The Enchanted Forest Chronicles Readalong: Talking to Dragons

Well, Squiders, here we are at the end of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. The elaborate plan set up at the end of Calling on Dragons has been executed, Mendanbar has been freed, the wizards have been vanquished, and everyone is going to live happily ever after. (Or are they? Duh duh duuuuun…)

(I mean, I assume they are, because this is the last book. I kind of wish Ms. Wrede would revisit them, however. I imagine there’s rather a lot you could do with the next generation. I mean, assuming Daystar and Shiara do get married, what if there’s some sort of incompatibility between fire-witch magic and the Enchanted Forest’s magic? And so forth.)

(Moving on.)

Now, if at any point during this you say to yourself, “What the heck is she talking about?”, I want you to know that there’s two versions of this book. You see, this book was written FIRST. So you can actually think of (and, in retrospect, they kind of read this way) the other three books as prologues to this book. So she wrote the book, then went back and wrote the other three, and then changed this one to line up better with the other three. If, for some reason, you have a pre-1990 version of Talking to Dragons, you have the original and quite honestly I’m not sure what the difference is. So! I apologize if things don’t line up.

I am torn about this particular book. On one hand, I like it better in some regards. I like the story, the idea that the main character has no idea what he’s doing, because if he did it wouldn’t work. I like Daystar and Shiara (and I really like the name Shiara). But on the other hand, it doesn’t flow well from the other three, and I’m sure that’s because it was juryrigged at the end to fit into the rest of the series.

Cimorene seems really out of character at the end and it really, really bothers me. She seems to be pushing marriage on Shiara and Daystar and for someone who fought against her own so much, it rings really false. Morwen and Telemain continue to be awesome, though they don’t get a lot of screen time. (Page time?) Some of Morwen’s cats from Calling on Dragons seem to still be alive as well, even though it’s been 17 years. I mean, cats can live into their twenties. Maybe witches’ cats get added benefits, who knows.

So! Did you enjoy the series? Final thoughts, anyone?

We’ll be reading Howl’s Moving Castle next to see how a different author handles the whole fairy tale satire thing. If you’re highly motivated, you can also watch the movie, and then in the comments we can discuss how the two are nothing like each other but, yet, are both awesome.

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles Readalong: Calling on Dragons

Nooooooooooo cliffhanger.

Well, Squiders, we’ve reached book 3. (I think this may have been the one I read first as a kid. It seems…more familiar than the others, if such a thing can be said about a series of books one’s already read multiple times.) You know, it’s a bit interesting to note that each book in the series is from someone else’s point of view. We had Cimorene’s, then Mendanbar’s, and now Morwen’s. (Talking to Dragons, Book 4, is from Daystar’s point of view. And also is first person.)

(Also, I would like to point out how strange it is for a supposedly quite practical person like Cimorene to name her child Daystar. But moving on…)

I’ve always rather liked Morwen, probably because she’s no-nonsense and has a lot of cats, though there were times that I felt there were too many cats. Cats in the garden, cats under the porch, cats in the windows…so many cats. At some points I almost agreed with Vamist about the sheer number of them.

(I know Morwen points out that more cats = more powerful spells, and perhaps that will be important in Talking, but she only used two cats at a time here.)

Right, plot. The wizards continue to be up to no good. I admit I feel like I don’t quite understand why they’re up to no good, though. I suppose they’re stealing magic, but I have to wonder what they need all that magic for. I mean, it seems like an awful lot of work, and they must want the Enchanted Forest’s magic really bad to go to the trouble, and I have to wonder if there isn’t easier magic elsewhere to suck up or if they’ve already sucked it all up and now must resort to desperate measures. Where does magic go after a wizard uses it, anyway?

Anyway. The wizards have stolen Mendanbar’s awesome sword! Which is bad, because it’s directly tied in the forest’s magic. And so Cimorene, Morwen, Telemain, Kazul, a couple of Morwen’s cats and a former rabbit that is now not a rabbit named Killer go in search of it. (Mendanbar has to stay in the forest to anchor the magic and is grumpy about it because Cimorene is pregnant and he doesn’t feel like she should be traipsing about fighting wizards. More on that in a second.)

Now, I have a couple of bones to pick here. They take Killer along with them because Telemain wants to use the spell on him to find the wizards, but then they never bother. Also, Morwen and Telemain say they want to test the transportation spell on Brandel before they go after the sword, and then, unless I skimmed over important information, they never do. I understand it’s hard to keep track of all your subplots, but come on, people, didn’t anyone notice that these had been dropped at the time?

Also, having recently been pregnant, I would guess Ms. Wrede never has been (and Wikipedia confirms my suspicions, woo). Cimorene does not act like a pregnant woman would act. In fact, that’s mostly ignored unless there needs to be a reason for someone to protest her doing something. Oh, and as an important plot point at the end.

Complaining aside, though, these books continue to be fun, and I like most of the characters, and even Killer didn’t bother me even though, you know, they totally forgot about the reason they brought him along. It is a bit odd for the third book in a series to be the only one that ends on a cliffhanger, but it all somewhat makes sense if you know that the fourth book is the one that was written and published first.

Hm. I think I shall lay off the questions, since it doesn’t seem like anyone feels like answering them anyway. What was your favorite part, Squiders? Anything you dislike thus far? Anything else you’d like to note or talk about?

This seems like a good point to talk about The Book of Enchantments, which is a related short story collection. Yea, nay? We’ll read it between the fourth book and Howl’s Moving Castle if we’re going to do it. And we’ll discuss Talking to Dragons on April 30th.

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles Readalong: Searching for Dragons

(Man, that’s a mouthful of a title, isn’t it?)

Well, moving right along here in readalong land, aren’t we? I think I managed to read this in about three hours. Maybe less. Personally, I liked it a lot more than Dealing With Dragons. I think I like Mendanbar a little more than Cimorene, though not sure what that says about me. It may be that teenage!me liked Cimorene because I identified with her not being quite sure what her place in the world was, and adult!me appreciates that Mendanbar generally knows what he’s doing with his life.

All right, let’s do a quick overview for those who aren’t actually reading along and so do not know anything about the series, so they don’t live in utter confusion for the rest of the entry. The first book, Dealing With Dragons, introduced us to Princess Cimorene, who was not a typical princess and continuously butted heads with her parents for trying to get her to do princess-y sorts of things. She runs off and becomes the dragon Kazul’s princess (a post that is rarely volunteered for), and manages to stop a plot involving the Society of Wizards to get a certain dragon crowned as king (with help). Kazul is crowned King, Cimorene is happy with her spot, and everything is lovely.

Here in Searching for Dragons, we have Mendanbar, King of the Enchanted Forest, who is generally quite happy with things except his steward really thinks he should get on with marrying. He goes for a walk and discovers a large area of the forest has been destroyed, seemingly by dragons. Morwen (oh, Morwen, you continue to be my favorite) recommends he go and talk to Kazul about it, because there’s something funny about the whole set-up. Mendanbar goes to do so, but alas! Cimorene informs him that Kazul is missing and talks him into accompanying her in search of said dragon.

Maybe because I’m older and genre-savvy, but I thought the plot was pretty obvious from the get-go. What I really like about this book is two things: 1) the fairy tale twists, and 2) the description of the magic.

Ms. Wrede takes great pleasure in twisting as many fairy tales as possible. There’s the giant that only eats Englishmen (never mind that there are no Englishmen, because there is no England), the dwarf who’s legally changed his name to Herman because he’s gotten stuck with two many children from people not being able to guess his name, the uncle who’s not actually evil but feels the need to pretend to keep up appearances, and so forth. It’s brilliant and I like it a lot. (Herman’s probably my favorite, though.)

And then the magic. There’s magic in the first book, of course, with there being dragons and wizards and witches, but here Mendanbar is so entwined with the magic of the Enchanted Forest that he can actually see the constructions of the spells (his and other people’s) which leads to some very interesting solutions to some problems. Spell construction has always been fascinating to me as a reader and a writer, and I love to see how other people go about doing it.

Right, onto the questions. As always, your own comments and questions are welcome.

1) Mendanbar comes across pretty genre-savvy himself, since he knows he needs to follow advice exactly as it was told him to avoid disaster. Do you think this is a consequence of growing up in the Enchanted Forest?

2) How exactly do you think one repairs a broken flying carpet?

3) Why do you think Mendanbar’s magic doesn’t seem to decrease significantly outside the forest? Do you think there’s a distance limit on how far away it will still work?

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles Readalong: Dealing with Dragons

Hoorah! Here we go, Squiders. If this is your first time through this series, I hope you’re enjoying it thus far. I know I am.

What’s the most brilliant about this series, I think, is how it takes fairy tale conventions and turns them on their heads. Or at least mocks them a little bit. (This is a common thread throughout the series. It gets more ridiculous.)

When I first read these books, probably in my early teens, I really identified with Cimorene. She’s tall! Likes non-traditional things! Isn’t afraid to defend herself! Now I notice that she tends to be smart when the plot needs her to be and not when the plots needs her not to be, but it wasn’t too jarring. (Except for inability to accept that a female dragon could be king. I remember that part bothered me when I was younger too.)

There’s a lot of elements I really like about this book. I love that wizards melt in soapy water. (That’s important throughout the series, if I remember correctly.) I love Morwen and her cats. I love the stone prince’s tale. I love that the talking frog is not a prince, but has picked up a few things from hanging out with them.

Admittedly, this series doesn’t have the depth as Harry Potter or the Time Quintet, but I think it makes up for it by being so much fun, and by being so very aware of the genre that it satires.

(As a random aside, I have a paperback copy of the book, probably the first paperback printing, and I think that Kazul–at least, I assume it’s Kazul–on the cover looks really strange, and isn’t nearly large enough, seeing how Cimorene should come up to Kazul’s shoulder when Kazul is on all fours.)

All right, onto discussion.

1. Which twist on fairy tale convention was your favorite?

2. The dynamic between the dragons and the princesses is very interesting. Do you think it’s worth it to keep a princess for the minor status increase it comes with, even knowing that you will have to face knights and princes coming to save them?

3. The book focuses on the way things are supposed to be done. How does going against what’s expected affect the characters?

As always, feel free to leave your own impressions and questions in the comments. And we’ll discuss Searching for Dragons on February 28th.

Magic Doesn’t Solve Everything

Despite being one of my very favorite sayings (“Why does blah blah blah?” “Magic.”), magic must, unfortunately, make sense.

This means if you are creating a world where magic exists, there has to be rules, and the rules must be consistent and make sense (in the context of your world).

This, Squiders, is called a Magic System.

The good news is aside from the making sense and being consistent thing, your magic system can be pretty much anything.

And you don’t have to explain to your audience how the magic system works and what its rules are. Like a lot of backstory, as long as you know, it’s all good.

So, if you’re working on putting together a magic system for your story/webcomic/video game, what have you, here are some questions you might ask yourself:

• Who can use magic? Why?
• Can magic be taught? Is it hereditary?
• How does magic manifest (for example, is it elemental)?
• Are there magical beings, and how does their magic differ, if at all?
• How has technology compensated for the level of magic (for example, a world with high magic probably has low technology, since there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel)?
• How has magic affected society, culture, politics?
• What are magic’s limits (what can’t magic do)?
• What is the source of magical power (tap into mana, etc.)?
• What are magic’s costs?

This last question is something that’s come up in more recent fantasy. If you look at older fantasy, a lot of times there’s no consequences of using magic, no limits, etc., but in the gritty story era of today, magic has costs. In some cases, the bigger the spell, the more energy it drains, or you may draw life out of nearby creatures, or something along those lines. Magic becomes more interesting when there’s the risk of something going wrong.

Any additional questions you would include in generating a magic system, Squiders? Anything you feel I’ve left out? Any magic systems (yours or ones in the media you consume) that you really like?

Announcing the Enchanted Forest Chronicles Readalong

Hoorah! Our first of the year. You’ll notice, Squiders, that we’re changing from re-reads to readalongs. I want people who have never read the particular series we’re working on to feel welcome to join in.

To start ourselves off for the year, we’re going to be reading through Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles which, if you are unfamiliar with them, are fantastic examples of fairy tale satire (and have also been a major influence on my own writing). There’s four books: Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons.

These are YA books, so they read pretty fast.

When we get to Calling we’ll discuss whether or not to add in a related collection of shorts, The Book of Enchantments. There’s at least one in there that is directly related to the series (and involves an enchanted frying pan, if I recall correctly), but I worry that it may be too hard to find. Feel free to let me know here if you’d like it included or not.

Also, as a bonus and to compare fairy tale satires and another of my very favorite authors (and an influence), we’ll read Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle at the end.

(There’s two sequels to Howl’s: Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways. Right now, I’m leaning towards not including them, but if everyone really likes Howl’s I’m open to it.)

(And yes, Miyazaki made a movie of it–which is also excellent–but not really at all similar unless you count that some characters have the same name and there is a castle. That moves. Miyazaki put an environmental turn on it, which is really not surprising if you look at the rest of his work.)

So! If you want some fun, excellent fantasy once a month for the next however many months, jump on board! We’ll do discussion of Dealing with Dragons on January 31st.

Which is a Thursday.

Time Quintet Re-read: An Acceptable Time

Well, Squiders, here we are at the end of our re-read. I hope you’ve had a good time of it, and stay tuned for our next one, to be announced some time in the next few weeks. And it you hadn’t read the Time Quintet yet, I hope you enjoyed the books.

To be perfectly honest, I thought there were only four books in the series, but I did a Google search in the process of posting about the re-read and lo! there were five books.

I admit I don’t read much L’Engle outside of these books. I read A Ring of Endless Light last year and I didn’t really like it, so I think it’s the combination of science and religion that I like. She does it somewhat masterfully, really. To paraphrase something Bishop Colubra says in this book, it doesn’t matter if you believe in God, but he does, and that’s okay. Characters are religious or not, nephilim and cherubim exist, “El” talks to Noah, but none of it is in your face.

All right, onto An Acceptable Time. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like characterization isn’t really one of L’Engle’s strong points. All of her main and peripheral characters are essentially good-hearted people who do the right thing, whether or not they are a native person from three thousand years ago or a modern person. I’m not sure, if you took Polly out and replaced her with Meg, that you’d see any real difference in the story.

Zachary’s an ass. He was one in A Ring of Endless Light too.

Let’s see. It’s nice to see some continuity between this and Planet, with the People of the Wind, though there is no mention of dark planets or IT or anything of that nature. (And now that we’ve gotten all the way through without returning to IT at all, I’m a little disappointed. Maybe if she’d tied IT to the events in A Wind in the Door a bit, I’d be less annoyed.) And the part in the past, if you ignore the ability of all the characters to learn languages rather quickly, is interesting.

I did have a bit of an issue with the “modern” day part, however — specifically how disbelieving the Murrys are about the whole idea of time-travel. They were there for A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door. They know things like this happen, even if they’re completely unaware of the events of Many Waters and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. I’m not sure why so many characters are suddenly so closed-minded.

(Also, did something happen to Charles Wallace? Polly mentions that he “would have liked” the changes to his bedroom early in the book, and then he’s not mentioned again, hardly, though Meg, Calvin, Sandy, and Dennys are.)

All right, onto the discussion questions. As always, feel free to ask your own in the comments.

1. Madeleine L’Engle is sometimes accused of being culturally insensitive when it comes to the People of the Wind. Would you say that this is true when it comes to this book?

2. Polly is staying with her grandparents to be homeschooled, but Charles Wallace and Meg were not allowed to be homeschooled earlier in the series. Why do you think attitudes towards this have changed throughout the series?

3. While most of the “modern” day characters have been seen in other books, why do you think Madeleine L’Engle chose to include the character of Bishop Colubra?

4. Time travel throughout the series is rarely set up so that the time traveler returns to his/her own time without some noticeable passage of time (the only exception being Sandy and Dennys in Many Waters). Why is it important for time to pass in both times?

5. Many of the characters in the past have nature based names such as Cub, Eagle Woman, Winter Frost, Dark Swallow, yet the main characters do not. Why the difference in the naming scheme?

Announcing Seasons Eternal

Hey Squiders, do you have friends or family (or yourself) that enjoy science fantasy? Do you need Christmas (or other holiday) present ideas? Then look no further!

The incredibly sexy ladies over at Turtleduck Press (myself included) have just put out their second anthology, and we decided to work from a shared world concept this year. Our going idea was: what would happen on a world where the seasons had stopped changing, locking entire regions into one of the four? How would society have to adapt to continue to survive, say, if summer’s heat never waned, if autumn never finished its decay?

We set up ourselves up with some vague parameters: the seasons would have stopped changing about a hundred years previously, only a few generations back, so that society could still be in a state of flux, but enough time had passed that they would have figured out enough to continue surviving. And then we went to it.

The result is an interesting mix, as each author had to imagine what a season that never ended would look like, what it would do to the land, the animals, the people, and then come up with society’s response. Would they turn to technology? Would they run from it? Would stories of the seasons make it into legend, or would they be forgotten?

Could it be fixed? Would they try?

As with our last anthology, the proceeds from sales go to benefit UNICEF, hopefully making children around world’s holidays a little brighter. Ebooks are available for 99 cents, and the paperback is available for $4.99. Cheap and for a good cause! Oh, and full of science fantasy goodness. More information can be found here, so give it a look!

Time Quintet Re-read: A Swiftly Tilting Planet

I want to begin by saying that I have a paperback copy from 1981, and Charles Wallace has an epically bad late-70s/early-80s haircut on the cover.

Let’s see. Having read this now, I don’t think I’ve read it before. I can remember, probably at least a decade ago, searching through used book stores and rummage sales in search of A Swiftly Tilting Planet because I had the other three books and not this one, but apparently I never actually read the book once I finally acquired it. Go me.

I did like it, though. I thought it made a good continuation from A Wind in the Door with the Echthroi and the upping of the stakes (though I continue to be uncertain how IT and dark planets connect, and there’s no mention of either in this book). I liked how small changes throughout history–even just in a few families’ lines–can turn a potential bad event into a good one.

There were some things I found infuriating, however. Whenever Charles Wallace was Within, he essentially disappeared. We know, from the narration, that his being Within changed something in the time, just a little, to get a more positive outcome over a negative one, to swing the balance, but you have no idea what it was. For example, in the colonial period, where Zylle was being tried as a witch, I assume in the original time line she was burned and so forth, but I couldn’t tell you why it went differently with Charles Wallace. After being Within Madoc, Charles Wallace asks if he gave Madoc the rune, but this wouldn’t have been true in later times because the rune was passed down through the families. So I would have liked just a hint of what changed with Charles Wallace there, what he brought into the equation that hadn’t been there before.

And with most of the times, I could guess at what had changed, but the one with Beezie and Chuck…I have no idea. Sometimes it seemed like most of the point of being there was to get bits of the story, leading up to the final Within, the one that directly determined whether it would be a good or bad future, the one with Matthew Maddox, but then, it was a bit of a false lead-up, because we didn’t get any more insight into what Charles Wallace did to help there than we did elsewhere.

I can see why she went back and set Many Waters  between this and A Wind in the Door. It’s been nine years, and you have to wonder what happened in that time period, why, after two encounters with dark forces in two years, that they’d gone so long without another.

On the other hand, you have unicorns in both this book and Many Waters, and they don’t quite work the same. Gaudior is an intelligent being, who can talk and think and so forth. While the unicorns in Many Waters can also travel through space and time, they don’t seem to be intelligent at all, and don’t really exist when they’re not there. I’m not sure why she chose to have unicorns in both but not be consistent with them.

Sandy and Dennys seem a bit out of character here if you take the events of Many Waters into account. Which is always a risk in backtracking your characters.

Calvin continues to not really be much help.

Questions!

1. Madeleine L’Engle has always been a bit vague about when and where the Time Quintet takes place, sometimes leaving contradictory clues. Based on this book alone, what would you say the when and where is?

2. Is it right for Charles Wallace to push people towards decisions that they would not have made on their own? Why or why not?

3. What is gained by having Meg kythe along for the journey?

4. What do you think the title means?

5. Why do you think it’s necessary to have time pass in the present while Charles Wallace and Gaudior are off riding the wind through time?

As always, your own questions and comments are welcome. And we’ll read our final book, An Acceptable Time, for December 27th.

General Update and Thoughts on Adaptations

First of all, I want to apologize for missing Thursday’s update. I spent all of Thursday convinced it was Wednesday, and it wasn’t until my to-do app yelled at me about not blogging at about 8 PM that I realized my mistake. And then Friday was busy and I didn’t touch a computer all day, and Saturday went much the same, so at that point I figured we were closer to Tuesday than Thursday anyway and gave up.

As for Nano, I am sad to report that it’s not going well. It’s admittedly rather difficult to get anything done around our new addition, and I find that it doesn’t seem to be terribly high on my priority list for the year. I’m not throwing in the towel quite yet, but I’m going to have to do a lot of 3K days to catch up.

Enough of that.

I recently finished reading Ironskin by Tina Connelly. It’s a steampunk-esque novel that came out last month, and purports to be a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, at least from the cover quotes. But it’s not, not really, unless you count some allusions to the fairytale. What it is is a retelling of Jane Eyre, and quite obviously so from the very first chapter.

That got me thinking about whether or not Jane Eyre could be considered a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and how many retellings in you could get on something. It seems like you could get pretty deep if you wanted to, like when a modern retelling of something alludes to another retelling of the same something, or when an adaptation gains as much fame or more than the original.

(That being said, I’m pretty sure Jane Eyre is not a Beauty and the Beast retelling. I don’t think the timing lines up right, though both stories do involve overcoming secrets to love someone. What do you think?)

(Also, I found Ironskin to be an interesting read. If you like Jane Eyre, steampunk, or interesting fantasy worlds, you might consider picking it up.)