Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman

Twelve-year-old Eon has been training for years to become an apprentice Dragoneye, a human connected to one of twelve guardian dragons who are ascendant in a cycle. Hindered by lameness caused by a crushed hip when he is younger, Eon finds many of the requirements of Dragon Magic-a combination of ceremonial martial arts moves and actual magic-difficult, and is ultimately passed over at the competition. At the competition, however, something unprecedented happens, and the Mirror Dragon, who hasn’t chosen a Dragoneye in 500 years, chooses Eon.

But Eon is actually Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl, and it’s illegal for women to practice Dragon Magic. If discovered, she’ll be put to death. In addition, there is no Dragoneye for Eona to be apprenticed to, and her presence creates a chance for two sides of a political struggle to attempt to establish dominance.

Because Eona is a young woman disguised as a man is a very patriarchal, very sexist world, in an extremely male-oriented environment, there aren’t many female characters. Of the other two important female characters, one is biologically female, and the other, Lady Dela, is a transgendered. (She was actually my favorite character.) Despite this, Goodman explores gender and gender identity a good bit, while also having interesting politics and worldbuilding.

The kingdom is based on both Japanese and Chinese history and mythology, and on the surface, it seems to fall into the trap of the stereotypes of those countries involving sexism, but it soon becomes apparent that this is not the “natural” evolution of the kingdom, but something specifically created at one point, and other countries based on Asian countries seem to have far less sexist societies. The Mirror Dragon’s secrets were easy to figure out, and I find myself more interested in the history of the Dragoneyes and how the country ended up in its current state, and why women aren’t allowed to be Dragoneyes than I am in the present story, though I’m very much looking forward to the second book.

The Surgeon's Lady by Carla Kelly

Somehow, I missed the fact that Carla Kelly was writing again until I saw a secondhand copy of this. Apparently, this is her second book since returning, as it’s the second book in a series.

Widowed after years of nursing her much-older husband, Laura Taunton is finally free of him (she was literally sold to him by her father) and ready to live her own life when she receives a letter from a half-sister she didn’t know she had. When she meets her sister, who is married to a naval captain, she also meets Philemon Brittle, a naval surgeon, and soon becomes involved in his work with wounded soldiers.

Kelly’s romances tend to be very straightforward and down-to-earth, and her angst-of which there is always plenty-more realistic than most. She also tends to avoid the upper class characters most Regency writers use, focusing instead on the middle classes. Unfortunately, this isn’t so much out of interest in the middle classes as it is disinterest in learning titles and rules, something that shows when she does include the upper classes. In this case, Laura’s husband was an aristocrat, but there was a very “modern” feel to her working in the ward, and her interactions with Philemon in general. Kelly also got a bit close to Laura needing Philemon and his manliness to heal her wounds for my taste.

Still, a “lesser” Kelly is still well worth reading, and I’m glad she’s writing again.

Babylon 5 5.1-5.22

OMG you weren’t kidding about this season! Especially, like, the whole telepath plot in the first half. Also, did the world really need a Fabio clone? And am I the only one who kept hoping he’d play with matches on a windy day? To be so perfect, that hair had to have enough chemicals in it to make it extra flammable. Also, I think it was vampire hair* that sucked the personalities out of everyone who got near it. It would explain so much.

But yeah, as I was told, it’s really obvious what was left from the original plans, and what they had to cobble together. Like how they clearly had no idea what to do with any of the characters besides Londo and G’Kar.

( spoilers )

Now for the movies. And maybe Crusade? Non-spoilery opinions there?

*Actually, Lyss gets credit for that.

Christmas Regencies and current SciFi TV

Does anyone else read Christmas regencies? Because I went through my backlog yesterday and pulled all of mine out. Most tend to be terribly formulaic and feature cranky, scrooge-ish men having their hearts melted by Pure Women (of a lower class, of course) children and puppies and in short have plots I typically shun but devour when in the form of a Christmas Regency.

Though, in a story I was reading last night, I suddenly started picturing the guy as G’Kar and got terribly confused. Then I realized that he was describing his thoughts about someone similarly to how G’Kar does, and it made sense, but it provided a very interesting visual for the rest of the story.

Also, I am…irrationally annoyed by the fact that V is on hiatus until March, even though I'm not hugely into V yet as much as really hoping to be soon. I mean, I think the hiatus is a bad idea anyway (and at least I have 2 episodes to watch between now and then) but it’s made worse, I think, because I learned that about an hour after learning 2 episodes of Dollhouse aired in one night. Different stations, but I can’t quite suppress my initial reaction of “wow, I guess they were worried about showing too many episodes of a current genre show where women aren’t constantly getting raped and are able to act and/or defend themselves without men first beating them up, bashing their heads into desks or throwing them against cabinets*.”

OTOH, Alice comes out either tonight or tomorrow, and I am SO EXCITED for that. A reminder why:

It looks so fun! And I thought Tin Man was a blast. Though the trailer makes me worry a bit about a love triangle. But i will be so sad if I don't like it!

Dang. Even mentioning Dollhouse makes me want my Farscape DVDs and/or more Babylon 5. Even at their worst, they couldn't dream of being as bad as Dollhouse at it's best. (Buffy, Angel and Firefly are currently somewhat ruined for me, though at least I no longer want to remove anything with the taint of Whedon from my apartment like I did after 2.4.)


*No, not “women getting hurt in a fight,” which is another thing entirely and not a bad thing, as long as they’re hurt because they’re fighting and not because they’re women, but women literally being passive until physically assaulted or “fixed” by the assault. Like Ballard repeatedly punching Echo until she switches to the personality he wants to “fix” her.

And so Brandon Sanderson betrays me too.

So, on top of the fact that I couldn’t watch Alice tonight because I only sometimes get SyFy, and this wasn’t one of those times, and the fact that, not only does Dollhouse still exist, but I seem to be almost tripping over people saying positive things about it (Said there were good rapists and bad rapists and textually justified a man literally beating a woman into having the personality he told her to have. Seriously, people. And apparently still telling us how utterly fascinating rapists and slave traders are.) but Brandon Sanderson apparently wants to be an example of why female genre fans are often leery of buying books by male authors (And so proving we don’t exist. Or something.)

Brief breakdown of 2 1/3 of his Mistborn books (not-hard-to-see-coming spoilers, but too annoyed for spoiler cut):

Mistborn: Main character is awesome street rat heroine with superpowers. All other characters are male with token evil/dead women. Very interesting story and world, and at least the men are interesting.

The Well of Ascension: Heroine still awesome, but more men and more male narratives. Some male narratives determined to angst selves into dullness. One succeeds before he even shows up. Definite narrative shift away from heroine, but 2 other non-evil important women. One, sadly, exists to die and give a man a reason to angst.

The Hero of Ages (through page 300): Heroine still awesome, but almost irrelevant now that boyfriend has superpowers too. Even more male narratives introduced. Formerly most interesting male character has successfully angsted himself into dullness. Only other female character only in about 5 pages.

And so I mentally throw the book against a wall. In many ways, cases like this are worse than when they don’t even bother to have women outside of bit parts for girlfriends and prostitutes. Unless a villainess is needed, of course. At least then the hope isn’t built up and you can tell in the first book (even part of it) if it’ll be worth it for you. It makes me even more grateful for writers like Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green and George R. R. Martin, who may tend towards male leads, but also tend towards tons of major and minor female characters consistently doing things.

I may attempt it again when less annoyed, but for now, I think I’ll just read more Christmas Regencies and maybe Super Girly Shoujo. Though I do also have Green’s third Secret Histories book and Butcher’s last Codex Alera book.