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Re-reads: Barbara Hambly's Darwath trilogy
Sep. 2nd, 2015 10:38 amI've been doing a bit or re-reading recently. I picked up Barbara Hambly's 'Darwath' trilogy at Eastercon this year, which I haven't read since they were originally published in the UK in 1985 (they were some of the very few BH books I didn't already own - I must have borrowed them from someone?)
I'm not going to talk much about the content, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pennski hasn't read them yet, but I'm more interested in what I remember about them after 30 years. There were three important plot points I remember very clearly - though one of those isn't actually confirmed until pretty much the last chapter and I remember as being much more significant. But there's one hugely important relationship that I have absolutely no memory of at all. I also have no memory of the resolution of the main storyline, nor how much an asshole one of the protagonists is at times (I'd also note that I remembered one of the two protagonists as being the more important character and the other being secondary, but in fact it's the other way around.)
What does still impress is that - at a time when there were huge numbers of highly derivative high fantasies being published - there is a genuinely different threat, with no Dark Lord or evil masterplan and, in fact, could be seen as a natural disaster. There is also a wonderful chapter half way through the third volume where one of our protagonists explains What Is Going On which made me smile with genuine pleasure as I read it. So, yeah, overall I'd still recommend them, though with a certain caution; they are definitely stories of their time in some respects (some of the aforementioned assholeness of one of the protagonists may be only noticible because I am better educated about certain issues than I was at 18!)
Oh, and we have a number of female warriors in a medieval-ish setting and no-one mentions it as strange. This was 30 years ago! Why are we still having this conversation?
I'm not going to talk much about the content, as
pennski hasn't read them yet, but I'm more interested in what I remember about them after 30 years. There were three important plot points I remember very clearly - though one of those isn't actually confirmed until pretty much the last chapter and I remember as being much more significant. But there's one hugely important relationship that I have absolutely no memory of at all. I also have no memory of the resolution of the main storyline, nor how much an asshole one of the protagonists is at times (I'd also note that I remembered one of the two protagonists as being the more important character and the other being secondary, but in fact it's the other way around.)What does still impress is that - at a time when there were huge numbers of highly derivative high fantasies being published - there is a genuinely different threat, with no Dark Lord or evil masterplan and, in fact, could be seen as a natural disaster. There is also a wonderful chapter half way through the third volume where one of our protagonists explains What Is Going On which made me smile with genuine pleasure as I read it. So, yeah, overall I'd still recommend them, though with a certain caution; they are definitely stories of their time in some respects (some of the aforementioned assholeness of one of the protagonists may be only noticible because I am better educated about certain issues than I was at 18!)
Oh, and we have a number of female warriors in a medieval-ish setting and no-one mentions it as strange. This was 30 years ago! Why are we still having this conversation?