2. My copy of Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein, has shipped! I am so excited! *does happy book dance*

3. As mentioned on Twitter, I love Eddis and Attolia together so much! Not in a slashy way, but just the way they’re so different in terms of history and personality and everything, but they become friends. Like, actual, genuine friends. You can see it at the end of Queen of Attolia, but then it’s even more obvious in that one scene in Conspiracy of Kings, with the hand holding, and I cannot even!

4. I’ve been thinking about changing up the format for my monthly book posts. They’re a lot of work, to be honest, and I don’t always have much to say. I’m considering doing highlights for the month–the books about which I have something to say*–and then just listing the others. Opinions? I don’t want to change the format if people really like it.

* For some reason, the dangling preposition was really bothering me.

Like QoA, there is only one myth in The King of Attolia. Unlike QoA, the relationship between the story and the main plot is not apparent; is, in fact, almost deliberately UNapparent to the point of being somewhat frustrating. At the same time, it’s the story which is most integrated with the main text, as Gen is constantly interrupting and disrupting the telling.

The myth is the story of Klimun and Gerosthenes, and it’s told to Gen (and, more incidentally, Costis, from whose point of view we’re seeing this) by Phresine. Phresine, in case you were wondering, is awesome, as everyone at Sounis agrees.

Before the story even starts, Gen interrupts to stipulate that he is “not appearing in this drama.” He doesn’t want to “hear the story about the wayward, self-indulgent boy who learns the error of his ways and grows up to be a model of decorum and never cuts anybody’s head off for spite.” As Phresine tells the story, though, he reacts as if it means something to him, something important which Costis does not understand and, therefore, we do not either. Unlike the myth of Horreon and Hespira, the meaning of the story of Klimun and Gerosthenes is hidden.

There are things we can say about it, however. Remember the thread of the moon’s promises? It reappears here, except that the moon is not giving false promises. She extracts one from Klimun and then holds him to it. Rather than being a symbol for lying and fickleness, she enforces honesty. There’s an interesting connection, which I haven’t quite worked out all the way, with Gen. He’s a liar, but he’s also an honest liar. As Eddis tells Attolia, “I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie.”

Part of this story is about the weight of honesty. Klimun has promised to tell no lies while the moon shines, and this promise binds him, affecting his decisions, his behavior, and his reputation. So does his position as king. So Klimun is bound, as Gen feels he is, by position, by promises.

Except that Klimun is not really bound. Even when he forgets his promise, he is saved by Gerosthenes, his former slave and friend. He himself might be bound, but his friend is free to act. Because of the nature of their relationship, Gerosthenes can hit his king over the head with an amphora without fear of Klimun’s anger. I think what Phresine’s story suggests is that we’re saved by those around us, that in part we’re judged by who our friends are and how we have treated them. If we have inspired loyalty and trust in others, then we can rely on them to remember our promises for us. There’s also the fact that true friendship breaks the bonds of king and slave, or king and guard (or even king and court musician/fop/former rival).

It’s interesting to note that that this is not an Eddisian myth. It comes from Kathodicia, which apparently is a region in Attolia. Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first time we’ve had a non-Eddisian myth (the others may have been told by the magus, but they weren’t directly Sounisian stories). I don’t have a theory about this, but I did notice it.

The other thread that gets picked up is the power of choice. Gerosthenes could have chosen to leave Klimun and go home, but instead he chooses to stay and serve him. The difference between the voluntary and involuntary servitudes is the defining factor in whether he is truly a slave or not. That choice frees him to make other choices, like hitting Klimun with the amphora.

I think I’ve almost talked myself into making some kind of sense out of this myth, which has always been the most puzzling. I’d still love to hear thoughts or suggestions, though!

Please note–this does contain spoilers for QoA! In order to do the kind of in-depth analysis I wanted to, they were kind of unavoidable.
There’s only one myth in QoA, but it’s a very important one. Also, it is my favorite. It’s like the best parts of Beauty and the Beast and Persephone! And Horreon is awesome, and Hespira is amazingly cool and I always giggle at the plants and the temple. I…maybe love it a little bit too much. But that’s okay, because, as I said, it’s very important to the rest of the story.

So. The Story of Hespira, which is told to the magus and, more incidentally, Gen, by Eddis.* The magus requests it as a way to avoid Gen’s bitterness and, well, whining.

The first thing I noticed is the fact that Horreon is both god and man** like Eugenides-the-god. With Horreon this is because he is directly the son of a blacksmith and Meridite, and Eugenides this is because he’s the Earth’s son and, at the same time, the adopted son of the woodman and his wife. So both characters have a foot in both worlds.

There’s also an interesting double echo of Vulcan and Hades–the Hades bit comes out with the cave and the shape of Hespira’s part of the story. The Vulcan bit comes out with the blacksmithing and the ugliness, and the complicated relationship with his mother.

As in the myths in The Thief, the gods both trick others and are tricked. Meridite tricks Hespira into coming with her, semi-successfully, and Horreon also tricks Hespira by pulling them forward in time. On the other hand, Hespira doesn’t fall into Meridite’s trap and her mother successfully tricks Meridite into letting Hespira go (though this doesn’t quite work out as planned).

There’s also the thread of gifts balanced with sorrow and vice-versa. Hespira’s mother manages to win her daughter back, but she ultimately loses her. Horreon’s joy in Hespira is somewhat diminished by his guilt over his deception of her. Meridite tries to give a gift to her son but finds that her deception strains her relationship with him.

Another thread I picked up from both the earlier myths and the books is the idea that boldness and bravery are something that please the gods and are usually rewarded. It’s not so much piety, at least not in the way that we usually think of it. Neither is it brashness, or else why would Moira warn Gen about offending the gods? It’s something between the two, almost a stepping out in faith that I find really interesting.

There’s still a contrast set up between the oral Eddisian tradition and the magus’s more scholarly experience. As he says, “He was used to the dry records of scholarship without the voice of the storyteller shaping and changing the words to suit an audience and a particular view of the world. He’d heard Eugenides tell his stories, but hadn’t realized the Thief’s interpretations were more than a personal aberration.” There’s also the point about alternative endings–Eddis has chosen a relatively happy one, while Gen points out that in other versions, Hespira’s mother loses her mind and wanders around the mountain looking for her daughter. (Oh, depressed Gen.)

But let’s hone in for a moment. As the magus notes, the storyteller can shape and change the story to suit an audience. Here, Eddis’s audience is the magus and Eugenides. The story is about falling in love with–not quite a monster, but close–and choosing them. It’s about leaving behind home and family for romantic love. Now, I’m not sure what point we’re at in terms of Gen’s plans and Eddis’s knowledge of them, but I can’t help wondering how much of this particular telling of this particular story is Eddis giving Gen her blessing. Or if it’s a way to comfort herself, to tell herself that Irene could be Horreon, and not the monster she looks like. (This is further strengthened by the fact that later in the book, Eddis says that she feels like Hespira’s mother.)

To me, the parallels between Horreon and Hespira and Gen and Irene are the most important part of the whole myth. There’s an actual echo of language here: “‘I chose,’ Hespira said again, and Horreon believed her,” and “‘Do you believe me?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I love you.’ And she believed him.” (Incidentally, I’m all now mushified inside. Awwww.)

You could say that Hespira and Horreon are kind of a gender reversed Gen and Irene, except that I would argue it’s not quite that simple. It seems to me that one of the strengths of this myth is it he fact that they are both Hespira and both Horreon, just as they are both Beauty and both the Beast (see this brilliant discussion!).

In a book about finding love where you never meant to, and about the choices we make, to choose our path and to choose our faith, the story of Horreon and Hespira is both an echo and a foreshadowing.

* This is a total side note, but by the end of Conspiracy, I have no idea how to refer to anyone. Maybe just go with first names?

** Because I’m Orthodox, this has all kinds of theological resonances to it, which I’m not intending at all.

There are four myths in The Thief, told by Gen and the Magus. I think they work a little differently than the myths in the other books do. There is some connection between the characters (especially Gen) and the characters in the myths, but their primary purpose seems to be worldbuilding. They also show Gen in a different light than the persona he is trying to project through most of the book.

It’s also the only book in which the myths are given official titles, as well as pulled out of the main text with italics.

The first myth in The Thief is “Earth’s Creation and the Birth of the Gods,” which is told by the Magus, although it’s also prompted by Sophos. At the very beginning is a phrase that gets picked up and used later in the series, “the moon’s promises.” These are fickle and can’t be trusted. It’s echoed in the myth of Klimun, although it’s reversed there, and also during The Queen of Attolia. (“Better to trust in the moon’s promises than in the word of the Thief of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies.”)

It’s also interesting to note that this myth is set up as specifically Eddisian. Sounis has a different creation myth, one closer to the standard Greek pantheon. It’s one of the things that ties Gen to Eddis and provides a hint that he’s not quite what he seems.

The myth also shows Gen’s initial of the myths and the gods. After the story ends, he says, “It’s just religion. They like to go up to the temple on feast days and pretend that there is some god who wants the worthless sacrificial bits of cow,and people get to eat the rest.” He defends the myths, pointing out that the Magus left out part, but it’s more because he’s loyal to Eddis and his mother’s version than because of any belief in the gods.

This myth is also, significantly, about genesis. It comes towards the beginning of the book, the beginning of Gen’s story, and what would eventually become the beginning of the series.

The second myth is called “The Birth of Eugenides, God of Thieves,” and it is, appropriately enough, told by Gen. In it, the gods give gifts, but the gifts have consequences which the humans who receive them cannot always foresee and which are not always benign. The Earth’s gift to the woodman and his wife results in the destruction of large portions of the world.

It also establishes Hephestia’s power, the first strong female ruler in the series. Here, she manages to bring about peace between her warring parents and is only behind them in worship from the people.

In the worldbuilding category, this myth establishes the rough pantheon: the Earth, the Sky, Hephestia, and Eugenides. The book will add other characters, Moira and Aracthus, but the most important are preserved in the myth.

Finally, the telling of the myth reinforces Gen’s connection to Eddis and again hints at the possibility of his being something more than he seems. As Sophos notes, “You sound very different when you are telling a story.”

Interestingly, although I’ve been talking about a distinction between the preserved myths of the Magus’s books and Gen’s oral tradition, Gen’s versions of the myths are much more set in stone. He tells them the way his mother would have and objects when things are left out. The oral tradition is given flavor by the teller, but it’s not necessarily more flexible.

The third myth is called “Eugenides and the Sky God’s Thunderbolts,” and it’s told by the Magus, who was prompted by a strained silence. There’s another thread that will get picked up later–the coleus leaf which the Sky God gives Eugenides and which Attolia used to poison her first husband.

In this story, we really encounter the character of Eugenides-the-god, who turns out to be both a trickster and the one who is tricked. He steals the Sky God’s thunderbolts, successfully pulling off a simultaneous bird and mole reenactment (that’s talent, right there). But he also is tricked by the Sky God, who promises to make his life bitter. This theme occurs several times in the myths and may be an interesting insight into Gen himself.

There’s a question here which also could apply to “The Birth of Eugenides”–how is power used? When it’s too powerful, how is it balanced? In “The Birth of Eugenides,” Hephestia mediates a peace between her parents which effectively gives her some of their power and returns them to balance. Here, the Sky God rewards Eugenides’ cleverness, but also curses him with a bitter life. I think this is another important strand to trace through the books–how much of QoA is driven by the need to balance Attolia’s power and potential instability?

The last myth in The Thief is called “Eugenides and the Great Fire,” and is told by Gen, prompted by the magus who “wants to compare it with the version he knows.” The story concerns the misuse of hospitality, of family. Once again, Eugenides-the-god is both the trickster, successfully stealing the Sky God’s thunderbolts AGAIN, and the tricked, trapped by Lyopidus and the Sky God. And Hamiathes tricks the river into giving up the thunderbolts

It’s also specifically an Eddisian story, a nation-myth to explain the relationship between the God of Thieves and Hamiathes. For that matter, it’s a myth that helps to explain Gen. For that reason, it’s more intensely personal, I would argue, than the others, although Gen certainly cares that all of them are told correctly. He says that it’s not his favorite story, but I think it’s because he sees too much of himself in it. And it will shortly become even more personal, when he cannot help but believe in the god’s reality.

It’s interesting to note that all four of the myths in The Thief build on each other. They start wide, with the creation of the world, and slowly narrow, till they are focused on the character of Eugenides. Because they’re so connected, they could almost be read as a separate narrative, except that the point of them is that they’re not separate at all. They’re intimately involved in Gen’s journey across Sounis, Attolia, and Eddis, and his journey from unbelief to faith.

I knew I wanted to write something for this week, because duh. I had a couple of ideas, including a post about clothing that I still want to do sometime. But had this crazy idea last year, a kind of academic paper about the myths in the Queen’s Thief series, which I made copious notes for and then never did anything with. But it’s one of my favorite aspects of the books (along with everything else), and so I’m using this as an opportunity to finish it.

I’m hoping that you all find my ramblings interesting and that I don’t get too dense and academic-y. I’m going to be posting today-Saturday, focusing on one book a day, with an introduction and conclusion.

Introduction

First, I want to clarify what I mean when I talk about myths. In the context of the Queen’s Thief series, they are the stories which occur in every published book, told by one of the characters and dealing in some way with the pantheon of gods. Like plays within plays, they have their own coherence, while at the same time, they relate to the larger work in some way. They’re not just random stories stuck in the middle to bore us all.

The myths actually serve several purposes. First, they help to establish the culture and thought of the three main nations in this world (Eddis, Attolia, and Sounis. (I know you know this. I just like typing it.)). It’s pretty well established in the books that this world is not based on Ancient Greece–in the language of the books themselves, it is not the archaic. The world is instead a Byzantine-flavored one, a place in which the stories of the old gods are known but not necessarily lived (this especially holds true for the depiction of Sounis at the beginning of The Thief). They also help to illuminate portions of the larger story, without being allegories. The story of Horreon in Queen of Attolia is the most obviously analogous, but they all relate to the book as a whole. And finally, like the books themselves, they build on each other. Threads appear in both the myths and the books, phrases and themes repeated again and again.

The myths all concern the interaction between the gods and humans. They illuminate the characters’ relationship with the gods, and with the past. For instance, for the magus, the myths have been primarily a matter of scholarship, of words on the page. In the Eddisian context, they exist as a living tradition, added to, subtracted from, and given flavor by the voice of the teller, even if that teller does not believe in them as true events. At the same time, we are reading them on the page ourselves. Whatever complex voice the myths have is created in the space between the printed word and our own imagination.

Check back tomorrow for part two, focusing on The Thief. And be sure to check out all the Queen’s Thief Week posts!

But it was also deeply weird. TFIOS, you see, is set in Indianapolis. And I live in Indianapolis. Even more than that, it’s set in my part of Indianapolis. I drive by the IMA and Crown Hill all the time. I hate going to Castleton, but I do sometimes. I’ve probably bought gas at the Speedway on 86th.

And so it was fun to find all the places I know–the Ruins at Holliday Park! Indy is not exactly a city that gets featured in books often. For that matter, the Midwest is not a region that gets featured in books much. And for all the making fun of the lack of culture and so on, Hazel and Gus live here.

At the same time, as I read I realized that Hazel’s Indianapolis is not mine. I don’t know exactly where she and Gus are supposed to live (pretty nearly, with Hazel, but not precisely). And if I went Crown Hill today (which I won’t, because it’s CRAZY COLD out there), I would find presidents and vice-presidents and Civil War graves, but I wouldn’t see [redacted]‘s grave. In fact, Hazel’s Indianapolis is an Indianapolis that never was, an alternate version of reality, as it were.

Of course this is true, when you think about it, of all cities and settings. If a place is ficitionalized, it is made alternate, at once highlighted and flattened. I love thinking about setting and characters in books, and how they interact–it’s one of my very favorite Reading Things. But, partly because I read so much sf/f, I had never considered quite how this works with real places. It took finding my own city, made familiar and strange, to do that.

(This obviously is not a review. I liked the book a lot and thought Green navigated some tricky waters (NOT A PUN) very well.)

[For a lot more, see my Twitter feed]

I haven’t done a Retro Friday post before, but I read plenty of older books and enjoy talking about them anyway, so I may try to work this into a regular thing. Anyway, I had recently re-read Elin’s Amerika by Marguerite De Angeli, so I thought I’d talk about that today.

Marguerite De Angeli is probably best known for her Newbery winning book, A Door in the Wall, but she was a fairly prolific writer/illustrator, and also wrote a loose series of books about young people in America’s history. This isn’t as daunting as it sounds; one of De Angeli’s strengths is her ability to, without making her characters contemporary, create relateable and likeable characters. For the most part, her children work as of their time, while at the same time being sympathetic to De Angeli’s audience, and even to us today.

Elin is a young Swedish girl, living somewhere in what will eventually become Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She has three brothers, Peter, Knute, and Axel. Axel is working on one of the ships that brings new settlers and supplies to the area. And, in the midst of all this strangeness and maleness (her neighbors all have boys too) she longs for her friend back in Sweden and wishes for another girl to play with.

I was a little worried about Elin’s Amerika, simply because of the fact that I knew these were earlier settlers interacting with the Native Americans and…you know, it’s always both annoying and sad when a favorite childhood book turns out to be a problematic. By and large, I think Elin comes out okay in this regard. There is a tribe that attacks the settlers, but there are several others who help them, and De Angeli seems to be trying to depict a sort of cooperative harmony between the Swedish settlers and the neighboring Native Americans (at one point, Fader says, of the others “They just don’t know us,” which is very simplistic, but better than They are evil). How close that is to the historical reality is probably highly debatable; I simply don’t know, so I’m not going to try to get into it, but overall I’d say that this is one I’d feel comfortable reading to children, especially if we were able to discuss a few points afterwards.

One of the strong points of De Angeli’s books are her beautiful illustrations. Elin’s Amerika is no different–the traditional Swedish embroidery is beautifully rendered, and there’s a picture at the very end, which I can’t find online, of Elin and her family walking through the woods on their way to the Christmas service that’s just gorgeous. The one I was able to find is the family gathered around their fire in the evening.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I continue to like poor lonely Elin and the ups and downs of her first year in America. For those who like such things (I do) there are nice descriptions of housekeeping and everyday life, as well as a healthy dose of excitement and potential danger.

Book source: public library
Book information: originally published 1941 by Doubleday; reissued by American Swedish History Museum in 2007; children’s, illustrated

The Map of My Dead Pilots is an account of the author’s years working at an Alaskan aviation company. It’s a fascinating book, lying somewhere between a nonfiction essay–which is to say an fact-based narrative about Alaskan flying–and a memoir. Mondor places herself in the middle of the group, but she herself worked in Ops, not as a pilot. So she is at once involved and an observer. It’s a book about flying in Alaska, with fascinating and horrifying details of the conditions and life. It’s full of stories both funny and tragic. Sometimes these are the same stories.

She also weaves the different stories together, particularly the deaths of her friends Luke and Bryce, and the end of her father’s life. The book begins with the statement that Bryce’s death changed everything for those working at the Company, but it’s only slowly that the details of Bryce’s death are revealed. And throughout the book, Mondor grapples with the why of these three main events. Why did Luke die? Why did Bryce? Why did her father? It’s a book about searching for impossible answers.

It’s also about the stories we tell ourselves. In one chapter, Mondor gives several possible versions of Bryce’s death as created by one of his fellow pilots. Each one is a cohesive narrative, each one emphasizes a different side of the possibilities, gives a different answer to the why. None of them are wrong, but none of them can be said to be true either. The group cannot answer the why of Bryce’s death, but they can create their own narratives and they can create them as a group.

Because of all of this, I was left with an unsettling feeling of wondering, not exactly how much of this book is true, but how much is seen through a lens. This is, of course, true of all books, fiction and non-fiction, but Mondor seems to invite this question, to require it, almost.

It’s strongly narrative as, I would argue, most good fiction is, but never loses sight of fact that these are real people whose lives have been changed and altered by the experience.

I did wish that we had returned to the Alaskan part just at the very end, but that’s a very minor complaint. All in all, this is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in the subject, or just in stories and how we tell them. One minor caveat: there is a lot of swearing. I’m able to read past most of it, but I know others aren’t.

Book source: public library
Book information: Lyons Press, 2011; non-fiction, adult but could be a great cross-over for the right teen

Mother Reader’s review, with an interview and links