#serrano legacy

[fuckyeah-nerdery]

Got a nice little book haul from the library’s sale

Mercedes Lackey:

Heralds of Valdemar: Arrows of the Queen, Arrow’s Flight, and Arrow’s Fall

The Last Herald Mage: Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Price (they didn’t have the second book, though)

Royal Assassin and Assassin’s Quest - Robin Hobb

Hunting Party - Elizabeth Moon

Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr

The Price of the Stars - Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

Empire in Black and Gold - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Phylogenesis and Diuturnity’s Dawn - Alan Dean Foster

The Longest Way Home - Robert Silverberg

The Godfather - Mario Puzo

The Pleasure of My Company - Steve Martin (yes, THAT Steve Martin)

The White Lioness and The Return of the Dancing Master - Henning Mankell

Alaska - James A. Michener

Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett (omnibus)

Skinwalkers, A Thief of Time, and Coyote Waits - Tony Hillerman (another omnibus)

Sanibel Flats - Randy Wayne White

15 Travis McGee novels that I’m not going to list because it’s 15 books - John D. MacDonald

[nonenosome2]

"Damn," said the voice. "It's supposed to—oh." She didn't know what that "oh" meant, and it infuriated her. How dare they mean whatever "oh" meant?

-Once a Hero

[nonenosome2]

“I want to see my nephew,” Cecelia said.

“I want to see my niece,” Marta said.

“I want to see whoever’s in charge,” Venezia said. Heris said nothing. The three older women had charged off the shuttle like a commando team, every action coordinated for maximum efficiency. Venezia made the three necessary calls—to the police, the hotel, and the local corporate headquarters. Marta arranged ground transportation. Cecelia gathered everyone’s luggage and dealt with local customs. Heris wondered how they’d worked that out when they hadn’t said a word after that first confrontation. She was supposed to be the military expert, but she felt like a young ensign on a first live-fire maneuver.

-Winning Colors

[nonenosome2]

Heris found herself grinning in spite of everything. “Well, you know what they say—when you haven’t any other place to step, it doesn’t matter which foot lands in the shit first.”

-Herris Serrano (Sporting Chance)

[nonenosome2]

Paksenarrion series is done.

Going to go through the Serrano Legacy now.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

A Lesson in Damsels in Distress

The Damsel in Distress is such an overused trope that it's now a cliché but people still use it. A woman is captured and the hero(es) need to go and save her. As a female reader, I find this is annoying more often than it's done well. However, for this post, I'm going to focus on an example where it is done well. My example is the book Rules of Engagement by Elizabeth Moon. This is one of the books of the Serrano Legacy - a seven book sci-fi epic with lots of interweaving plotlines.

One of the major plotlines in this book is around the capture of Brun Meager. She is taken prisoner, raped, mutilated and forced to carry a pregnancy to term. A huge focus for the book is on how to rescue her.

The thing I love about how this book handles the damsel in distress angle is that a lot of the emphasis is on Brun. The book shows how she copes with the trauma, how she stays strong and how she comes up with her own plans to escape rather than just sitting waiting to be rescued. Her plans actually come into conflict with her rescuers' at one point because she refuses to leave without another girl who was captured with her. The damsel in effect becomes the rescuer to someone else.

Brun never becomes just an object of a quest, she remains a strong and competent character in her own right. That's what makes it work here.