The Language of Power, Rosemary Kirstein
Sep. 26th, 2015 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkI went to a hockey game today! The first game Vienna's women's team, the Sabres, played in Vienna this season, afaik. (The announcer didn't know how to pronounce "sabre"...) A 4:0 win against Zürich, nice. The Sabres have some very good players, I especially noticed Meixner, Kanthor and Casorso. Unfortunately none of my hockey-interested friends had time, it'd be even more fun with company. I think I accidentally sat in the Zürich section of the stands, where almost no-one was, and then I was too lazy to move so I didn't talk to anyone. Not even during intermission, because I was finishing the fourth Steerswoman book.
I really enjoyed The Language of Power. Willam! It was great to see him again. Six years later, it was great to see how that changed their dynamic and Rowan constantly had to adjust. Now Willam is the one teaching her (magic!) He clearly still admires Rowan and Bel very much, especially Rowan's intelligence.
I loved Willam and Rowan talking about magic, Willam with his completely new vocabulary and suddenly having to explain it, and Rowan trying to wrap her mind around it and mostly managing with astonishing speed. Rowan understood very quickly that magic is just a further step along understanding and manipulating nature with the help of certain rules. Formulas! Rowan loves physics. Meanwhile Willam became one of this world's first hackers.
Poor Rowan, after Fletcher Willam is the second close friend who turned out to be secretly working for a wizard. The second one who turned away from them, too. The relationship that's hinted at between Corvus and Willam is very interesting. It's left open if they were actually sleeping together, which I like a lot. Willam stayed with Corvus from 14 to 20, Corvus was his teacher, no wonder they developed a strong relationship, even if Willam wasn't sure what exactly it was. Strong enough that Willam deceived two women he highly admires to protect him. He gave up his chance at going back (going home) to find out more about Slado and now he's not even sure yet if or how that additional information will help with anything, ouch. He won't be able to learn more magic now either, or even practice most of it anymore, I'm sure he'll miss it.
I also really liked the relationship between Willam and Bel. All three of them together made an excellent team, and I'm sad they had to split up. At least Willam is on a ship travelling the coast, they'll be able to exchange messages every once in a while, maybe even meet. They'll have to, Willam still has a lot of information about wizards that would be very useful for the steerswomen to know.
More worldbuilding! I love this slow uncovering. Of course their "magic" is tech more advanced than we have on Earth, it would have to be for colonizing and terraforming. Artificial dragons! The dragon-stealing was very cool, btw, how Willam and Rowan worked together to figure it out and pull it off. And machines so advanced that it's unclear if they're alive or not, and them concluding that there's probably a spectrum and not a clear line between alive and not-alive.
I also love the history, like how everyone knows that the stars are distant suns even though nobody knows how or why, and how almost everybody knows the earth is a globe. Bel keeps insisting that the Outskirters were the first people, maybe that's where the first colony ship landed, but they don't have wizards in the Outskirts - at least not where the Outskirts are now, but how far west where they when the ships landed? It took me a while to figure out where "Krue" comes from: crew, of course! That makes a lot of sense.
The "stars" that show up on one map and not a few seconds before or after: signals from elsewhere, right? Just a few, but maybe there were more. Kieran must have been happy to know there were others out there, while Slado – what? Wanted not to be found? Do they have definite proof yet that Slado scheduled the extra Routine Bioform Clearance cycles?, because I was wondering if it was just some program wrongly adjusting after G-3 went down.
Willam said Slado must be at the third place where one could bring down a Guidestar. At first I thought that was probably is in the Crags: the place where the first wizard showed up, where there has always been a wizard. But Abremio is there, would Slado really want to be so close to another wizard? Besides, Willam knew about Donner, if it was the Crags chances are not bad he would know too. Does Willam know what kind of hold Slado has over the other wizards? Maybe he has the highest clearance and locked them out of the admin systems. Willam could probably also explain the Red/Blue system, from the outside it just looks like a giant waste of resources.
The people of Donner are involved now, nice. I loved the scene where they refused to give Rowan up – and then Jannik electrocutes her anyway, for no reason at all. And now, literal dragon-killing! It was great that we got to know Reeder, and Naio and Ona. A barely mentioned death in the first book suddenly becomes a lot more tragic when we get to know his family.
Of course it was Bel who decided to tell the truth to the city council. Bel, Margasdoter, Chanly is one of the most important people on the continent right now. If she's killed in the Inner Lands, and Rowan too, it would take a long time until the Outskirter tribes would even find out about it, and then… I love that Bel's most important quality is not that she's the best fighter - she's very good, but not necessarily exceptional – but that she has vision and thinks ahead, and that she's a poet and knows how to use stories to convince people. She'll make a great leader.
Bel is right that the Inner Lands also need to organize and a leader, if nothing else for diplomatic relations with the Outskirters even if it doesn't come to war. Rowan would be terrible for it, of course. The likely candidate that's already appeared is Duke Artos, Rowan's old friend.
I'm very much looking forward to the next book! "Language of Power" came out in 2004, so that's a while, but on her blog the author says she's still working on the sequels so I'm cautiously optimistic.
There are very few fics on AO3 so far, sadly. My timing is good, Yuletide nominations are open.
I really enjoyed The Language of Power. Willam! It was great to see him again. Six years later, it was great to see how that changed their dynamic and Rowan constantly had to adjust. Now Willam is the one teaching her (magic!) He clearly still admires Rowan and Bel very much, especially Rowan's intelligence.
I loved Willam and Rowan talking about magic, Willam with his completely new vocabulary and suddenly having to explain it, and Rowan trying to wrap her mind around it and mostly managing with astonishing speed. Rowan understood very quickly that magic is just a further step along understanding and manipulating nature with the help of certain rules. Formulas! Rowan loves physics. Meanwhile Willam became one of this world's first hackers.
Poor Rowan, after Fletcher Willam is the second close friend who turned out to be secretly working for a wizard. The second one who turned away from them, too. The relationship that's hinted at between Corvus and Willam is very interesting. It's left open if they were actually sleeping together, which I like a lot. Willam stayed with Corvus from 14 to 20, Corvus was his teacher, no wonder they developed a strong relationship, even if Willam wasn't sure what exactly it was. Strong enough that Willam deceived two women he highly admires to protect him. He gave up his chance at going back (going home) to find out more about Slado and now he's not even sure yet if or how that additional information will help with anything, ouch. He won't be able to learn more magic now either, or even practice most of it anymore, I'm sure he'll miss it.
I also really liked the relationship between Willam and Bel. All three of them together made an excellent team, and I'm sad they had to split up. At least Willam is on a ship travelling the coast, they'll be able to exchange messages every once in a while, maybe even meet. They'll have to, Willam still has a lot of information about wizards that would be very useful for the steerswomen to know.
More worldbuilding! I love this slow uncovering. Of course their "magic" is tech more advanced than we have on Earth, it would have to be for colonizing and terraforming. Artificial dragons! The dragon-stealing was very cool, btw, how Willam and Rowan worked together to figure it out and pull it off. And machines so advanced that it's unclear if they're alive or not, and them concluding that there's probably a spectrum and not a clear line between alive and not-alive.
I also love the history, like how everyone knows that the stars are distant suns even though nobody knows how or why, and how almost everybody knows the earth is a globe. Bel keeps insisting that the Outskirters were the first people, maybe that's where the first colony ship landed, but they don't have wizards in the Outskirts - at least not where the Outskirts are now, but how far west where they when the ships landed? It took me a while to figure out where "Krue" comes from: crew, of course! That makes a lot of sense.
The "stars" that show up on one map and not a few seconds before or after: signals from elsewhere, right? Just a few, but maybe there were more. Kieran must have been happy to know there were others out there, while Slado – what? Wanted not to be found? Do they have definite proof yet that Slado scheduled the extra Routine Bioform Clearance cycles?, because I was wondering if it was just some program wrongly adjusting after G-3 went down.
Willam said Slado must be at the third place where one could bring down a Guidestar. At first I thought that was probably is in the Crags: the place where the first wizard showed up, where there has always been a wizard. But Abremio is there, would Slado really want to be so close to another wizard? Besides, Willam knew about Donner, if it was the Crags chances are not bad he would know too. Does Willam know what kind of hold Slado has over the other wizards? Maybe he has the highest clearance and locked them out of the admin systems. Willam could probably also explain the Red/Blue system, from the outside it just looks like a giant waste of resources.
The people of Donner are involved now, nice. I loved the scene where they refused to give Rowan up – and then Jannik electrocutes her anyway, for no reason at all. And now, literal dragon-killing! It was great that we got to know Reeder, and Naio and Ona. A barely mentioned death in the first book suddenly becomes a lot more tragic when we get to know his family.
Of course it was Bel who decided to tell the truth to the city council. Bel, Margasdoter, Chanly is one of the most important people on the continent right now. If she's killed in the Inner Lands, and Rowan too, it would take a long time until the Outskirter tribes would even find out about it, and then… I love that Bel's most important quality is not that she's the best fighter - she's very good, but not necessarily exceptional – but that she has vision and thinks ahead, and that she's a poet and knows how to use stories to convince people. She'll make a great leader.
Bel is right that the Inner Lands also need to organize and a leader, if nothing else for diplomatic relations with the Outskirters even if it doesn't come to war. Rowan would be terrible for it, of course. The likely candidate that's already appeared is Duke Artos, Rowan's old friend.
I'm very much looking forward to the next book! "Language of Power" came out in 2004, so that's a while, but on her blog the author says she's still working on the sequels so I'm cautiously optimistic.
There are very few fics on AO3 so far, sadly. My timing is good, Yuletide nominations are open.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-27 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-27 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-27 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-27 08:31 pm (UTC)...and now the word looks weird to me. Never repeat a word too often. You said you didn't want to know anyway, sorry ^^
They won their game against Budapest 9:1 today :)
I hope you find a game nearby, it was a lot of fun. The first time I saw a game in person I was especially surprised by how loud the action on the ice is. I know the Sabres have many players called Anna because they call that name often during play.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-28 09:19 am (UTC)The nearest DEL team is 3 hours per train I'll see if I can find something more local, maybe.^^
no subject
Date: 2015-09-29 02:00 am (UTC)That does sound like some interesting world building. I might look into them, when I get time.
Hopefully, you can get some more fic at yuletide.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-29 06:56 pm (UTC)