May 29th, 2008
by
Liz Henry
On the plane on the way home, I read Amberlight, by Sylvia Kelso. It was very lovely!
????????
I loved its odd and poetic language, very leapy & coiled & springy – and the gender reversals & oiled men with gilded calves kept in Towers by their grim warrior politician artist wives who are also super rich and powerful because of matriarchal hereditary ability to communicate with alien consciousness energy/electric/magic stone called qherrique, which they quarry (WHILE ON THEIR PERIODS, DUH) & sculpt and which is a thinly veiled metaphor for political power. They sell the statue things to foreign governments who use them to oppress & conquer. Tellurith, the protagonist, rescues a guy from being left for dead in the gutter after brutal gang rape, and he’s got amnesia. HURT/COMFORT ALERT.
Tellurith thinks he is really hot and objectifies him at every turn especially when he’s fierce yet helpless; angry & psychologically damaged; reluctant yet tarting himself up with the gold nipple paint for her anyway. Let’s just say, it’s kind of hot, but also problematic and instructive. Total reversal of the male gaze.
I very much enjoyed the motivations of the characters and the HUGE BATTLES with lasers and mirrors and catapults & explosions. Warrior pride! Defend your city! But OMG agonize over the injustice of capitalism in private, which your oiled amnesia boy has shown you with a few deft words and eyelash batting, impudent pouts as he paces around the room like a captive lion!
Trashy, yet political!
Do people give up privilege and power easily? NO THEY DO NOT. The end!
In short it is super awesome. But only if you like that sort of thing.
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Liz Henry at
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Filed under Books & Literature | Comments (5)
Yay oiled up amnesia boy who pouts. It reminds me of “Last Hawk” by Catherine Asaro with the matriarchal society and pouty slave boys. I am a complete sucker for books with pouty pleasure slave boys. Hello id vortex.
Hi Liz!
Sue Lange sent me the URL for this – I was really chuffed that you liked Alight so much, I can tell you. And that other people are also big on pouty pleasure slave boys, snicker.
Esp. pleased you liked the big battle scenes, “based on” as they say in the movies, some of the literally epic battles and sieges in Hannibal’s war with Rome – I had a lot of fun with those in a backhanded way, so it’s a kick that a reader liked them too.
In pedantic academic style, though, I shd. just pick up one point: the Houses don’t actually “cut” – quarry – qherrique while the cutter is menstruating. Rather, it’s done at the dark of the moon, by someone who herself is in her “moon-dark” – ie. in the two or three days prior her period, the paramenstruum.
As for hurt/comfort alert, yeah, I was considerably startled when I did read Russ on slash-fic, after I was fully into the SF part of my PhD, a coupla years after I wrote the draft of this novel. At the time of this one I had only been thinking about/ noticing the “damaged hero” syndrome in what was then called Female Gothic – daughters of *Jane Eyre*, basically – from the first half of the PhD.
When Lois (Bujold) read Alight – somewhere round ’02 – she also commented on the echoes of fanfic, which at the time rather startled me, since I’d read Russ by then, but still hadn’t read any fanfic for myself. Supports the theoretical arguments about straight women and the hurt/comfort syndrome very nicely, heh.
Hope you will also like *Riversend*, the sequel, due out in November, which Paula Guran at Juno reckons will “spook” everyone. No more pouty slaveboys, alas, but lots of angst, all the same…
Best wishes and thanks again
SK
I am just nearing the end of Riversend and holy id vortex Batwoman. That’s the slashiest thing I’ve ever read. I love how Tellurith goes about her business of important meetings and finance and politics as her two men have super drama over every touch on the shoulder, passionate kiss, horrible PTSD trauma, etc. They’re so smoldering! Then, the OTHER guy joining in! I thought it was totally realistic, my radioactive sentient lightsaber thingie totally brings all the boys to the yard and I’m 100% sure the Emperor himself would move to a remote mountain village to have drama with my touchy warrior husbands and fetch pails of water with a yoke. Separate review to come when I finish the book. This is only my lunch break.
… I’m not sure why I’ve never before identified “pouty slave boys” as a specific genre/meme/recreation, but I’ve now created a page for it on the FSFwiki. Go to town.
Hey Liz,
Belatedly found time to get back here and saw above – have been falling about with glee and giggles. Did you ever finish the book? and what happend to the review or did I miss it somewhere in here later?
BW and ta for that encouragement!
SK