And by early, I mean early in the series’ internal chronology.[1]
I've commented on my frustrations with the Liadan universe before, but as I've recently reread some of these books, I couldn't help noticing, again, some of the problems with this series. Plenty of people have noticed the mary-sueish levels of luck, power and wealth attending the protagonists, particularly members of clan Korval, around whom most of the stories center. But, as Dorothy Sayers and Lois McMaster Bujold have demonstrated, this is not an insuperable problem, if done well. [2]
All of those criticisms still stand, but it rather amazes me how many assumptions seem to slip right by readers. One of the most appalling is the reason the Jethri Gobelyn's mother hates him so much: (major spoilers for Balance of Trade!) this woman's lover (evidently) subverted her birth control, and then persuaded her not to abort, her initial choice. That would be reason enough for Iza Gobelyn to resent her unplanned, unwanted third child, but there's also the fact that as captain of a very small, family-run spaceship, she has to be cognizant that there literally isn't a place for him once he's grown.
But wait, there's more! Turns out, genetically, Jethri isn't even her child! Nope, he's a clone of his father, with her as an unconsenting incubator. Created with technology which said dad knows is deeply distasteful to her. Which goes a long way to explain why Iza Gobelyn treats this child so shabbily, trading away his future by sticking him on a dead-end ship with no scope for his only real talent to date[3] , trading, not to mention hoarding his belongings, such as a notebook he and his father worked on together, practically Jethri's only memento of the man. In the sequel, we learn additionally that she's done her very best, out of mere spite, to suppress any attempts for him to get the ship and pilot's training everyone else is expected—nearly required—to pick up.
But if Iza Gobelyn is mentioned at all, it's merely as a witch. Or a "B". Even if the authors aren't feminists, a lot of readers are. Yet none of the reviews has so much as a breath about this. Why not?
The authors have set up a nice, juicy situation: two very flawed characters, acting out very much according to their lights. Arin is desperate to prosecute his researches, to the point of betraying his beloved, who in turn betrays an innocent child (not least because he so resembles the lost beloved.[4] ) Their motivations align, and make perfect sense. It's the aftermath I can't stand. We're never told exactly when Iza discovers that Jethri is a clone, rather than a child, but presumably it's long enough after he's born that he's given her, rather than his (father's), surname, and thus implying that Jethri has a place —in her family, and on her ship.
Nor does she immediately boot father and son off her ship when she discovers the elder's perfidy; had he lived longer, we're told she ‘would've come round’ to accepting Jethri. Despite her emotional and vocational abuse (and, to be clear, it is) she forgives enough to tolerate her lover's child & associate (and, we assume distant relative) Grig, who also lives aboard ship, even after Jethri's been forced to leave.[5]
I've always detested those books in which the woman is expected to bear, love & automatically forgive her rapist's offspring, or even just an unplanned child. So I'm hardly going to knock Iza for her rejection of Jethri. Yet, we're told Arin persuaded her to have the baby; so at least for awhile, out of love for its father, if nothing else, I'd expect she'd make an effort to bond to their son. Yet, Jethri has no early loving memories of her, only of his father.
And that's what bothered me. Jethri's mother, for the most part, neglects him—often benignly, occasionally with truly cruel malice (as when she arranges to boot him off the only home he's ever known.) But Jethri knows she's his mother, knows she treats him differently than her other two children, knows it's wrong (because the other crew try to make up for it), but doesn't, until he's in his late teens, have any idea why.
This despite the fact that his mother is captain—the esteemed leader of their little clan. He ought to be going nuts, because he's a nice kid (one of the reasons I liked the character), with years of trying for some scrap of approval—that to judge by the way Iza suppresses any efforts for him to learn even the basics of shiplore—he's not gonna get. Sure, he compensates by learning trade (his father's area of expertise) instead; but I have to believe his interactions with his mom left a mark. But I'd expect his character to be twisted by resentment—and it isn't. Why not?[6]
Especially when he's adopted by master trader Norn ven'Deelin[7] of Liad clan Ixin. Again, it makes perfect sense that he would throw himself into his new life, learning all he can of Liad culture, having been so brutally rejected by the Terran (in the shape of his mother.[8] ) That past relationship should be causing more issues than it does with his new maternal relationship—both out of guilt and fear of doing the son thing wrong, but also out of guilt and sadness for deserting his ‘natal’ mother. Not to mention years of resentment, apt to come out in socially unproductive ways when he's not paying strict attention. Along, perhaps, with justifications that the one woman is far more a mother than the other, since neither is genetically related to him. And so on and so forth.
We get plenty of Jethri angst over being an improper Liadan son to Norn; not so much in switching his alliances. I'd expect at least to see a bit more rationalization that since his first mom treated him so badly, he's entirely justified in throwing her off for this new, far more awesome, educated, and rich mommy. And he does—once or twice, almost as an aside. In much the same way we get the explanation, as sort of an aside, of Iza's betrayal.
And that where I stumbled with the characterization of this story. Given his history, Jethri should've been far more conflicted over his mom(s). —Would've been nice if a few other readers noticed the defacto...forced pregnancy on his mom as well. But that particular crime seems to have sailed right over most people's heads.[9] But that to happen, I think we needed the characters to be more sensitive to Iza's betrayal; and though Grig acknowledges that it's happened, and it's painful, nowhere does Jethri ever reflect on how difficult his conception was for his mother. He barely reacts to the news that he's a clone, which given the focus on crossing clan lines, ought to have some effect (even though the text doesn't really provide enough cultural background to predict what that reaction might be.) Neither does anyone else, though it's not clear how many of the ship family actually know this hidden history. But then there ought to be more interpersonal dynamics, either during which they point out the unfairness, or Jethri resents them for not doing so.
IOW, I wanted to see some resolution between Jethri and Iza for the wrongs done them, and we don't get that. We don't even get a ‘sorry, I can't forgive what your father did to me’; heck, I'd settle for Grig's being frustrated at the situation hanging about limbo, as the birth of his own, problematically heritaged child suggests.
But to be fair, I suppose this sort of thing is what other readers are complaining about when they say the ending is ‘rushed’.
There are some other, larger themes that difficult for me when I read these books. —To be sure, the characterization, humour and plotting range from good to excellent, and I probably have a greater than average tolerance for reading about clothes, customs and even the endless references to tea (and coffee). That's why I find these books entertaining. But there are some troubling assumptions that come out of the libertarian and ‘honour culture’ underpinnings, and those, very few, if any other readers, appear to have addressed.
In a nice variation on the theme, Jethri later rescues another trader, Tam Lin, from a similar, if more dire situation than the one his mother tried to impose on him at the beginning of Balance. Excellent! But then as he and his new family plot to extract Tam Lin from his fate, their goals are not only to save him, but also to revenge themselves upon the miscreants. Not just any revenge, but a subtle, unobvious revenge. To be sure, it is the villains most focused on settling ‘Balance’, but all Liadans are obsessed with face—‘melant'i’[10] ; that is, they are an honour culture, obsessed with macho presentation (e.g. martial arts ‘menfri'at’, carrying knives and guns). In sort of a chill-girl twist, both sexes engage in these behaviors—a sort of feminist overlay upon hierarchical, conservative world-view.
Think about that. Revenge culture tends to escalate violence —as indeed the books themselves show, when one clan is ultimately driven off its homeworld for blowing a chunk of it up (or off), as part of a centuries’ long feud. What was done to Tam Lin (and, to a lesser extent, Jethri) is, when you think about it, obscene: both are threatened, at the very least, with indentured servitude, if not outright slavery, in a universe in which recyclers can provide nutritious food with the taste of button. There is no Child Protection Services, apparently no way to become an Emancipated Minor, nothing—not even the comparatively crappy social services net we have, right now.
What these folk do have is great disparity of wealth: Jethri, for example, compares his new ship, which is luxurious, with his natal one, always ‘one bad decision away from bankruptancy’ —not just in danger of losing their home, but their entire way of life, since they're ship-born and detest planets. All planets. What I found interesting is that Jethri, while grateful for his change of fortune—due almost entirely to luck, that is, a chance meeting with a wealthy, powerful clan head—he does not question it. No-one asks why such good fortune should be limited to a very few, with everyone else scratching at the margins, barely able to survive.
The series is conservative in other ways as well. The most thoughtful amongst Jethri's Gobelyn family are very sensitive to the changing political situation that has imperiled their old way of doing things; given a windfall, they immediately plow it back into their ship, along with plans to adapt to the new economic realities. But without that windfall—again, basically luck of the draw (aka Jethri's uncanny, nearly magical ability to identify salvage) they'd be stuck in an ever-tightening noose. That makes for more engaging story-telling, but it does imply a rather startling lack of compassion for the average person.
Even Arin, Jethri's father, whose decades if not centuries long schemes to rescue ‘Befores’ and ‘Old Tech’ are backwards looking: he's focused on resurrecting a lost (if dangerous) golden age, not creating, say, a scientific community capable of inventing its way to a new one. (Bear in mind that sympathetic characters ‘like a little danger’.) Norn ven'Deelin certainly should get some credit for fostering Liad/Terran trade and cultural understanding, and though she nominally pursues this course to foster trade (her mantra) the decision seemed to come more out of her personal honour than the sincere belief that such understanding was essential to the well-being of both cultures.
As I've mentioned in a previous post the Liaden Universe echoes the libertarian/feudal-aristocratic assumptions of Georgette Heyer (not altogether surprising, since the authors explicitly created the series to be Heyer in Space) and how problematic I find these underlying assumptions: yeah, I get it: it's much easier to have good guys and bad guys, to set up horribly unfair situations to direct your noble characters to fight their way through—instead of, say, messy, complicated people who are suffering from intractable problems such as systemic discrimination or personal failings that cannot be solved with lightsabers and jedi disciplines magical trees and pilot training.
Like the comfort read I mentioned a week ago these are fun stories, and Jethry's story is probably my favourite, despite the problems I document above: possibly because he and the other characters are not as over-archingly Mary-Sue-ish, especially in the first book, as the ones written earlier about clan Korval. It just kind of surprises me that no-one but me seems to notice these problems—or mebbe the overlap between people who do, and people who enjoy the books enough to write this sort of deconstruction is very, very small.
[1]That is, the book itself is plenty recent enough & the authors plenty experienced enough, that they can be fairly taken to task for the following.
[2]I.e. giving your super protags commeasurately outsize problems—not to mention some endearing personal quirks and/or weaknesses.
[3]As a Liadan Universe protag he practically has learn piloting and self-defense...
[4]I say ‘beloved’ rather than spouse because the main bond between characters appears to be child-making: carrying out your genetic line is very important to many characters in this series.
[5]The internal evidence is when Seeli Gobelyn(?) and Grig make a child, who Iza as captain surnames Tomas, rather than Gobelyn, at the end of the book. Thus, the new baby may grow up on Iza's ship, but is not guaranteed a spot once it crosses to adulthood.
[6]Besides the fact that it would make him a lot less appealing as a character, of course...
[7]Dealing, get it? Lest you think I'm making this up, note that Iza's ship is called the Gobelyn Market, presumably a reference to the Christina Rossetti poem.
[8]Ed. note: Liadans & “Terrans” seamlessly interbreed, so they obviously are all Terrans, at base...
[9]N.b., too, that Tam Lin has an even worse conception: his mother deceives his father Quiptic into siring the child, gutting the family fortunes in exchange, thereby destroying the family to the point that she gets both child—which she sells into slavery— and the fortune. Thus, the reader has plenty of opportunity to reflect on Jethri's creation. Though, to be fair, you have to give the series credit for equal-opportunity villains, male and female.
[10]Yup, this is the series that inspired all that snark on randomly placed apostrophes amongst their conlang...
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