Shadow Gate Reviews & Falling Behind

In the final frenzy of getting ready not just for Denvention but for a more extended trip to visit family WHILE also being buried in trying to finish and revise Crossroads #3, I am also attempting to catch up on the stuff I ought to have caught up on or never fallen behind on -- oh, enough whining.

Here are two thoughtful and quite good reviews of Shadow Gate, both of which I was delighted to read.

Juliet McKenna in Strange Horizons

and

Rick Kleffel in The Agony Column (scroll down a little).

If anyone has reviewed the book (or any book, whether or not one of mine!) and would like me to know or highlight here, please forward me the link.

Also, I've already been scarce and will be getting more scarce online as I am beyond being under the gun at this point. I'll see some of you at Denvention, between my stints huddled in my hotel writing and revising.

Finally, I direct you to this wonderful post on Re-reading, by Jo Walton at Tor.com. Did I mention the debut of Tor.com?. No, I didn't. But there it is.

Crossroads and Jaran

Astute readers who have read all or some of the Novels of the Jaran* as well as my current Crossroads series** have noticed that in Crossroads #2: Shadow Gate I seem to have set a short flashback among what appears to be the jaran tribes.

A smart reader in email queries: Does that mean that Crossroads takes place in Rhui and is somehow connected to the main Jaran series? She goes on with much more elaborate and interesting speculations some of which I don’t know the answer to.

A reviewer on amazon.com is not so happy: I even like this series. But, it is almost as if she took her other books, put them in a bowl and picks out characters , etc , changes them a little and puts them in the new series. For instance, the blond girl Kirya and her people, are straight out of the Jaran series.

Wah.

But an interesting and thoughtful observation none the less, which, were I more weak-willed, might cause me to go into a digression regarding the theory that each writer has only one story to tell and if they are fortunate it’s a very very large story and, if not so fortunate, a rather smaller story. But I am strong, and in addition I have an overdue and overlong novel to finish so I cannot spend too much time in digressions here since I have so many more to braid up in Crossroads #3, which is meant to bring several major plot strands to a close.

Over here in cofax7’s lj, there’s this comment: Finally, for those who read and enjoyed the Jaran series, there's an extended callout to the series in Shadow Gate, one that I both enjoyed and found baffling. Is this fantasy series supposed to be crossing over with that SF series? Or did Elliott just like the Jaran so much she wanted to use them again and thought nobody would mind? I find this baffling, and frankly it yanked me right out of the narrative.

The following reflections are from my answer there, with a few changes.

Why on earth would I shoehorn the jaran into Crossroads? (I really love the phrase an extended callout to the series.)

Am I just that lazy? (on second thought, don’t answer that question.)

Was it just easier to reuse the jaran because I love them so and figure no one would notice, or do I have a deeply clever and intensely convoluted, indeed Eriksonian, plan in mind?

None of the above.

I really loved Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. I don't believe vampires exist (if you define vampires the way they are defined and displayed in the series). To me, Buffy is a fantasy. Our world is the template and the setting, but a fantasy element is introduced. We do this all the time with Earth history.

A few years ago I was thinking about Rhui, the fictional planet on which the Jaran books are set. As a science fiction world, it is presupposed, in a way, that it is a *possible* world that *could* exist in the future (if you accept all the other conditions that would have to come about for the story to play out in that way). So in that sense, Rhui is like Earth (theoretically speaking, I hasten to add, as I have no evidence that there is actually such a place).

That being said, I got a hankering to write a story set on Rhui and written as by a Rhuian in later days, who was writing a fantasy novel set in her historical past, one on which she was free to impose fantasy elements.

In an odd metafictional way that is normally quite unlike me, I've even devised an entire history of "who" (on Rhui) is actually writing this fantasy series and how it relates to her composing a fantasy story retelling how her father came to marry her mother, all of which is tangential to the main story (and occurs long after the current plot line anyway, so it will never be touched on--I don’t think). There are things I choose to do while writing almost purely to amuse myself.

In the lj post reference above, I commented that I couldn’t really identify how the whole thing got started in my mind, but upon further consideration I think I know what might have got me riding down this road.***

I expect it has a lot to do with my knowledge of Katharine Kerr’s fabulous Deverry series. aberwyn uses a narrator writing, in the present of the Deverry world (whatever that is defined as being), a long historical fantasy novel about Deverry’s past. You can see sprinkled here and there within the text references to the narrator’s voice (“in those days, the town had only one wall”--that’s a paraphrase, not a quote--and also her long-standing dispute with a scholar of Elvish). I not only recommend the Deverry series highly but I also think the entire narrative framework is quite a clever conceit and in Kerr’s case exceptionally well done.****

As it happens, I don’t use omniscient pov. Metafictionally speaking, my narrator is writing in the same limited multi 3rd person point of view I typically use. I haven’t got a handle on omniscient yet, although I hope to try it someday.

So, Crossroads is some breed of historical fantasy novel set on an imaginary science fictional planet rather than being set on Earth in Earth’s past or present. Kinda like, well, Buffy. Only without vampires. Or Buffy. Or fiendishly clever wise-cracking.

Naturally, I hope the series offers other pleasures than wise-cracking (not my strong suit). Weaving in the jaran as a minor side reference has been one such pleasure for me. There are a few other references to the Novels of the Jaran, although they might be more difficult to identify. Have fun.



( footnotes behind the cut )