{"id":2264,"date":"2020-04-16T22:52:49","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T02:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/?p=2264"},"modified":"2024-01-21T11:29:21","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:29:21","slug":"wein-elizabeth-e-winter-prince-the-a-coalition-of-lions-the-sunbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2020\/04\/wein-elizabeth-e-winter-prince-the-a-coalition-of-lions-the-sunbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Wein, Elizabeth E: Winter Prince, The; A Coalition of Lions; The Sunbird<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I feel vaguely that I ought to post something much more momentous for the annual-ish dusting off of this booklog, but quite simply, I wrote a decent chunk of this in another forum, looked at it, and said, hmm, if I expanded this\u00a0 just a smidge it would be a booklog entry. So:<\/p>\n

The Winter Prince<\/i>, A Coalition of Lions<\/i>, and The Sunbird<\/i><\/b> are the first three books in Elizabeth E. Wein’s Arthurian\/Aksumite Cycle. I’d read The Winter Prince<\/em> years ago, but never got past the first chapter of\u00a0Coalition<\/em>. However, I was told that when the series transitions to Africa, it’s very good, so I somewhat randomly decided to give the whole thing a try again recently.<\/p>\n

Like my friend Becca<\/a>, I forgot a fairly major component of\u00a0The Winter Prince<\/em>: “… it’s the incest, the thing I forgot was the incest.” Even by Arthurian standards, there is a lot of it (and that’s not the only kind of abuse by a long shot, be advised). This is an intensely psychological and internal book, told in first-person direct address [*], specifically the Mordred-equivalent telling Morgause about his dramatic experiences with, and highly-conflicted feelings about, his father’s legitimate heir, Lleu. It’s very compellingly done, and if this is your set of tropes, it shall be catnip.<\/p>\n

[*] It is not<\/em> second person, this is the weirdly specific and inconsequential hill I am willing to die on. Everyone says that this, and Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” and Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower<\/em> (and another series that is possibly a spoiler to name) are in second person, but they are not, all of these stories are one character talking to another character, and that<\/em> makes the character who’s talking the first-person narrator.<\/p>\n

The series has a somewhat weird relationship with the Arthurian mythos, I guess is all I can say without spoilers; in the second book, A Coalition of Lions<\/em>, it moves to the Aksumite Empire and is narrated by Lleu’s twin sister, Goewin, who apparently has no analogue in the mythos. For years I held this book an enormous grudge because of its first chapter, but this time I powered through. Unfortunately, though I like Goewin very much, I did not enjoy this book; extremely little happens in it, in a frustratingly-claustrophobic way. I’d been advised that this could be regarded as a transitional book, however, so picked up the third.<\/p>\n

The Sunbird<\/em> is the opening of a trilogy, with a new third-person protagonist, Telemakos, and yes,\u00a0Coalition<\/em> probably is skippable. The Sunbird<\/em> is also about attempts to contain a plague, which I did not realize going in. But that was not actually what made me decide to stop reading these books here. Rather, while I know full well that Wein likes to put her characters through the wringer (see: Code Name Verity<\/em><\/a>), and while I know there is a minimum amount of wringer required for characters who are Lymond-analogues, it turns out there is such a thing as too much wringer for me–especially when the character being wrung is not yet twelve years old. It’s well-done wringing! Just not what I’m looking for. So, having confirmed that this continues by skimming the openings of the next two books, I set them aside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel vaguely that I ought to post something much more momentous for the annual-ish dusting off of this booklog, but quite simply, I wrote a decent chunk of this in another forum, looked at it, and said, hmm, if I expanded this\u00a0 just a smidge it would be a booklog entry. So: The Winter … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Wein, Elizabeth E: Winter Prince, The; A Coalition of Lions; The Sunbird<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,4],"tags":[429],"class_list":["post-2264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-historical","tag-wein-elizabeth-e"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2264"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2425,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264\/revisions\/2425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}