"I don't like the look in his eye as he watches me."

October 18, 2020 6:01 PM

Three fantasy stories about magic, gender oppression, and fights that, as it turns out, aren't finished. "Many Mansions" by K.J. Parker, published September 2020, a sort of cat-and-mouse tale. "Charms" by Shweta Narayan, 2009: "Women's magic, she says, is like everything else. Not good enough for girls these days." "True Names" by Stephanie Burgis, 2009, is the most triumphant of the three: "The bell rings again while I'm still standing rigid as a rock in pure astonishment, right in the middle of the kitchen with a frying pan in my hand."

From "Many Mansions" by K.J. Parker, published September 2020:

But they send me because I get the job done—an early mistake on my part. On my first field assignment, I was under the impression that a splendidly successful outcome would win me merit and commendation. Silly me. What it got me was a reputation for being able to do this sort of thing. What I should’ve done was make a total hash of it, and they’d never have sent me again, and I’d be an abbot by now.

posted by brainwane (5 comments total)

All three are excellent! I love the concept of Many Mansions especially.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:20 PM on October 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Reading True Names with my own fist-chewing "don't put me down" E named baby asleep on my lap was extra chilling.
posted by freethefeet at 9:24 PM on October 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

K.J. Parker is a pen name of the comic fantasist Tom Holt. I’ve read some complaints about the way women are viewed and handled in Sixteen Ways to Defend A Walled City, which is still on my to-read list in spite of that, so I’m happy to be given the impression here that “Many Mansions” may not be following that trend.

Thanks for the links!
posted by verbminx at 12:50 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Here is Charles Payseur's review of "Many Mansions" which does find the POV character unpleasant and the story not particularly enjoyable:

The thing for me with the story is that it leans rather hard, in my opinion, on the reader being able to see that the narrator is an ass, committed to those prejudices (namely misogyny though that’s normally not all when dealing with these types of institutions) and so unreliable as a rule.

I believe I haven't read any of Parker's other work, but I looked at some other reviews just now. It sounds like he often writes worlds where basically every character who gets significant dialogue/action is deeply flawed or generally amoral, and where very few significant characters are women, and the men have and express misogynistic views (which are probably meant to be read as further indictments of the speakers). I'd welcome further edification from commenters who have read more of his work.
posted by brainwane at 4:49 AM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Let me digress about Parker/Tom Holt for a moment, then address the other stories.

Parker consistently has women cheat on their husbands/lovers and/or set them up for death. He does write women who don't do that, there's a female engineer/carpenter in Sixteen Ways who works heroically and brilliantly, and a female tavern owner who does some good stuff and has agency, but then there are two women who both cheated on their husbands and tried to set them up to die.

I dunno, maybe that's consistent with real world history, I can see in a misogynistic society women choosing who they want to be with and using men to accomplish their political goals might be a thing. But they are written unsympathetically, and it always (in what I've read) fails to kill the guy.

The engineer Trilogy has that too. K J Parker does some brilliant historical fantasy without any supernatural elements (and some with supernatural elements that are also good, like this) but I kinda want to ask Tom Holt, "Dude, who hurt you?" And Many Mansions I feel continues that, the woman chooses to be awful in order to get what she wants by destroying a man who doesn't deserve it, and she fails.

But honestly, I think K J Baker is distracting from the quality of the two other stories. Because while I may want to ask the author of "Many Mansions" things, I want to ask the protagonist of "Charms" things, I want her to reconsider who her ire is directed at. I want to congratulate the protagonist of "True Names" for her victory. the characters are stronger, more richly drawn then in Parker's story, even though his is more than twice as long as the other two stories combined.
posted by gryftir at 10:30 AM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]