#mordion

[no-where-new-hero]

The Hexwood readalong might be over but my quest for Mordion fancasts never ends

[quietflorilegium]

"There was no avoiding the memories. They were there, and they existed, implacable and everlasting as stars."

Diana Wynne Jones, "Hexwood"

[kapuzenknoten]

Just finished hexwood and was disappointed by the little amount if fanart, so i decided i needed to help out :D also mordions backstory? I still think that reigner one deserved worse. 😤

[lavenderfables]

When Vierran kissed Mordion on the nose while he was in dragon form, I transcended into blissful theta-space.

[quietflorilegium]

“Ann left him there, kneeling among the violets looking out into the fog as if that glimpse of the castle had somehow broken his heart.”

Diana Wynne Jones, "Hexwood"

[quietflorilegium]

"Can't you treat yourself with a bit more consideration?" "Why should I?" Mordion said, hugging the duvet round himself. "Because you're a person, of course!" Ann snapped at him. "One person ought to treat another person properly even if the person's himself!"

Diana Wynne Jones, "Hexwood"

[alishatheninth]

Another character I really like is Mordion Agenos of Diana Wynne Jones' Hexwood, a rare example of a ruthless hero. Art by @madstuart / @madtumbleson.

Mordion is very good at killing people, quickly, with his mind. He's been bred and trained through extensive coercion to do it, as the Reigners' Servant. Now a lot of what Diana Wynne Jones writes is YA, and I'm pretty sure I found it on those shelves as a young teenager and maybe it shouldn’t have been there, because this is some really dark stuff. It's not lingered on gratuitiously - it feels exactly like something Mordion does quickly because he doesn't like to think about it - but nothing in this book is lingered on and that’s part of the impact and why it stands up so well to re-reading.

It would be very easy for such a book to end with "and then Mordion got free and never killed anyone ever again", but that's explicitly not the message. The message is the much more offbeat "you should do your own dirty work" (and definitely not have children to do it). It's still a bit shocking to read the scene near the end where Mordion has two of the minor villains at his mercy. They haven't actually done anything that bad onscreen. One's soft and ineffectual. But they’ve both been part of an evil regime. He considers outcomes briefly, and then "he terminated them both on the spot". If you think that sounds hot, well, Diana Wynne Jones is looking right at you and she knows what your filthy mind is like. Our female protagonist Vierran realises she's attracted to the glamour and intrigue of his role - "she had a crush on the Servant, not the man". I feel seen and inserted into the story... and DWJ disapproves (but probably understands). This isn't a bleak book overall. We get a lot of relatively happy (memory-altered) Mordion interacting with Vierran and it's really cute. And we see him through his own POV (he's trying so hard even when he can't really remember why) and through the eyes of his oppressors (he's polite and respectful because of what they've done to him, but you can see even filtered through them that he does have a lot of empathy despite everything). And then he gets his own memories back and it's so bleak I just want to cuddle him and wrap him in a duvet (Vierran gets to do this, lucky bint). I have no idea where DWJ started plotting Hexwood, but I wonder if she was thinking about plots where the damaged victim gets to be the ruler at the end, and what might sell this as a good idea rather than a likely perpetration of the cycle. If I have a complaint about the book, the ending feels rushed and muddled and throws a lot of things in at once which mostly happened offstage, but it's also earned.

[vokpodcast]

VoK 638: GRRM’s Thousand Worlds – “The Glass Flower” and “The Stone City” (Review)

http://archive.org/download/vok-638-thousand-worlds-3/VOK638_ThousandWorlds3.mp3 The Vassals (and Bastards) conclude their voyage into George R. R. Martin’s science fiction universe. Join Amin, Duncan (aka Valkyrist), Michael (aka Mordion), and Zach (aka Alias) as they review two more short stories from Martin’s Thousand Worlds series – “The Glass Flower” and “The Stone City.” Credits: Edited by…

View On WordPress