Due to some highly convenient time traveling, Willow, Lor, Jo, and Myra all end up hanging out together. I have a super squishy soft spot in my heart for this foursome, so I'm not even going to attempt proper analysis or criticism. Anyway, despite the fact that two of them sort of just died in battle (because timey wimey) and one of them has been pretty much useless except as a people-producer for 150 years, they decide that instead of taking some time to relax and enjoy life they're going to go exploring in the big bad human world. As one does.
Unfortunately, while they were time traveling/living in a hidden valley, the outside world has spontaneously decided to become deliberately misogynistic. (I end up exploring how this might have happened in King of Worms, but at the time there was no excuse.) Oh, and they've invented these exploding things that look like rocks that are called...drum roll please...roks! The horror!
My penchant for clever naming (which I would like to think has vastly improved since I was 15) continues as we meet the Evil prince Sean and the dangerously dim King Reg. Because for some reason I wanted the villain's name to be a tribute to the high school that I actually really liked attending. Fail.
We have another Party, some more Thoughtless Cruelty from Evil People and then, inexplicably, a Biblical interlude with Noah...er, Nomar. (Ugh, Nomar?!) Everything starts to fall to pieces (got to live down to that title) and Sean rats the non-humans to Reg. Jo has one BAMF scene and then with a hop skip and a jump we're back to Lavardia for a not-so Climactic Battle that culminates in a flood of, literally, Biblical proportions.
I say all of that with a heavy dose of sarcasm, but again, I really did find this section more enjoyable than the previous two. There are actually some scenes with genuine internal reflection--there are people who feel tired of fighting to survive and, unlike Korcal's OOC mood swings, you understand why. I can see my love of world building starting to sprout in the places where I try to shoehorn cultural tidbits into otherwise innocent plot. They're actually some good ideas that I'd like to expand upon.
Unlike the other parts of this book, the last one is not broken down in any labeled or logical way--I just let the breaks fall where they were needed. I actually really like this format, especially considering that many books these days don't have a table of contents even if they have numbered and titled chapters. What's the point? I use a similar format in King of Worms, though those are numbered even if they range from a paragraph to over twenty pages long.
Let's have some quotes now, then I'll make a few general observations about the whole book.
Roundup
286) I really loved the bickering on this page. ("That's mine!" "No it's not!") I was also weirded out by a) how little time had passed between parts II and III, b) how few people there were in the valley (coughincestcough), and c) how little I thought about what Jo would have been doing in the years between.
291) "Lapis flew about like a pigeon with the power of a warlord." This may be one my favorite things that I have ever written. I like pigeons far too much for my own good.
311) In which an island sinks and a mountain erodes in less than 200 years because geology? What is this thing of which I ought to know plenty?
334) Sean calls Myra "the prettiest girl" in the room and I can't for the life of me think why. It's been established that she's more plain than beautiful and Sean isn't the type to pay compliments. I have a niggling little thought that it was a kind of manipulation, paying a ridiculous compliment so that she might feel obligated to show her appreciation. I'm going to go with that. Also:
Myra: Pig.Huh?
Sean: Aren't we all?
359) In which I at least make an attempt at giving King Reg some depth and, later, repetition is used to heighten tension to the opposite effect.
364) "Nomar began to run forward, remembered himself halfway, and hobbled across the remaining distance." I was surprised how much there was that was funny in this overall pretty dark section. Goodness knows what made me think of this in the first place.
Things I'd Change
- Julian would have an ambassador program so that the people on the valley could stay on the peripherals, observing without any real power to draw attention to themselves. None of this "I'm 30 years old and the King's most trusted adviser" nonsense.
- More back story for the royal family of Quetsoni, of course.
- More cultural differentiation and exploration of Quetsoni.
Overall Notes
Ages: I've commented on this before, but it strikes me now as extremely bizarre that some characters are relatively mature at younger ages while others are relatively immature at older ages. Then there's the fact that time is compressed so tightly: There are only a hundred or so years between major catastrophic events, not nearly enough time to recover from them or grow complacent.
I think this is was partly just because I was younger. At age 14, 20 seemed adult and 30 seemed huge. (This was exacerbated by the fact that the past few generations of my family got married and started families when they were relatively young, so I always thought most people would have a kid or two by the time they were 30.)
But that doesn't really explain the history time frames. As a history nerd, I knew that nothing changed quickly in the world until relatively recently. I simply can't fathom why I had everything happen in such a compressed amount of time.
Crowds: I couldn't help noticing how many relatively intimate scenes there were that took place in front of faceless crowds. I kind of wonder if this went along with the feeling of being watched that I often had when I was younger. It's a common enough feeling for people, that their embarrassing moments are being seen and evaluated when, in fact, most people probably aren't paying attention because they're worrying the same thing about themselves.
I think I felt (and, to some extent, still fee) very responsible for myself because I had the impression that what I did and how I behaved would have a major impact on others. Not materially, of course, but emotionally: I didn't want my parents to be embarrassed to talk about me to their friends. I'm still very conscious of how other people might perceive things--not to the point that I feel like people are watching all the time, but enough to think about how others might see something. I do think it can hold me up sometimes, but I've been teaching myself that it's sometimes okay to give in to impulse.
Maybe there was also a tiny bit of fantasy in there, that one person's troubles might amount to more than just a hill of beans in this world, at least to the people who know and care about them. It's kind of the opposite hypothesis: That I knew no one was watching me as closely as maybe I wished they would, so I gave my characters the audience that I felt they deserved. Even if, now, I know they really didn't.
Romance, Or Lack Thereof: Now that I'm "out", so to speak, I can talk about the weird romantic situations in this book. My mom commented in an early draft of Part I that she thought Willow and Lor were going to end up together romantically. And I did, actually, think about that for a while. I ended up changing it because it was deeply unsatisfying to me. It felt expected, almost obligatory, so I did my best to subvert it by making them siblings.
I knew from the start that Willow and Myra were going to be good friends, but I never wanted them to end up in love for much the same reason. I think I was aware, even before I was very feminist, that there was often an inherent imbalance in a romantic relationship, at least as portrayed in the media. It was important to me that these four friends were all relatively the same--fast forged in the fire of circumstance, the way I later felt about my study abroad friends. That equality couldn't happen when romance was in the cards.
Now, of course, I know that this thinking isn't exactly healthy, but at the time, I didn't feel like I had any other option. Stories with girls in them had romance: there was no way around it.
Jo was my sacrifice. I don't know why it had to be him--his abrupt declaration to Lor at the end of the story is really the beginning of the end of their foursome (though you don't see the fallout in the book). Up until then, they might have escaped and picked up life right where they left off. At the time that I wrote and edited it, Jo's kiss felt more like a betrayal than anything else.
As much as I loved building Willow and Myra's relationship, it feels a little bittersweet to me now. Their genuine friendship was meant to distract from the hints of Jo's interest in Lor: look, here's this clearly developing emotional intimacy between a boy and a girl who aren't related. Obviously it can't be anything but romantic love.
I really resented that implication, that a boy and a girl couldn't be best friends and love each other deeply without ending up in love, if not married. Oh yes, that was often wonderful, but did it have to be inevitable? After all, I didn't want to marry any of my best friends who were girls, so who was to say that I'd want to marry my best friend if they were a boy? I didn't make clear in the book that Willow and Lor wouldn't end up as a couple, but that was always my intention. Not saying it outright was thumbing my nose at anyone who thought it. (A horrible way for a writer to treat their reader.)
Long and short of it is that I was pretty messed up about otherwise basic interpersonal facts, and it showed through here.
Where Are They Now?
This completely gratuitous section exists only to show how little life I have. I'm also skipping A LOT of backstory.
Willow is Lord Overseer of time, responsible for making sure that fictional creatures stay real in their world and fictional in every other world, that anyone who tries to change time to better their own situation is stopped and the damage contained (even if that means ensuring that bad things happen--this ain't Doctor Who), and is pretty much always exhausted. He'll sleep for two days straight, take a week off to recover, and then be back to work.
Lor and Myra became one person in order to combine their abilities to help settle the people of the Star in their new home. She's "Myra" to most and "Lor" to a select few. She's married to Jay Goodgrass, a (literally) gender- and species-fluid goblin general and Puckish mischief maker from my Goodgrass universe, and they have three adopted children and one foster child, all boys.
Willow and Myra/Lor live in a future version of the Palace with Jo, their seven sisters and one brother, an ever-growing gaggle of nieces and nephews both genetic and adopted, and various assumed-dead characters warped, adapted, and elaborated from other stories (Frankenstein's creation, the eldest son of Elizabeth and Will Turner, Anne and George Boleyn, etc.). Lapis loves them all dearly and is always happy to patch people up after their adventures, but doesn't leave the valley anymore.
And they all go on adventures all over space and time and between realities. There are plenty of rough patches, but it all averages out to happily ever after. And "ever after" is ongoing...
Thanks for sticking with me! It was really interesting to read my book again after so long and approach it from a mixed inside/outside perspective.
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