wherein Liz falls into a new minor obsession

[edenfalling]

My Kindle app has been recommending Victoria Goddard at me for a few months now, and a few days ago I finally said, okay! Fine! I will try one of her shorter works and see if I like her writing style! And then I can either safely ignore these recs or I will have found a new good author!

...

I got the second result. :)

Thus far I have finished:

-The Tower at the Edge of the World, in which a nameless young man in an enchanted tower makes the first choice of his life

-In the Company of Gentlemen, in which an old soldier visiting his nephew at university tells a tale of his most ignominious day in the imperial army

-all five extant Greenwing & Dart novels (Stargazy Pie, Bee Sting Cake, Whiskeyjack, Blackcurrant Fool, Love-in-a-Mist), which are Regency-ish comedy of manners meets trope-tastic pulp adventure story meets post-magical-apocalypse worldbuilding meets hang-on-is-this-actually-going-to-end-up-in-democratic-socialist-revolution in addition to return-of-the-rightful-monarch??? political intrigue, and are entirely delightful

This evening I started The Bride of the Blue Wind, the first of the Sisters Avramapul duology, which thus far seems to be an Arabian Nights twist on Eros-and-Psyche gone wrong.

...

Those are all set in the same overarching multiverse, by the way.

...

There are apparently five works on AO3 for The Hands of the Emperor (which I have also purchased but am waiting to read until I finish both Sisters Avramapul novellas because it looks long), all written within the past two months (WHAT), but none for any of her other books.

This is a travesty.

Fortunately, Yuletide exists, and I know at least one canon I am DEFINITELY nominating this year. :DDD

Comments

[theodosia21]

I've read The Hands of the Emperor,Till Human Voices Wake Us, and The Seven Brides-to-Be of Generalissimo Vlad. I've been meaning to read more of her work but I got distracted. :-)

The Hands of the Emperor was really really good - I first came across it in this review, and then I saw Alexandra Rowland/Ariaste's review - I think they may have started a discord that's responsible for the sudden outpouring (can you call it that when there are 5 works on AO3?) of fic in this tiny fandom.

[edenfalling]

I have now read both Sisters Avramapul novellas, The Hands of the Emperor, The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, In the Realms of Gold: Five Stories of Ysthar, and Till Human Voices Wake Us. I really like them! It's really interesting to read fantasy that has all the trappings of high fantasy quest stories but uses them instead of tell stories about government and families and friendships and character growth and stuff.

I think I saw a review of Till Human Voices Wake Us that said the plot ends halfway through the novel but you don't care and keep reading, which is... I mean, the typical fate-of-the-world thing does end there, but that wasn't ever really the plot. The plot is about one human drowning in guilt and responsibility and isolation slowly reawakening to his full self. We just don't usually expect that to be the main text of high fantasy.

It's also interesting to watch some minor details of Goddard's worldbuilding shift over time (there's a slight discontinuity in how many generations are between the Sun, the Moon, and Yr the Conqueror; I don't know that she'd properly pinned down Schooled magic when she wrote Till Human Voices Wake Us; I feel like Kip in the epilogue of The Hands of the Emperor should have received a bit more word of His Radiancy's adventures than a single letter about bank accounts, given the events of The Return of Fitzroy Angursell; etc.) but overall it's impressively consistent.

I will probably read The Seven Brides-to-Be of Generalissimo Vlad next. :)