Lifelode, Jo Walton (365 Books, Day 336)
Aug. 6th, 2011 01:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksRead July 31st. Obligatory disclaimer: the author is a very dear friend of mine.
It took me longer to find this book than I'd have liked, because NESFA Press put it out and therefore libraries elsewhere in the country do not seem to have it. But I bought one at Readercon, and I asked at the press table and they do still have some left.
This is the sort of fantasy novel that sounds much, much more complicated when you explain it than it does when you read it, because when you read it it is all plain and natural and the way the world works and everyone takes it for granted. But when you explain it you have to say, well, the world works in this kind of belt of cohesiveness, where the further West you go the more orderly and routine and uninspired and clockwork everything becomes until you reach the areas where there is no thought possible at all, and the further East you go the more quicksilver and magical and fluid and changeable everything becomes until you reach the areas where there is no thought possible at all (and just before those dwell the gods). Time is affected by this, too; easterly is faster travel than west. And of course this is all perfectly normal, is the thing. You can go east and come back a few generations later. It happens. Why not?
And another perfectly normal thing is that the protagonist has the ability to see all the different versions of people through time, the bits of themselves at different ages that they leave around in the places they've lived and also project into the future. So she's always seeing shadows of what people might mean now underneath, or would have meant when they were teenagers, or what have you, and again since this is how she has always lived the sliding tenses are simply how it is. This is one of those books that sounds overly complex, sounds difficult to get a footing in, but it isn't. It's a domestic fantasy and it's incredibly readable. It's about, among other things, the work of keeping house, and why that's worth doing and the ways people do and don't value it as it deserves; and it's about the complexities of having multiple adults in a household, who have children in various combinations; and it's about archaeology and sex and cooking and harvest and, in the way they always happen to people, the gods. (Never trust a god as far as you can throw it. Not that far.)
This is that rarity, a book which has a plot which is, actually, world-changing and complex, but where that is not, necessarily, the point. Most of these people are not out to change the world. They are out to put dinner on the table and run the village and estate and follow their lifelodes, that thing in them that is what they most truly want to do. It can be difficult for you if your lifelode is yeya, magic, which will make you want to go east.
I enjoyed this, in a way where bits of it were happy and reassuring, and bits were melancholy, and some was downright tragic, and all of it was very much one flowing whole, a book like water, a book which makes you realize how inclusive the term slice of life ought to be. It is clearly one of those books I am going to come back to; there is a lot in it. It is very much worth tracking down. It was very much worth looking for. I have never read anything else quite like it.
It took me longer to find this book than I'd have liked, because NESFA Press put it out and therefore libraries elsewhere in the country do not seem to have it. But I bought one at Readercon, and I asked at the press table and they do still have some left.
This is the sort of fantasy novel that sounds much, much more complicated when you explain it than it does when you read it, because when you read it it is all plain and natural and the way the world works and everyone takes it for granted. But when you explain it you have to say, well, the world works in this kind of belt of cohesiveness, where the further West you go the more orderly and routine and uninspired and clockwork everything becomes until you reach the areas where there is no thought possible at all, and the further East you go the more quicksilver and magical and fluid and changeable everything becomes until you reach the areas where there is no thought possible at all (and just before those dwell the gods). Time is affected by this, too; easterly is faster travel than west. And of course this is all perfectly normal, is the thing. You can go east and come back a few generations later. It happens. Why not?
And another perfectly normal thing is that the protagonist has the ability to see all the different versions of people through time, the bits of themselves at different ages that they leave around in the places they've lived and also project into the future. So she's always seeing shadows of what people might mean now underneath, or would have meant when they were teenagers, or what have you, and again since this is how she has always lived the sliding tenses are simply how it is. This is one of those books that sounds overly complex, sounds difficult to get a footing in, but it isn't. It's a domestic fantasy and it's incredibly readable. It's about, among other things, the work of keeping house, and why that's worth doing and the ways people do and don't value it as it deserves; and it's about the complexities of having multiple adults in a household, who have children in various combinations; and it's about archaeology and sex and cooking and harvest and, in the way they always happen to people, the gods. (Never trust a god as far as you can throw it. Not that far.)
This is that rarity, a book which has a plot which is, actually, world-changing and complex, but where that is not, necessarily, the point. Most of these people are not out to change the world. They are out to put dinner on the table and run the village and estate and follow their lifelodes, that thing in them that is what they most truly want to do. It can be difficult for you if your lifelode is yeya, magic, which will make you want to go east.
I enjoyed this, in a way where bits of it were happy and reassuring, and bits were melancholy, and some was downright tragic, and all of it was very much one flowing whole, a book like water, a book which makes you realize how inclusive the term slice of life ought to be. It is clearly one of those books I am going to come back to; there is a lot in it. It is very much worth tracking down. It was very much worth looking for. I have never read anything else quite like it.
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 12:32 pm (UTC)(It really is kind of weird.)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 02:52 pm (UTC)"Looking for this one, I see you have published some books by the said author, is there plans to publish this one, as I would like to buy it, but it is hard to get at the moment."
no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 02:58 pm (UTC)It's not even that hard to get as long as you know it exists (which is the real problem), you can buy it from their website and from Amazon, as well as from NESFA tables at cons. It is expensive... but again, they're a small press and they were prepared to publish it when my regular publishers weren't because it was too weird.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 03:16 pm (UTC)Unfortunately I need visa to be allowed to enter USA first and only then I can buy plane tickets to get to these NESFA tables.
(see - compared to the plane ticket and visa costs the book itself is not THAT expensive)
And - while Amazon robs foreign customers shamelessly, if it is listed on Amazon, then it is NOT hard to know it exists. I only buy from Amazon when sending gifts to USA, but I use the site for reference and search of books that interest me nearly daily.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 01:53 pm (UTC)Nine
no subject
Date: 2011-08-08 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-08 02:10 am (UTC)