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rushthatspeaksThis is from Monday. I read it at Project Gutenberg.
Baum is one of my go-tos when I am exhausted because he is not going to emotionally involve me, tends to be short, and is usually interesting. This is one of his more obscure non-Oz books, and I am rather sad it has fallen into obscurity, because I can best describe it as Baum Does Dunsany-- it's straight-up high chivalric fantasy and he isn't half bad at it.
Well, beyond the usual issue with Baum. Yes, there is an instance of appalling and horrific racism in this book. It is about two paragraphs long and is even more blatant than Baum usually gets. It is neither plot-related nor involved with significant character interactions, and was both sufficiently late in the book and sufficiently self-contained that I did not throw the book across the room. Just, you should know to brace for that.
The rest of this is some of his better and more unusual writing. In a standard high-fantasy country, full of castles etc., the inhabitants are aware that there are fairies, although they aren't seen often. A group of high-ranking maidens on a picnic are accosted by a fairy, who states that she is tired of her immortal life, sick of never being able to make mistakes, and annoyed by her own omniscience. The fairy says that, just as fairies have the capacity to change mortal things into other shapes, so mortals have the capacity to change fairies, and asks to be transformed into a mortal for a year and a day.
So they change her into a mortal prince, and he goes off a-questing.
This is like the fifth Baum thing I've read with a protagonist who is in some direction genderqueer. It doesn't read as explicitly feminist here, necessarily-- the fairy fails to separate the fact that mortal women's circumstances are limiting from their capacities being limited-- but it does read as explicitly subversive and intended as subversive; the fairy's a better prince than many and doesn't see any difference in personality after changing gender, and for 1903, well.
The questing is also well done. When I say Baum Does Dunsany, I mean his language is more liquid and rhythmic than usual, there aren't anachronisms or odd turns of phrase, and the whole thing has the air of the pre-Raphaelites and their medieval revivals in a way I haven't seen Baum do before. The Land of Twi, one of the places the protagonist winds up, is genuinely fantastical and striking: everything in it is twinned and acts in duplicate, from plant growth patterns to people, so that individuals who come into it from outside terrify the inhabitants by being only half-persons. There's not much in the way of plot, but there doesn't need to be, and if this is the sort of book you like, you will indeed very much like it.
I found it an unexpected pleasure on a very tired evening.
Baum is one of my go-tos when I am exhausted because he is not going to emotionally involve me, tends to be short, and is usually interesting. This is one of his more obscure non-Oz books, and I am rather sad it has fallen into obscurity, because I can best describe it as Baum Does Dunsany-- it's straight-up high chivalric fantasy and he isn't half bad at it.
Well, beyond the usual issue with Baum. Yes, there is an instance of appalling and horrific racism in this book. It is about two paragraphs long and is even more blatant than Baum usually gets. It is neither plot-related nor involved with significant character interactions, and was both sufficiently late in the book and sufficiently self-contained that I did not throw the book across the room. Just, you should know to brace for that.
The rest of this is some of his better and more unusual writing. In a standard high-fantasy country, full of castles etc., the inhabitants are aware that there are fairies, although they aren't seen often. A group of high-ranking maidens on a picnic are accosted by a fairy, who states that she is tired of her immortal life, sick of never being able to make mistakes, and annoyed by her own omniscience. The fairy says that, just as fairies have the capacity to change mortal things into other shapes, so mortals have the capacity to change fairies, and asks to be transformed into a mortal for a year and a day.
So they change her into a mortal prince, and he goes off a-questing.
This is like the fifth Baum thing I've read with a protagonist who is in some direction genderqueer. It doesn't read as explicitly feminist here, necessarily-- the fairy fails to separate the fact that mortal women's circumstances are limiting from their capacities being limited-- but it does read as explicitly subversive and intended as subversive; the fairy's a better prince than many and doesn't see any difference in personality after changing gender, and for 1903, well.
The questing is also well done. When I say Baum Does Dunsany, I mean his language is more liquid and rhythmic than usual, there aren't anachronisms or odd turns of phrase, and the whole thing has the air of the pre-Raphaelites and their medieval revivals in a way I haven't seen Baum do before. The Land of Twi, one of the places the protagonist winds up, is genuinely fantastical and striking: everything in it is twinned and acts in duplicate, from plant growth patterns to people, so that individuals who come into it from outside terrify the inhabitants by being only half-persons. There's not much in the way of plot, but there doesn't need to be, and if this is the sort of book you like, you will indeed very much like it.
I found it an unexpected pleasure on a very tired evening.
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Date: 2011-02-23 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 10:58 pm (UTC)Either I read this book years ago or I've encountered the same conceit in a science-fictional setting, because I remember that scene. I'll have to head over to Project Gutenberg. Or I only think Le Guin should have made a story out of it.
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Date: 2011-02-24 01:05 am (UTC)Um ...