Margaret River and etcs

[callistra]

Margaret River rocked. Mynxii's parental units seem lovely. :-) It was a very relaxing, fantastic weekend. Food was excellent, wine was excellent, we really enjoyed the wine tour and I learnt heaps. Flutes resturaunt is bloody awesome; go if you can. The house was beautiful, and had five double bedrooms, and was genuinely on the river. Plus there was a spa. And two lounge rooms, which I figure is lovely cos then you can have quiet time without every one. I read about GOD and the ARMAGEDDON. I enjoyed that. :-) Now I am reading "First Fall" I think it is? Or "Dragnsdawn," which I am enjoying. It's a nice story in it's own right, forgetting the fact that I was a shockingly avid Annie Mack fan, and own stuff including "The Year of the Lucy" and "Atlas of Pern." I hate the ones where Annie Mack has "shared" authoring roles; I think they suck. None of the co-authored ones have been any good. Please, feel free to argue with me. Re-reading Dragonsdawn has, however, bestirred within me the urge to read *all* of the dragon novells again. I have more Annie Mack than John Norman or Terry Pratchett put together (although I think it must be getting close now) and there are some of the Dragons series which I have not purchased. I am bestirred to re-consider purchasing some of the missing ones, however I find Annie's novels to be of variable quality. I hated Masterharper (or whatever it was called, the one about Masterharper Robinton) on a couple of grounds - 1) I was expecting more discussion on *HOW* the masterharper became such a powerful figure after years of Masterharpers apparently not having such political clout, not a diatribe on him growing up. 2) Menolly should have married him. 3) Menolly should have been the Masterharper, not Sebell. Anyways.... The ONE thing I hate about Annie Mack is she is a terrible writer for women. Every strong, powerful female she writes about subverts herself, is submissive in her relationship, and allows the male to over rule, over write, and over power her in ways I find offensive to my feminist spirit. Menolly should have been Masterharper; Sebellis described as easy going, relaxed, bright but not ambitious; Menolly is written as being bloody highly intelligent, able to keep her thoughts to herself, more politically minded, and better at negotiation, underhanded manipulation and group wrangling, and an alround better leader.... but as soon as she opens her legs to Sebel she gets sidelined to occasionally writing songs and spawning.

Let me re-iterate, I LOVE the dragon serious, but I am fully conscious of Anne's drawbacks. It's a man's world, with dragons. Even Lessa gets sidelined and marginalised by F'Lar and F'nor, despite the huge dragon and cool hair. Brekke is just a love of F'nor's, and her only purpose is to make people sad when she loses her dragon. The fire-lizard series was good, but Menolly didn't have much chance of being marginalised since she was OUT LIVING IN THE CAVES. And then she was recognized as instrinsically talented because of her ability to make songs, not because she was a tough female determined to survive and was quite willing to "do what had to be done." Then she gets sidelined to sing a lot and be around when Sebel needs a screw and not actually use many of her abilities. :-)

Killashandra was also a damn sight more intelligent, capable, active, and with better leadership abilities that her partner. What sort of a leader has to be hidden from every one and then babysat?? I hated Crystal Line, I still do, WITH A PASSION! It sucked ASS royally. Killashandra strikes out, against every one else's recommendations, takes a hard line for her freedom, and then just hands it over on a platter????? Please - kill me now, but let my heroines do things which are true to character. Why spend all those previous novels in making her a strong effective female if you'rte going to DECIMATE HER in the final book?

And Sharra! Her ENTIRE role is to make Jaxom happy. And while I liked Ruth, Jaxom often struck me as a spoiled brat who just wanted everything his own way. It has been a few years since I have read all of these, I found The White Dragon interesting and fun to read, one of my favourites, but then she goes and creates an Artificial Intelligence that's managed to survive a thousand years or so in a standard Landing building under a pile of volcanic dust???? Sorry, something just broke with a twang - and it was my suspension of disbelief. And I hate "pat" answers! Goddamnit, they should keep scrubbing in the dust trying to rebuild like the GODDAMNED REST OF US HAVE TO! Where's the challenge?? What would we feel if we managed to un-earth a rude hut of the Aztecs that houses an AI which then blithely explains what the f*ck happened to them and how the aliens helped them out and here's some genetic samples and pics of the whole event!?

Let's not even get STARTED on Damia and her bloody mother. There's something in me that just enjoys the female angst and pain, I guess, otherwise I would never have bothered to read/buy all of them. I was young; it's my only defence. As I read more Annie Mack, I am sure I will have better and more tightly referenced stuff to rant about. *grin* If I can be bothered to read it all again. Oh, and I hated the follow ups to The Ship Who Sang, Helva was hot, and impassioned, and she fought for what she wanted even thought she was in a titanium case, and the follow up stories were just .... blah. I don't know if I can be bothered reading the Catteni book (no idea of the name) since I was amused enough at the short story. I kind of was amused by it, I'm not sure if I could handle a whole novel. I did like Restoree. That was a cool book. I also like the fact that it wasn't really explained *why* the lead female was made into a restoree. I loved Moreta. Moreta's Story is one book that will have me in tears. *sobs* Anyways.... I should stop ranting and go back to my reading of Dragonsdawn.
:-)

By the way, I have a sore throat and my glands are having a disagreement with something right now. I hope I'm not getting fluey NOW of all times!!!

Comments

[raucous-au.livejournal.com]

damn it you better not, I certainly don't want no Perth flu!!!

[wildilocks.livejournal.com]

As an Anne McCaffrey fan from way back, it's interesting what you have to say and agreeing with most of it. Anne McCaffrey was one author I completely idolised when I was younger and I think the dichotomy of strong female characters who then become subservient is quite interesting, and may explain why I've had some issues with relationships :P

The Crystal series is my favourite though, despite as with the others, it being a grossly patriarchal universe. I'm a soppy bint at heart :)

[syncretin.livejournal.com]

God, stop, all of you. Too many memories.

[anysia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, even Silvina went all atwitterpate whenever Masterharper or any other male was around. (unless it was a teenager, then hey thats a kid and a different story)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

Yeppers, I was thinking of mentioning Silvina too, but there's just TOO many examples. And Sean and Sorka - he's a hotheaded twit and she's calm, cool, collected and can manage people, and WHO GETS TO BE THE ONE IN CHARGE???

*sigh*

[numbat.livejournal.com]

Hmm, you never did explain about the sex, or lack of it. I recall Anne MacCaffery explaining that the was never anything but vaguely implied sex (as in you were free to assume that properly marrtied couples sometimes rubbed ugly bits together) because her books were read by young people and theo shouldn't be exposed to the notion of sex.

As Dave Langford has pointed she has also reached the point where she can't bring herself to make her major characters work too hard any more.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

You are quite correct, I realised this later when I was off at a team meeting.

:-)
I will save this for another day.

[amarillion.livejournal.com]

The odd thing is, that AnnMac introduced me to the fact that sex was something that could be had between more then a guy and gal.
Again with the great Moreta's Story and the gay blue? rider and his mate.

I loved her books until she started that whole slippy slide of repeating her stuff and just couldn't seem to let go of the whole everyone body winds up happy ever after symdrome.

Her earliest works are her best, but after about ...Renegades of Pern it starts to drop fast. Some of her early short stories are brilliant. Get of the Unicorn had so many fantastic idea's for a corruptable young 10 year old.

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

glad you enjoyed margaret river :)

i love anne mack too - but i've only just started reaching the conclusions you just ranted about :P so i don't have a great deal to add except you might not be the only one rereading her anne mack...

[msvyvyan.livejournal.com]

The indusry gossip about A.M. was that her period of frequent collaborations and less interesting books was caused by a flirtation with alcoholism/substance abuse. I have no idea whether this is true or just one of those nasty rumours you used to get even before the net invented itself to spread such things around, but it fits the pattern. Too many bad books (even by her standards) in a row...

I couldn't read more than one, anyway. Too painful to my gender politics and too many damn cliches. Put me off dragons for life.

I'm so glad the Margaret River thing went so well. Get better soon!

[callistra.livejournal.com]

No no, not "Get better soon," it's "Resist that damned bug, woman! Just do it!"

:-)

But yes, interesting that what you heard about Annie Mac... Have you heard anything similar about Lois McMaster Bujold since the last Miles Vorkosigan novel was so shockingly bad?