[Bumped]
“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” is Mandolin’s first novella, just published online by Subterranean Press. Her longest pieces, in the past, have been novellettes; this is her longest published work to date.
It’s also my favorite of any of Mandolin’s stories. I love the anti-hero protagonist; I love the epic scope of the story; I love the supporting characters. I think this story deserves to become Mandolin’s second Hugo nomination, and her second Nebula nomination as well.
So: Take a little time. Get up, leave the computer, and make yourself a bracing hot cup of coffee or tea, whichever you prefer. Sit back down, warm beverage in hand, and turn off the instant messaging and the twitter and the text messaging and all the other things that beep or boop at you every ten minutes. And read it.
If your story preferences are anything like mine, you’ll want to read it twice.
It started out excellent and finished fairly strong but I didn’t really buy some of the narrative in the middle section. The narrator’s willingness to use her magic to help a male rescue his village, even to the point of having an intimate soul relationship with him just so he can live a little bit longer, is jarringly discordant with the narrator’s later ideological consistency about teaching men. Could have used a couple thousand words there to put that shift/contrast into play.
That aside I should hasten to say (12 hours later, so I guess it isn’t all that hasty) that I was really drawn into the story. I am usually someone who thinks “this should be shorter” but this is an exception.
Thank you, Robert.
I was a little bit disappointed with how you handled the dwarf character, Kyan. I don’t mean to suggest that a dwarf can never play a villainous role, but I think when dealing with characters with dwarfism it is important to remember the history of dwarfism in fiction – that is, to recall that their role as twisted evil servants is almost as well worn as their role as court jester or adorable fairyland resident. Dwarf villains can undoubtedly be done well, but as a rule I feel that if you aren’t willing to put a lot of time and effort into building nuance into their character, it’s better not to. It was both uncreative and, to someone sensitive to dwarfism issues, gratuitous and offensive.
I have no doubt that this was not something which you added into your story maliciously. And ultimately it was a minor part of the story. But being hit with that right in the beginning, as someone with a personal stake in such issues, really took me out of the story, and I found it difficult to want to jump back in.
That aside, I found the story otherwise very engaging and beautifully written. You are an extremely talented writer, and it was a pleasure to read your story.
I rather liked the vicious little fucker. So he was an evil dwarf. Dwarves can’t be evil? Besides, he thought he was doing the right thing, serving his queen who he loved, etc. Deluded, sure, whatever, who isn’t.
Smack down my presumption in offering an idea freely, o author, but I could see this story, split into a bunch of shards, as the intro pieces to an epic series set in this magic-using humanish universe. The narrator is the one person, or one of the few persons, to see it all, or at least to have some perspective on the whole sweep.
It’s funny that you should mention the possibility of dwarfs being evil, Robert, because had to managed to slog through my comment all the way to the second sentence, you would have noticed that I acknowledged that dwarfs can indeed be evil. Actually, I said it twice. My issue was not that someone dared to portray a dwarf as a villainous character – rather, it was that the portrayal was deeply stereotypical and lacking in a nuance that I would have hoped to have seen, given the long, long history of offensive portrayals of dwarfism in fiction. As stated before, the image of a dwarf (and indeed of all people with physical disabilities and deformities) as backstabbers and servants of evil is a prevalent cliche, particularly in works of fantasy. Now, the use of a cliche is hardly the end of the world, except when you consider how rare fair portrayals of dwarfism actually are in our culture. Then the cliche is not just a cliche – the cliche becomes the average person’s chief experience with dwarfism. That is why I found the portrayal to be unfortunate. Whether or not you like the character, the fact remains that he does indeed perpetuate a stereotypical image of people with dwarfism, and there are not a whole lot of not-stereotypical images out there to counteract those.
All that aside, given that you likely neither know nor especially care about issues pertaining to dwarfism, I am somewhat curious as to why it was you thought it was a good idea to correct me. Was my saying that I have a personal stake in the issue not enough of a clue to you that I know what I’m talking about, or did you just decide that in the two seconds you spent thinking about your reply, you would be able to know better than I would?
I meant to comment a while back. I liked this very much; I read it through from beginning to end in one sitting (when I should have been doing something else). It’s quite complex, especially given it’s length, and presented non-Western-traditional sex roles without being simplistic or presenting a “look how wonderful it would be if women were in charge” meme. Very enjoyable.
And now, having offered praise, I beg your forgiveness. I should probably put this in an open thread, but the people here are the people interested in fiction and there’s no current open thread, so here goes:
A few days ago I found myself in the Science Fiction section of a Borders with money in my pocket. And I realized I had absolutely no clue on what to buy.
It’s been many years since I was current on the genre. I grew up on The Good Doctor, Robert Silverberg, Harry Harrison, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. VanVogt, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Harlan Ellison, C. J. Cherryh, James Blish, Philp K. Dick, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Lois McMaster Bujold, Urusla K. LeGuin, Riger Zelazny etc. I know not all those names will be big favorites here but that’s what was big at the time. I do like my SF somewhat hard. So who would you recommend I might buy the next time I find myself in this situation?
Ron:
I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it. :)
Some of the bigger SF names who write “somewhat hard” SF might be: Geoff Ryman, Joe Haldeman, John Scalzi, Charles Stross, Paolo Bacigalupi, Octavia Butler… those are the ones that come to mind right away…
Hi Triste,
Please forgive me for taking a couple of days to reply. I’ve been having health problems this summer.
You’re right. I should have been more aware of the cliches I was engaging with. One of my first readers flagged it, but he framed it as a fantasy cliche rather than as disablism, and I didn’t make the leap.
Here are my thoughts… I know they don’t excuse everything, and they aren’t the final word, but I thought it might be somewhat useful to lay down what I was thinking:
*The Kingdom of Flowered Hills believes that magic is innate to (upper class) women and that it does not exist in (almost all) men. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t allow any man to train as a magician. At the time I was writing, I was thinking about an anthropological paper I’d read (sorry, I don’t remember the source) that was discussing how people with certain kinds of physical disabilities–dwarves were used as an example–have been perceived as being innately magical in a number of cultures. I thought that was interesting… and also fit in with the Kingdom of Flowered Hills since that kind of belief might create some male magicians.
I’m sure you could tell, but one thing I was thinking about with the story was the social versus genetic construction of magic. Obviously, the main character initially believes magic is genetically determined (and gender-linked), and is very upset by the eventual evidence that it’s not gender-linked. I liked having a male magician in the early part of the story because it shows where Naeva’s logic about what men can do is weird from the beginning.
*I don’t know that Kyan is necessarily evil. I see where there’s a legitimate reading of him as evil, since the narrative poses him as evil, even though the narrator is unreliable. Of course, I also see how his being a henchman is reminiscent of other relationships (e.g. the White Queen and her dwarf, etc.) Naeva certainly sees Kyan as evil, but then Naeva is … well, I don’t know if I’d call her evil (possibly because I don’t really believe in evil as a concept), but Amp assures me she’s evil. Either way, her perspective is suspect. That doesn’t make Kyan good… by my reading, he’s probably a jerk. But by my reading, there’s no one from the initial kingdom who’s not a jerk.
Anyway, that said, now that you point it out, I do see the offensive cliches you’re pointing to. I’m sorry the story was upsetting on that level, and thank you for taking the time to point it out.
Ron, another hard SF writer you might check out is Robert Charles Wilson — the book I’m thinking of is Spin.
Kim Stanley Robinson is hardish SF, and Red Mars was excellent. But he’s also very left-wing, which you might find a distraction from the enjoyment.
To be honest, the reaction you had to it makes it a great deal less upsetting in general. Thank you for graciously accepting the criticism. I did greatly enjoy your story, and found it a breath of fresh air in a lot of other ways – it broke down the “peaceful matriarchal paradise” stereotype quite nicely, for starters. I have recommended it to a number of other people, and like Robert I would love to see more stories set in this amazing little universe you’ve made.
Thanks for the recommendations, folks!
Hah! I’ve read some of Kim’s stuff. That’s interesting. Until this moment, I had presumed Kim was female. Androgynous name, don’t you know.
The characterization of the dwarf at the beginning made me go ARE YOU FOR SERIOUS, but after realizing that the narrator is totes unreliable (my favorite kind!) I didn’t see Kyan as evil. Not to say the way he is portrayed wasn’t problematic, but I can see you already discussed that at length upthread.
That said! I enjoyed so many aspects of this, especially just how brutal the women’s society is, how was strong and vibrant and fucked up. As Triste said, so many stories portray matriarchal societies as awesomesauce utopias (ahem, Herland). Which are fine! But your version is much more fun. I loved it so hard, definitely read it more than once.
That’s a remarkable piece of world-building.
I read the story in September, recently read it again, and am only now coming back to comment. I liked it very much – the surprising looks into different cultures, the magic – but feel I didn’t get it, somehow. For instance, I still don’t see where Naeva is an unreliable narrator. And should we like her? Look down on her for her prejudices? Just enjoy the story? That’s the kind of thing I’m wondering about not getting.
This is just one reader’s opinion, obviously, but I think Naeva is reliable when it comes to reporting the immediate facts of what’s happening around her, but extremely unreliable when it comes to her moral judgments and her assessments. Most obviously, I think any time she’s interpreting what’s going on around her through the lens of her gender beliefs, she’s unreliable.
Well, that’s up to you as a reader. But I do want to point out that these aren’t mutually exclusive. We can like her, think that her bigotries are stupid and harmful, and enjoy the story for the story.
For myself, I like her in the sense that she’s got an attractive and compelling storytelling voice. I enjoy my time with her as a reader. On another level, though, she’s obviously a terrible, terrible human being, responsible for I can’t even count how much death and suffering, so I don’t like her at all on that level. And of course, I enjoyed the story a lot.