!) in which the Big Bad is out to destroy the world, turn humans into zombies, obliterate the planet, etc etc and so on. Over and over, such grandiose, even hubristic, plans ("and along comes someone with ambition," as Spike once said), and somehow our heroes pull it out of a hat and save the day from yet another apocalypse.
Reading the Crosspointe stories, it's more like getting a sense by the third or fourth page -- on some gut level -- that if there is a true antagonist in the stories, it's not some petty human. It's the ocean itself, and you're heading into the story with a fair idea that this antagonist will prevail, and the heroes will not. Sure, there's the old joke about if you can't beat them, join them, and in our real world this would have a more ironic knife-twist, of the sailor who drowned -- probably because he didn't get out of the way fast enough. Couldn't beat it, and now has joined it.
And that's what I mean by transformation, but there's no return from the hero's journey with cute girls throwing flowers and the adulation of hundreds, and possibly a princess or two. The return is marked by, well, not much of a return at all, so much as a recognition that any last humanity (in the sense of 'belonging' to a civilized society) now exists in name only. And that, also, ties into the notion of family, because where death is just a birth elsewhere, then dying from one family means being born into another. For the character who loves her family, breaking those ties is self-destroying; for the character who fears his family, it's equally terrifying, because who knows what will lie beyond, and whether this will all be worth it -- that is, result in the gain of a new/better family? ...because in all cases, it's the idea of family, the ideal even, that drive the characters into the transformation and see them through.
Yet transformation isn't just change, and it's not just a willingness to 'accept' change, as though it were a passive thing. It requires the willingness to self-kill. We've got that phrase about looking death in the face and laughing, but the characters in these stories don't laugh: they embrace death. Because you can't go around, and they make the choice to go through. The heroes don't prevail over this nebulous antagonist; instead, they turn the damage onto themselves, to render themselves allies of that opposition. They don't beat the antagonist; they join the antagonist.
I think compared to the usual metaphoric 'christ-like resurrection-figure' ideas in literature, Francis' heroes do not return as healed, or even quintessentially human, or even the literary more-human-than-human. I'd go so far as to say her Crosspointe heroes return as less than human, but it's in being reduced to nothingness -- one could argue even a literal nothingness -- that each protagonist is able to experience the fullness of existence. Like it has to all be stripped away, reduced to total insignificance, before the character can realize the connections of family -- even if now it is solely of the heart, and not the blood -- that are the source of the character's true humanity.
And all that, my dears, is why I can't review these books. I can tell you to go get a copy and read, but I can't review them. Just can't seem to put it into words *with tongue firmly in cheek*. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's past midnight, so in absence of a final proofed and shelf-ready copy of Francis' next work -- Bitter Night and holy hell is it a ride and a half -- I think I may have to talk myself out of making a grocery run for cookies. Hmm.
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Date: 26 Aug 2009 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 Aug 2009 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 Aug 2009 12:12 pm (UTC)I love that... and you're right. The Lauper song does get the feel of it. The rolling touch of hope and sorrow coinciding with one another. Not just one or the other.
"Or perhaps, to mangle Kierkegaard, the only stability is that there is no stability: her characters end the stories adrift, to a certain degree, yet squarely rooted within this state of being adrift."
That pinpoints her endings perfectly. There is a satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This stage of this person's story is done but there is so much more ahead of them, so much more they need to do but then we move onto the next person. But to me, that's so lifelike. We don't all have a happy ending in the middle of our lives and then just sit around basking in it. No, we go through many journies, many steps, many conflicts.
I think the Crosspointe series also have the 'butterfly effect'. We see little incidents in each that effect the next story, that despite the fact that they are different people in different places at different times, they previous happenings have rippled into their lives. And I love that. Not many series do that. You don't get to jump from head to head and see how it effects the entire world. How one thought, one action, can effect multiple people in different and yet the same ways. That's probably one of my favorite parts of the series. I can see the overall arc. I can see there has to be a resolution to the overall story yet each book is just one stage in various people's journey towards that final goal that isn't even the same goal for some of them. And the constrast and movement forward... it's fascinating. I flip through each page dying to get a glimpse of previous characters, or meet new ones, or see how this journey will change the path to the final outcome...
"And that, also, ties into the notion of family, because where death is just a birth elsewhere, then dying from one family means being born into another."
Well said. I have no other comment for that, it just touches me. Makes me think of what it means to be adopted since my husband and I talk about doing just that.
Thank you for your 'not review'. It was awesome. I'm also a HUGE Di fan. I love the way she writes. She has a very unique voice in a sea of fantasy authors. It's always nice to find someone who enjoys her writing as much as I do, though you are much more eloquent that I am in expressing it.
-Missy
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Date: 31 Aug 2009 03:21 pm (UTC)