2021 read #7: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow.

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

288 pages

Published 2020

Read from November 10 to November 22

Rating: 4 out of 5

First and foremost, it's a delight to read a YA fantasy novel in which the protagonist-narrators show an actual range of emotions. I've had ill luck in recent years with modern YA narrators with chips on their shoulders, incapable of speaking in any meter but sarcasm. Morrow's two alternating viewpoint characters have depth and dimension to them, which shouldn't be this rare, but here we are.

I love the setting Morrow constructs. Beings of folklore -- sirens, elokos, sprites, gargoyles, oracles -- exist in modern society (or history) and everyone knows about them. Everyone knows the stories attached to them but is at least partially aware that the lore is often prejudiced and mistaken. There's no secret underground away from the mundane world. Everyone goes to high school and has to deal with shitty cops. The magical mingles with the mundane in a wondrous way.

Morrow uses the tools of the fantastic to craft a powerful allegory for the silencing of Black voices, particularly those of Black women. The healing powers of family, community, and having your voice truly be heard are an important through-line.

2021 read #6: In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce.

In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce

241 pages

Published 1984

Read from October 31 to November 6

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

It's been a while since I read Alanna: The First Adventure. Three years -- three long, tumultuous years. I can be forgiven for not remembering much at all about the original book. My partner R loves Pierce's Tortall books, though, and encouraged me to give them another go. Especially since we have them here at home, and I'm currently without a library card.

I can't compare Goddess to Alanna more directly. I can say that this volume felt a bit scattershot, an exercise in vibes rather than plot. About three years, coincidentally, breeze by for Alanna in the space of this volume, though the narrative really doesn't feel like it. Major events that feel like they should become the major thrust of the book instead get neat resolutions and on we fly to the next big thing. A war breaks out and gets resolved within a chapter and a half. The nearest thing to an overarching plot, the perfidy of Duke Roger, mostly just hovers in the background while Alanna pretty much lives her life.

In her afterward, Pierce details her struggles as a young reader trying to find any book where a straight girl is an active, ass-kicking warrior protagonist. Given how rare fantasy books about LGBTQIA+ protagonists of any description still are, it reads like a missive from a bizarre parallel universe when Pierce stresses how rare it was to find a warrior girl who liked boys in the books available during own her formative years. Especially when the much-vaunted heterosexuality here involves Alanna pushing away unwanted sexual advances from her friends but secretly wanting them, deep down. Let's just say that part didn't age well at all.

2021 read #5: Witch World by Andre Norton.

Witch World by Andre Norton

222 pages

Published 1963

Read from October 31 to November 3

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

If you browse used paperbacks with any regularity, you've seen this book. Andre Norton was such a prolific and popular SF/F writer during the midcentury pulp period that her books fill discount bins to this day. The Witch World books, in particular, are inescapable. I've orbited around the series for a while, intrigued by their place in the history and development of fantasy fiction yet confident that they would prove to be schlocky trash, and probably not worth the effort.

Sure enough, Witch World fulfilled my expectations. Norton's prose is awkward, written in bulk for a less discerning audience. Our hero is a stock sci-fi archetype, the cool and collected man of action whose unsavory reputation was thrust upon him by an unfair world. At a time when most fantasy was packaged with science-fictiony framing devices, it's almost amusing how our hero stumbles into a crackpot-inventor archetype straight out of a midcentury time-travel tale.

Our heroine is a sorceress from a land of matriarchal power, where mating with a man means losing your spark of magic. You can fill in the gaps of how this is employed as a plot device in a 1960s novel. And surprising no one, at the end our heroine (by implication, at least) proves willing to give up her power in exchange for the big strong embrace of our hero.

I skimmed Wikipedia to get an idea of where the series goes from here. Apparently it turns out that when a magical woman and a magical man love each other very much, their powers complement rather than negate each other, so there's that, I guess. Now that I've done my due diligence, however, I don't feel any desire to revisit Witch World or its dozens of sequels. Give me something newer, gayer, and better written, please!