Inda's Game
Apr. 9th, 2012 10:50 pmOn a rec from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
badgerbag I've just read the four books in Sherwood Smith's Inda series.
It is unfairly reductive but just like when you are trying to describe Motherlines and you say "second-wave post-dystopian female separatist sf" and people are like "Oh, Gate to Women's Country?" - "No, lesbian female separatist" - Oh, Ammonite?" - "No, I said post-apocalyptic - with the evil men -" "Oh, Daughters of a Coral Dawn?" - "No, look, it's - it's the one with the horsefucking, okay." "Oh right, THAT one." Nobody ever forgets that one! Anyway, in the same way I will forever think of these as the Nobody Poops books. And I understand there's a reason, I'm pretty sure it's because the author was trying to think of what people would use magic for if there was only a little bit of very limited magic in the world and only women used it; i.e., magic is used for what the author considers would be important to women. So nobody poops, or pees, instead they do a Waste Spell and vanish their biological wastes from inside. Presumably this also works on mucus and phlegm as I don't remember any adults blowing their noses at any point in the book. Bodies don't get buried, instead they are Disappeared. Stored water is magically kept fresh and clean, there are light spells, heat spells on the baths, Birth Spells, it's all very housekeeping-oriented magic. Which I guess can be seen as women's work. Two problems with it, though: one, babies are a huge part of traditional women's work, and the Waste Spell doesn't work on babies, babies still wear diapers. What the fuck, that misses, like, 80% of the point. And two, in this book, all the women go around armed, and their traditional job is to defend the castle while the men are out defending the fields or possibly attacking the other people's castle, and they spend all their time doing wargames and running half the country, so you'd think really that in this particular universe, women's magic would include things like intruder detection and possibly document printing.
I was on a Wiscon panel many years ago where someone, and I forget who, which is probably for the best, insisted that the traditional dramatic structure was sexist because the exposition, rising action, climax, denouement, etc. mimics the male experience of sex. They claimed that what we needed was more female-identified narratives with structures more like the variety of female sexual habits. I hope that person, wherever they are, has read the Inda books. Not that this is the only way women have sex, but there is a not unheard of female sex pattern of, so to speak, exposition, rising action, falling action, rising action, falling action, deciding that it's time to do something else, taking a shower, going out for Chinese food. No real climax; more intense bits, less intense bits, but essentially messing around having fun until you decide that you're done. And that would describe the narrative structure of these books. They're all kind of the second book in the trilogy. They're not bad! I read them all! But they kind of ended when...the author...decided she was done? I mean, that's cool? Okay, I would kind of like to know what the deal was with Norsunder...and the question about the Disappearing Spell...and what happened to Jeje...and with Jeje and Tau...and Signi...and Nugget...and Ramis...oh, but okay, whatever. Sure, I could go for some Chinese food.
The first book does leave me with a slight suspicion that the series started life as a Medieval Times* AU of Ender's Game. Inda, like Ender, is an innocent killer: a Holy Badass, the best general and strategist and fighter and all-around incredibly nice guy, bullied by the older kids, abused by the System, inherently and unwaveringly devoted to what is Right, who never wants to be a war leader, it just naturally happens that way**. He is, however, the most boring character in the story, which I don't remember Ender being. That's okay, though; the cast of thousands that surrounds him is pretty awesome, starting with his protective older sister Valentine/Hadand and abusive but ambiguously helpful older brother Peter/Tanrid. It is kind of tough to keep the thousands straight though; there seriously are a shitload of characters, and they all have like three names, plus nicknames, which sometimes get switched around. It is one of the things that makes me think that Inda's world is not based in Vaguely Europe but instead in Vaguely Russia. I'm not sure, I'm American, I don't know shit about Russia, but I have run into the name/nickname problem in what little Russian lit I know. There are also Definitely Vikings.
One thing I liked about these books is that they are not gritty or grimdark; and that is a sign of how much the grimdark Overton window has shifted, because they do include war and torture and mutilation and child death. But at least in this universe, the people notice that these are bad things! There's a bit near the end, not to spoil too much, where one set of characters has killed a bunch of people in a particularly bad way, and wherever they go, everyone is extremely pissed at them and refuses to deal with them because of what they did. I half expected them to start going "jeez, are you all STILL harping on about all those dead people, that was like a YEAR ago! God! If this was a GRRM book no one would have even NOTICED!" People in Smith's book notice! Also, pretty much everyone is more or less cheerfully polyamorous, and no rape (seriously! In four books! When was the last time that happened in a fantasy series?) and no homophobia either: some people are gay, some are straight, some are bi, and the only people that care are the people who are trying to bang 'em with greater or lesser success. It's really nice! It's shocking how enjoyable it can be just to spend time in a fictional world where you can just let go of all that bullshit for a while. It's okay, there's plenty of other bullshit in the world to provide conflict! Let's spend some time meditating on war and violence and why humans can't get away from it and sometimes it seems like we don't even want to! Let's spend some time thinking about how to make the best of a life in which no one ever gets what they want and that is beautiful. Then hey, let's go get some Chinese food.
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*They live in castles, they travel by horseback, they don't have guns. However, they also don't have religion, plague or other diseases, much of an economic system...it's pretty vague, as Ye Olden Tymes settings go.
**Making him the exact opposite of Dag Erkric, who is the only mustache-twirlingly one-dimensionally evil character in the whole book, which is nice.
badgerbag I've just read the four books in Sherwood Smith's Inda series. It is unfairly reductive but just like when you are trying to describe Motherlines and you say "second-wave post-dystopian female separatist sf" and people are like "Oh, Gate to Women's Country?" - "No, lesbian female separatist" - Oh, Ammonite?" - "No, I said post-apocalyptic - with the evil men -" "Oh, Daughters of a Coral Dawn?" - "No, look, it's - it's the one with the horsefucking, okay." "Oh right, THAT one." Nobody ever forgets that one! Anyway, in the same way I will forever think of these as the Nobody Poops books. And I understand there's a reason, I'm pretty sure it's because the author was trying to think of what people would use magic for if there was only a little bit of very limited magic in the world and only women used it; i.e., magic is used for what the author considers would be important to women. So nobody poops, or pees, instead they do a Waste Spell and vanish their biological wastes from inside. Presumably this also works on mucus and phlegm as I don't remember any adults blowing their noses at any point in the book. Bodies don't get buried, instead they are Disappeared. Stored water is magically kept fresh and clean, there are light spells, heat spells on the baths, Birth Spells, it's all very housekeeping-oriented magic. Which I guess can be seen as women's work. Two problems with it, though: one, babies are a huge part of traditional women's work, and the Waste Spell doesn't work on babies, babies still wear diapers. What the fuck, that misses, like, 80% of the point. And two, in this book, all the women go around armed, and their traditional job is to defend the castle while the men are out defending the fields or possibly attacking the other people's castle, and they spend all their time doing wargames and running half the country, so you'd think really that in this particular universe, women's magic would include things like intruder detection and possibly document printing.
I was on a Wiscon panel many years ago where someone, and I forget who, which is probably for the best, insisted that the traditional dramatic structure was sexist because the exposition, rising action, climax, denouement, etc. mimics the male experience of sex. They claimed that what we needed was more female-identified narratives with structures more like the variety of female sexual habits. I hope that person, wherever they are, has read the Inda books. Not that this is the only way women have sex, but there is a not unheard of female sex pattern of, so to speak, exposition, rising action, falling action, rising action, falling action, deciding that it's time to do something else, taking a shower, going out for Chinese food. No real climax; more intense bits, less intense bits, but essentially messing around having fun until you decide that you're done. And that would describe the narrative structure of these books. They're all kind of the second book in the trilogy. They're not bad! I read them all! But they kind of ended when...the author...decided she was done? I mean, that's cool? Okay, I would kind of like to know what the deal was with Norsunder...and the question about the Disappearing Spell...and what happened to Jeje...and with Jeje and Tau...and Signi...and Nugget...and Ramis...oh, but okay, whatever. Sure, I could go for some Chinese food.
The first book does leave me with a slight suspicion that the series started life as a Medieval Times* AU of Ender's Game. Inda, like Ender, is an innocent killer: a Holy Badass, the best general and strategist and fighter and all-around incredibly nice guy, bullied by the older kids, abused by the System, inherently and unwaveringly devoted to what is Right, who never wants to be a war leader, it just naturally happens that way**. He is, however, the most boring character in the story, which I don't remember Ender being. That's okay, though; the cast of thousands that surrounds him is pretty awesome, starting with his protective older sister Valentine/Hadand and abusive but ambiguously helpful older brother Peter/Tanrid. It is kind of tough to keep the thousands straight though; there seriously are a shitload of characters, and they all have like three names, plus nicknames, which sometimes get switched around. It is one of the things that makes me think that Inda's world is not based in Vaguely Europe but instead in Vaguely Russia. I'm not sure, I'm American, I don't know shit about Russia, but I have run into the name/nickname problem in what little Russian lit I know. There are also Definitely Vikings.
One thing I liked about these books is that they are not gritty or grimdark; and that is a sign of how much the grimdark Overton window has shifted, because they do include war and torture and mutilation and child death. But at least in this universe, the people notice that these are bad things! There's a bit near the end, not to spoil too much, where one set of characters has killed a bunch of people in a particularly bad way, and wherever they go, everyone is extremely pissed at them and refuses to deal with them because of what they did. I half expected them to start going "jeez, are you all STILL harping on about all those dead people, that was like a YEAR ago! God! If this was a GRRM book no one would have even NOTICED!" People in Smith's book notice! Also, pretty much everyone is more or less cheerfully polyamorous, and no rape (seriously! In four books! When was the last time that happened in a fantasy series?) and no homophobia either: some people are gay, some are straight, some are bi, and the only people that care are the people who are trying to bang 'em with greater or lesser success. It's really nice! It's shocking how enjoyable it can be just to spend time in a fictional world where you can just let go of all that bullshit for a while. It's okay, there's plenty of other bullshit in the world to provide conflict! Let's spend some time meditating on war and violence and why humans can't get away from it and sometimes it seems like we don't even want to! Let's spend some time thinking about how to make the best of a life in which no one ever gets what they want and that is beautiful. Then hey, let's go get some Chinese food.
-------------------
*They live in castles, they travel by horseback, they don't have guns. However, they also don't have religion, plague or other diseases, much of an economic system...it's pretty vague, as Ye Olden Tymes settings go.
**Making him the exact opposite of Dag Erkric, who is the only mustache-twirlingly one-dimensionally evil character in the whole book, which is nice.
