Fifteen Percent Concentrated Power Of Will

I don’t often say this, but I regret reading this book, a collection of short stories by Lindholm (aka Hobb). Not only did I dislike nearly all of them, but many of them were creepy and unpleasant, full of child abuse, animal abuse, preachiness, and despair. In particular, two stories were largely centered around cat corpses. There’s a theme I can do without!

I got the book from the library because I love Lindholm’s Ki and Vandien series, and enjoyed almost all her novels written as Lindholm. (I see cheap used copies of Harpy's Flight
here.) I also liked Hobb’s first two “Assassin” and “Ship” books enough to read most of her other novels, even though the rest ranged from okay to terrible.

But I had forgotten, or traumatically repressed, that of the two Lindholm short stories I’d previously read, one was the charming Ki and Vandien adventure “Bones for Dulath” (not reprinted in this volume, probably because it’s too much fun,) but the other was the awesomely depressing lizard messiah story (which was reprinted, probably because it’s so full of DOOM.) It also contains my new nominee for the ultimate Never befriend a person with problems story.

“Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man” is an exception to the doom parade. It’s a cute urban fantasy romance – a bit too cute for my taste.

“Finis” is a vampire story with a predictable twist ending.

“Drum Machine” is an annoying, preachy sf story about genetically engineered babies, the Horror of Sameness, and how if we eliminate mental illness, we will eliminate creativity. SIGH.

“Cut” is an annoying, preachy sf story in which the price of allowing girls to get abortions without their parents’ permission is that anyone over 15 can now make any bodily alteration without their parents’ permission, but parents can do anything to their children if they’re under 15. The heroine’s grand-daughter is going to voluntarily undergo female genital mutilation, and make her infant daughter do the same. This story was effectively manipulative, but when I’m being manipulated, I’d like it to be little less obvious. The foreword notes that “Cut” isn’t supposed to be an anti-abortion polemic, which is surprising given how exactly it reads as one.

The Inheritance

( Cut for spoilers regarding DOOM, child abuse, dead cats, and the Lizard Messiah. )

Most Gratuitously Depressing Novel (involving an apocalypse)

( I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman )

Most Gratuitously Depressing Novel (not involving an apocalypse)

( Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse )

Most Gratuitously Depressing Short Fiction (involving an apocalypse)

Most Gratuitously Depressing Short Fiction (not involving an apocalypse)

( A Touch of Lavender, by Megan Lindholm, and The Necklace, by Guy de Maupassant )

Most Gratuitously Depressing Dramatic Work (involving an apocalypse)

( Wolf's Rain )

Most Gratuitously Depressing Dramatic Work (not involving an apocalypse)

( In the Company of Men )

Due to p/o/p/u/l/a/r d/e/m/a/n/d one person's suggestion, I am reprinting two posts I first wrote on usenet here. I will edit and also update them a bit to add books I hadn't read at the time, but if they seem familiar, that's why.

Due to the success of the novels written under the name of Robin Hobb, the earlier novels written as Megan Lindholm are slowly but surely being reprinted. You can order them from amazon.uk.

Whatever you feel about Hobb, be aware that Lindholm is extremely different: slim and pithy rather than fat and sprawling, far more tightly plotted, often dark and sometimes very dark but without lurid suffering, determinedly different rather than using standard fantasy tropes. Her knack with worldbuilding and characterization remains the same.

WIZARD OF THE PIGEONS
An urban fantasy set in a vividly pictured Seattle. Wizard is a homeless-- surprise!-- wizard, a loner Vietnam vet who performs small helpful magics while trying to make it on the streets. The portrayal of homelessness, while nowhere near what I'd call realistic, is still considerably grittier and less sentimentalized than in the usual (and, in my mind, rather unfortunate) genre of "magical street people.") It's also worth noting that this was one of the very first urban fantasies to deal with that terrain.

A very well-written and well-detailed book. A sequence where Wizard goes about his day, using the tricks of survival necessary to get so much as a cup of coffee and someone's leftovers and, almost incidentally, changing the lives of a father and son, is particularly striking.

Unfortunately, there is also a standard-issue fantasy plot involving a mysterious evil force chasing Wizard. Everything connected to it is forced, confusing, and unnecessary, and leads to a final confrontation in which I'm still not sure exactly what happened.

Was it like the end of A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, or like a traditional Evil Force overcome at great cost? I have no idea. Lindholm probably felt that she needed a big evil magic force in a fantasy novel, but I think the book would have been better without it. It's still a very good book.

THE REINDEER PEOPLE; WOLF'S BROTHER
Prehistoric fantasies that read as one book, more historical than fantasy. Well-written as usual, but perhaps because I'm not fond of the setting, I don't recall them well.

THE KI AND VANDIEN SERIES
A terrific small-scale fantasy series, set in a peculiar world populated with inventive aliens/weird creatures and starring an engaging duo, the Gypsy-turned-trader Ki (how do you rebel against Gypsy heritage? By being as practical and straightlaced as possible) and her partner/boyfriend, the wild man and swordfighter Vandien. Ki and Vandien are great characters, and I'd marry the latter in a second.

HARPY'S FLIGHT
A striking, intense novel, in which Ki is recovering from the loss of her _first_ husband and children. In a smoothly structured sequence of flashbacks/present day action, Ki stays with her late husband's family, which turns out to have some very weird secrets, and after that has disastrously fallen through, she braves the snowy mountains in the company of an unwanted passenger, a down-on-his-luck man named Vandien. The opposite of any save-the-world fantasy, and much better than most of those.

THE WINDSINGERS
This one has its dark passages, and continues Lindholm's unsentimental characterization, but is lighter in tone and often funny. Ki discovers that her heritage is not what she'd thought as she undertakes a weird cargo assignment, hauling the disassembled pieces of a magician, and Vandien undertakes an equally peculiar mission to rescue a sunken chest from an underwater temple, with an even more peculiar team of rented amphibians pulling his wagon. Gripping, ironic, and often touching.

THE LIMBRETH GATE
Ki's heritage comes back to haunt her, Vandien goes to the rescue, and we sojourn in a very eerie country like something out of C. L. Moore. A good solid story, but without the emotional weight of the others.

LUCK OF THE WHEELS
This one's apparently somewhat controversial. I think it's the best of the bunch. Ki and Vandien are forced by financial troubles to take on a passenger, an obnoxious teenage boy named Goat. Goat is much more dangerous than he seems, and is also entangled in a small-scale rebellion. The ensuing consequences are as dark as anything in HARPY'S FLIGHT, but, in the end, as life-affirming.

A sequence toward the end in which Vandien is forced into a brutal swordfighting contest, his solution to the either-way-he-dies situation that leads to, and a party with a bunch of samurai tiger-creatures constitutes some of Lindholm's most intense and blackly funny writing yet. Emotionally wrenching and very rewarding.

ALIEN EARTH
Lindholm's only sf novel. Like all her work, unusually small and personal in scale for a genre known for big sprawling important epics. In a somewhat dystopian future, the lives of a modern man who's been cryogenically preserved, two humans of the time, an unpleasant insectile alien, and a living starship, the Beastship Evangeline, become entangled. Absorbing and with an exquisite final page, but a trifle slow and dry.

CLOVEN HOOVES
A beautifully written, intense, and painful novel about a contemporary woman's relationship with a faun. I don't know if it actually is autobiographical in any sense, but it has the flavor of lived experience. The protagonist grew up a wild girl in wild Alaska, running with the dogs, butchering moose, and wandering the woods with her friend the faun. Now she's a grown woman, married to an all-American man and with a young son. But circumstances drag her and her family to stay with her husband's realistically dreadful family... and then the faun returns.

Lindholm's most emotional and unclassifiable novel, and maybe her best. If you're a mother with small children, you may not want to read it.

THE GYPSY. A collaboration with Steven Brust.

An oddball urban fantasy, not as good as either author's solo work. A cop tangles with figures from Gypsy legend. Neither characters nor plot are as vivid as one might expect, though the prose is good. The folk-rock-worldbeat soundtrack by Boiled in Lead can be purchased on CD, and I like it better than the book.