(no subject)

[rymenhild]

mechaieh asked, "Which five characters in fiction did/do you most want to assassinate (or, at minimum, signficantly maim), and with what?"

Here are the four I could think of on short notice:

4. Camilla n'ha Kyria, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books. Yes, I know you had a horrid past and all, but stop looking grimly and stoically tragic about your degendered self, woman, or I'll take your inch-and-a-half-too-short-to-be-a-sword and... let you kill me. Never mind, that's not a good plan. I can still wish Magda ended up with Jaelle, though.

3. Joshua, Arm of the Starfish, Madeleine L'Engle. Joshua is the ideal human being. He is beautiful, filled with love for all creation, and walks around or flies his little airplane with a big sign over his head marked "Sacrificial Lamb". Kill him sooner and save us the agony and allegory. Maybe he could have a plane crash.

2. Daystar, Talking to Dragons by Patricia Wrede. Daystar's mother kicks wizard rear ends from the Mountains of Morning to the Enchanted Forest and back again. Daystar's father at least attempts self-sufficiency in an endearing manner. Daystar himself is just boring and confused, and ought to be roasted over dragonfire until he acquires some flavor and texture.

1. Pamela, from Samuel Richardson's book by that name. Alas, woe, poor Pamela will lose her chastity. Eventually. In three hundred pages. When she marries him. Then the book goes on for two hundred more pages after that...! The book would be much improved if, near the beginning, someone had taken a spork to Pamela's true, precious jewel, the one that could never be replaced.

Comments

[sovay]

Unless I am grievously mistaken, I read Calling on Dragons in sixth grade, in Nova Scotia. I borrowed a copy from one of the other girls in my class, having run through all of my own books quite early on in the trip. Mostly what I remembered was the Trina Schart Hyman cover—I love how she renders the characters—and the click of "Ah, this is how we got here." Morwen's cats. Killer, very blue and levitating. I still think the earlier books don't mesh as seamlessly with Talking to Dragons as they might, but this may be the danger of writing the last book first. Fortunately, we have "Utensile Strength" in her Book of Enchantments to provide a somewhat more consistent closure for the Enchanted Forest Chronicles (at least as far as I can tell). Also that ubiquitous appellation ". . . of Doom." Applied to a frying man. How can you lose?

Entirely off-topic: have you read Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward? If not, you might like these very much. They are Regency romances in a slightly alternate England—the same setting as Sorcery and Cecelia and The Grand Tour (although I have not read the latter) which she wrote with Caroline Stevermer. With all the usual complications of Regency romances, of course, made only slightly more complicated by the addition of magic. Good stuff.