Rosemary Kirstein: Steerswoman 1&2

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I had heard about the Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein before and finally bought it because it was on sale (and still is until Sunday, info here.)
I wasn't very impressed by the first book: it was solid, but very slow, and if it was fic I most likely wouldn't have finished. It had some interesting elements, but overall it felt a bit bland. I liked the characters, but I didn't find them particularly interesting. I liked Rowan trying to figure things out, and I liked her relationship with Willam once she stops lying to him – female mentors ftw!

I bought the second book, "The Outskirter's Secret", because it was cheap, but I ended up enjoying it a lot. It also has a lot of travel, but this time, because we're getting to know a completely new ecosystem and culture and because we know at least a vague shape of the overall plot, it's actually interesting. I liked the slow reveal of Bel's plan and ambition, I liked getting to know Fletcher and the romance between him and Rowan, and I loved the reveal and what happened after. (I guess his allegiance is the secret the title is referring to?) I'm even fine with him dying, even though he was interesting and would have been useful. (I feel a bit sorry for Averryl.) But now they can try if they find other wizards' men in the Outskirts, and with the most recent Heat the other tribes will be much more inclined to listen.
I loved the reveal of what the Heat is actually doing – terraforming! I'm not quite sure why Rowan thinks even the Inner Lands will be destroyed if the plan continues, except if she thinks Slado will continue with the Heats, which actually she has no reason not to, she doesn't know his motives except that it seems to be chaos.

The worldbuilding is interesting. Two things especially stand out: the magic, and the steerswomen.
I liked the "magic" and figuring out what things were – cables, for example! The solar panels took me way too long to figure out, at first I thought of computer chips. I'm very curious about the demons.
The terraforming satellites and the "Christer" religion make me think that it's a colonization story set far in the future. The plants and animals are different, but some of the religion stayed from the first human settlers. There "has always been a wizard", probably someone tasked with keeping watch over the technology. I wonder why the wizards fight each other?

The concept of the steerswomen is interesting, but I'm not sure I completely approve of their principles. From a practical side, the ban not to answer questions for people who refused to answer theirs is an integral part of making things work though – otherwise people have a lot less incentive to answer them – but I just don't see how they can uphold that, the different steerswomen can't communicate well enough for that. Whoever refuses to answer one steerswoman can just ask the next one. In remote towns there will be few of them passing through, but still. (Also, "steerswomen speak true" is nonsense. To the best of their knowledge, yes, but they can be misled or wrong like anyone else. Rowan often speaks without proof.)
Fundamentally, steerswomen have no respect for secrets. Yet at the same time they don't seem to be aware (or at least not be taught) that truth can be used as a weapon, and that's a very dangerous combination. At least in the second book Rowan seems to be much more aware of the dangers of her order's rules, like when the seyoh of the Face People tribe asks if she would reveal Kammeryn's people's names. She also recognizes that there are times when it's prudent to keep secrets, like when she doesn't immediately reveal to Kammeryn and the others that Fletcher is a wizard's man. In theory I respect the order's search for knowledge and their desire to share it, but I dislike how they're arrogant enough to presume they have a right to know anything.

I'm definitely going to read the next books, and I'm looking forward to them.

As an aside, one advantage of reading books instead of fic (I have all original novels labeled on my ebook reader as "origfic") is that there are new characters and also that I can ask for stories for Yuletide. One disadvantage is that I have to pay for them, I think I'll soon need a monthly book budget because buying ebooks is deceptively easy.

Comments

[isis]

Yay, enjoy the next two books! I am planning to request it for Yuletide, definitely.

I just get them from the library :-)

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They didn't have them at the library :(
But thanks for the reminder, I need to go check which new fantasy & science fiction books they do have at the library. Maybe check out some new libraries too.

[genarti]

Enjoy the next two! I do think the first is the weakest -- partly for some reasons of events, but mostly because I think the series benefits very much from the gradual piling-on of reveal after reveal, and there's only so much she had time to do in the first book when she was establishing the world as Rowan previously understood it. (The gradual development of Rowan's character and her understanding of the nuances and pitfalls of her orders' rules is another strength that only builds through time, IMO.)

I don't think the Heat would inherently affect the Inner Lands if it continued on as it had been. As I understand it, Rowan is afraid that Slado will turn the Heat onto the Inner Lands as an active weapon, because she believes that he has the ability to control and aim it and wouldn't hesitate to do so if it served his ends.

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Yes, the first one needed to establish the world, but even considering that it was very slow in places. Fortunately I remembered a rec somewhere saying that the second book gets better.

I just started with the third one and there's a lot of stuff about the Steerswomen that I really enjoy. Like how they can try to avoid answering questions they don't want to answer by asking very uncomfortable questions themselves. Or the possibilities of abusing their truth privilege, like Mira the town gossip. I still think their training in that regard is extremely lacking (and the order is a thousand years old!) but at least Rowan is learning. And hopefully I'll find out even more about the order later.

[genarti]

Yes! And in the later two books, I rather got the impression that Rowan is sort of straitlaced for a steerswoman, maybe in part because of her relative youth. Like, the rules are absolutely binding for them all, and they take them seriously, but some of them are more willing to countenance flexibility (and to see the potential for abuse or difficulty) than Rowan was at the beginning. And Rowan's social skills are very good, but they're also much better with certain personalities than others, which is something that the third and fourth books explore a good deal IIRC. In the second book the culture gap is a more pressing factor for everybody involved.

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"Very good social skills" is not how I would have described Rowan ;) But I'll see.

[genarti]

Ha! Okay, yes, fair and valid. I was waffling on it -- say, maybe, they're selectively good. But she does do a job that involves wandering around meeting strangers and not antagonizing them (shielded by her profession, but also without giving them a grudge against her profession), and by and large she does a decent job, I think. She could do better, but she could also do way worse.