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Mistress of the Empire
Sep. 2nd, 2006 06:51 pmI just finished reading 'Mistress of the Empire' and once again I'm surprised by how much my opinion of a book can change. It used to be one of my favourites, but this time I read it with great irritation.
Neither problems nor solutions flowed naturally from the setup. They had this neat little empire with alien cho-ja making alliances and magicians wandering around being all above the law. So this book sets up the cho-ja as secretly repressed slaves and the magicians as secretly murdering all the girl magicians, and the central figure of the previous two books has to go and fix this. And along the way this means that her son ends up emperor and she gets to set up laws in place of traditions. And its all because of a barbarian slave making her think different.
That is so unsatisfying. I mean, we didn't previously know the cho-ja were in any difficulty. They seemed to be merchants or mercenaries, not slaves. So freeing the cho-ja doesn't exactly pay anything off.
And at the final confrontation the thing that swings the opinion against the magicians is the killing all the girl babies thing. Well they only mentioned that twice in the book, and we never saw her find out, and so we didn't see her react to it. The whole thing is vaguely unreal, so again it doesn't read like a problem overcome, more like a handy brush to tar the assembly with.
If the cho-ja and the magicians weren't these newly revealed sorts, then the thing with the Emperor and the new laws wouldn't happen. And that changes the whole thing from a chess match of politics to some kind of... Well, she chases around to different countries finding bits of clue and seeing the sights. Its a fundamentally different type of story from one that simply plays politics within an admittedly foreign sounding setup.
She doesn't win through her own efforts, she wins because the cho-ja game the magicians, *and* her. Yet almost by accident.
So much of what happens with her is down to luck! Very, very annoying.
And then there's the personal aspects. I dislike how many children get killed off, but the point of it was to have her end up thinking of the whole nation as her family and wanting to save all those other children and their mothers, so I can see why that happened.
But I very greatly dislike what they did to get her back with her 'true love'. Mara, central lady character, had a child with Kevin the barbarian slave, who got sent home. I was fed up with the Servant of the Empire book because he was all supposed to be special and her true love and Hokanu got to be the consolation prize. Well in this Mistress of the Empire book Hokanu gets some plot and some doing things, which is cool. But after all that demonstrating he's her perfect partner, they hustle him out of the way in the last chapter so the epilogue can get her back together with Kevin! And the way it was done was *stupid* in their world's rules. See Mara and Hokanu are married, and both are Ruling Lords in their own right, no loss of power. Their Name gets passed on to their descendants, and due to the machinations of plot Mara ends up with two children to fill three roles, Emperor, Acoma and Shinzawai. So the Shinzawai lord says Mara's baby should keep on the Acoma name. Because she can't have any more babies. So that works out.
But then she divorces him so he can go have heirs, and that *doesn't* work out, because in that world either one of them could take whatever other partners they wanted and then declare the offspring their heir. That has been both said and demonstrated before. So to make that not work the authors decide that actually part of Hokanu being totally different from every single other guy on his world is that he wouldn't do that, even with all these compelling personal and political reasons. The whole monogamy thing, which his culture *doesn't even do*, is going to stop him.
There's no reason for it to stop either of them! They can stay married, he can get a girl and some sons, she can get back with Kevin when he turns up again. No legal reason in their world, no precedent in their world, nothing to stop them.
Except apparently the authors considered this solution somehow not of the good. Why?
And they spend pages on telling us the reaction of the crowd to her divorcing him because she can't have children. Apparently every single other person in the crowd thinks it is noble. Despite the fact that within their own laws it is *stupid* because he can go get children elsewhere with no problems!
So I'm deeply annoyed at that. The character I actually liked, the quiet thoughtful competent one, gets vanished to leave room for a 'happy' ending where she gets reunited with the guy she shagged 14 years ago.
Who apparently hasn't formed any relationships since he left her.
Am I the only one thinking that just isn't healthy?
I have to face it, my ideas of romantic are just really different from the dominant ones.
Which is actually a lot of why I read slash fic. Not that every story considers OT3 a good solution, but at least the possibility is there. Sometimes. Maybe.
Okay, aside from the crankiness listed above, the book doesn't suck.
But it is kind of weird and frustrating to go back to a book and rediscover the thing where books are never the same twice.
Neither problems nor solutions flowed naturally from the setup. They had this neat little empire with alien cho-ja making alliances and magicians wandering around being all above the law. So this book sets up the cho-ja as secretly repressed slaves and the magicians as secretly murdering all the girl magicians, and the central figure of the previous two books has to go and fix this. And along the way this means that her son ends up emperor and she gets to set up laws in place of traditions. And its all because of a barbarian slave making her think different.
That is so unsatisfying. I mean, we didn't previously know the cho-ja were in any difficulty. They seemed to be merchants or mercenaries, not slaves. So freeing the cho-ja doesn't exactly pay anything off.
And at the final confrontation the thing that swings the opinion against the magicians is the killing all the girl babies thing. Well they only mentioned that twice in the book, and we never saw her find out, and so we didn't see her react to it. The whole thing is vaguely unreal, so again it doesn't read like a problem overcome, more like a handy brush to tar the assembly with.
If the cho-ja and the magicians weren't these newly revealed sorts, then the thing with the Emperor and the new laws wouldn't happen. And that changes the whole thing from a chess match of politics to some kind of... Well, she chases around to different countries finding bits of clue and seeing the sights. Its a fundamentally different type of story from one that simply plays politics within an admittedly foreign sounding setup.
She doesn't win through her own efforts, she wins because the cho-ja game the magicians, *and* her. Yet almost by accident.
So much of what happens with her is down to luck! Very, very annoying.
And then there's the personal aspects. I dislike how many children get killed off, but the point of it was to have her end up thinking of the whole nation as her family and wanting to save all those other children and their mothers, so I can see why that happened.
But I very greatly dislike what they did to get her back with her 'true love'. Mara, central lady character, had a child with Kevin the barbarian slave, who got sent home. I was fed up with the Servant of the Empire book because he was all supposed to be special and her true love and Hokanu got to be the consolation prize. Well in this Mistress of the Empire book Hokanu gets some plot and some doing things, which is cool. But after all that demonstrating he's her perfect partner, they hustle him out of the way in the last chapter so the epilogue can get her back together with Kevin! And the way it was done was *stupid* in their world's rules. See Mara and Hokanu are married, and both are Ruling Lords in their own right, no loss of power. Their Name gets passed on to their descendants, and due to the machinations of plot Mara ends up with two children to fill three roles, Emperor, Acoma and Shinzawai. So the Shinzawai lord says Mara's baby should keep on the Acoma name. Because she can't have any more babies. So that works out.
But then she divorces him so he can go have heirs, and that *doesn't* work out, because in that world either one of them could take whatever other partners they wanted and then declare the offspring their heir. That has been both said and demonstrated before. So to make that not work the authors decide that actually part of Hokanu being totally different from every single other guy on his world is that he wouldn't do that, even with all these compelling personal and political reasons. The whole monogamy thing, which his culture *doesn't even do*, is going to stop him.
There's no reason for it to stop either of them! They can stay married, he can get a girl and some sons, she can get back with Kevin when he turns up again. No legal reason in their world, no precedent in their world, nothing to stop them.
Except apparently the authors considered this solution somehow not of the good. Why?
And they spend pages on telling us the reaction of the crowd to her divorcing him because she can't have children. Apparently every single other person in the crowd thinks it is noble. Despite the fact that within their own laws it is *stupid* because he can go get children elsewhere with no problems!
So I'm deeply annoyed at that. The character I actually liked, the quiet thoughtful competent one, gets vanished to leave room for a 'happy' ending where she gets reunited with the guy she shagged 14 years ago.
Who apparently hasn't formed any relationships since he left her.
Am I the only one thinking that just isn't healthy?
I have to face it, my ideas of romantic are just really different from the dominant ones.
Which is actually a lot of why I read slash fic. Not that every story considers OT3 a good solution, but at least the possibility is there. Sometimes. Maybe.
Okay, aside from the crankiness listed above, the book doesn't suck.
But it is kind of weird and frustrating to go back to a book and rediscover the thing where books are never the same twice.