Nina Kiriki Hoffman and the wandering adolescent in f/sf

[malka]

Nina Kiriki Hoffman is one of my favorite authors. I recommended The Enchantment Emporium, by Tanya Huff (another favorite author) to relevant people by saying, "Tanya Huff ate Nina Kiriki Hoffman's brain! Eeeeee!" I was just musing on what, exactly, identifies a NKH book to me.

Part of it is the down-to-earth drifty numinousness of it. I hesitate to call it urban fantasy, a) because I wasn't entirely sure what that term meant even before paranormal romance took over and b) because most of it is set in various small towns in Oregon. It's got that reality-crossover feel, though. I'm going to community college and my mother cast a spell on me. I drive a taxi and I can fly people. That sort of thing. She doesn't spell the systems out the way D&D-influenced fantasy does. They stay more or less mysterious, while simultaneously being part of everyday life. I really adore this way of writing, and I wish more people than Hoffman, Charles de Lint, and now Huff, would do it.

Another part is the family-centered-ness of her characters. Even the characters who aren't surrounded and defined by siblings, parents, and cousins, are enmeshed in long-term deep social connections. Sf/f is so often the language of the rootless adolescent that I didn't think there was any other way to be. Hoffman seems to usually write about adolescents, but she writes about adolescents who are part of a larger social contract. Even in [giving the book's name would be a spoiler], the man who has been running away from connections finds a woman who has been running away from her connections and together they settle down as part of her extended family with some of her previous connections in the mix. One of the main subthemes in [giving this book's name might also be a spoiler] is how the main character learns to deal with her mother, not by running away, but by asserting herself sometimes, giving in other times, and generally finding a balance point.

I want more social-connection-centered sensawunda f/sf. I will be sad when I've read through all that Hoffman's published and I can't find any more new.

Comments

[cme]

Possible other spoiler: you might also be disappointed or distressed by the sudden abrupt ending of Fall Of Light. :( I was disappointed enough that I didn't buy it.

[malka]

I bought it in hard-cover because it was a sequel to Fistful of Sky. I'm somewhat in denial about its existence, partially because it was a weak story (I don't remember the ending, which is not a good sign, but I also didn't bond with Opal the way I wanted to), and partially because of the way one historical scene was treated. I suspect Hoffman meant for it to come out nuanced, but to my read it came out as more of the same shit the genre's been shoveling about that topic. (If you like frothing rantage, ask me some time in person about why I can't reread or even recommend the otherwise fascinating Robert Sawyer trilogy about alternate societies.)

[cme]

I almost bought the hardcover but I was warned in time by another friend who'd pre-ordered, read it, and was disappointed.

You're right about the story (though I hadn't really noticed this because other things were bothering me more) and the character's voice- I loooooved Opal in Sky, and actually fangirled at Hoffman at Wiscon about a book about Opal, but... this Opal didn't seem like that one. I mean, I think it would have been possible to show how the Opal in her family's house, resisting her mother, was different than the Opal at work, but I don't think that *was* shown. It actually felt like the Opal in this book was really young, younger than Gyp in the last book, but I'm pretty sure that this was supposed to postdate Sky. And I was REALLY upset by the ending.

It's so sad, because I've basically loved everything else she's written.

and partially because of the way one historical scene was treated. I suspect Hoffman meant for it to come out nuanced, but to my read it came out as more of the same shit the genre's been shoveling about that topic.

Can you expand on that? I'm curious now.

[malka]

Opal in Sky had power. It was not the power Gypsy wanted, but that made it better: look, there are multiple ways to be, y'know?

It might have been really cool to show the Opal from Sky, n years later, negotiating some standard family tension (grandkids? Coming out? Child needs to be caretaker of parent?) with her mother.

I'm still being spoiler-jumpy, so here's my ROT13 expansion:

Vg jnf gur fprar nobhg bar bs ure cerivbhf oblsevraqf jub unq encrq ure (znlor? V'z tbvat bss bs zrzbel, abg gur npghny obbx) naq gura fnvq, "Ybbx, guvf vf jung lbh qb jura lbh zvaq-ahqtr lbhe oblsevraqf vagb frk rknpgyl gur jnl lbh yvxr."

Gurer ner n ybg bs vagrerfgvat ahnaprq guvatf gung V guvax Ubsszna jnf gelvat gb pbairl gurer, ohg gurl'er uvqqra sbe zr haqre gur jnl nyy bs s/fs gerngf encr, naq gur snpg gung gur syhssl snagnfl obbx (qvssrerag bar) V jnf ernqvat gb tb gb fyrrc orsber na rneyl zbeavat unq n fhecevfr encr-ol-fbzrbar-znva-punenpgre-gehfgrq naq gung, vs lbh'er trggvat aba-srzvavfg obbx erpf, gung'f abg rira jbegu jneavat sbe, naq gur jnl vzntvangvir encr-gurzrq vzntrel pbagrfgf ner cneg bs gur jnl znal zra V yvxr naq gehfg pbzcrgr jvgu rnpu bgure naq ...

(Spellcheckers do not like ROT13.)

[cme]

Opal in Sky had power.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! And Opal in Light did not. It was the whole "find your strength by letting goooooo!" canard. Which is really "ladies who submit to the patriarchy are happier!!" HATE THAT.

I was really, REALLY hoping that Light would be the book about that later Opal from Sky- having a life and career of her own, still coping with her family- I was really hoping that we'd learn how her complicated past with her mother, her siblings, and her power had informed her personality. I could buy that she was messed up by it all and disconnected in self-defense (I think Hoffman has handled this well in previous books) but instead I feel like we got a bad fic, or maybe an AU. We didn't get a 20-something Opal with a career and a personality, we got sort of... teenage quest stuff? Like maybe her publisher wanted the be riding the wave of YA popularity harder? Sadness.

I'm sort of disturbed that I didn't remember the scene you refer to above before being reminded. I see what you mean about how she could have been getting at things like learning important things about yourself and life from people who are otherwise shits, and making huge mistakes and damaging people and damaging yourself and stuff, but yeah, I agree with what you said about how it was just problematic. I didn't really notice it at the time (also disturbing)- maybe because it went by too fast? As strange as it sounds, I think this would have benefited from more text if she really wanted to do this.

In related disappointingness, I reread some Robin McKinley and was saddened in a way I wouldn't have noticed before talking to you about the "older man helping younger woman flower, mawwiage, happy ever after" nonsense. Sigh. (No guilt, though!) (Knot in the Grain.) Also if you were thinking of buying Fire, her latest anthology with her husband, you can have mine, and then you can find another home for it after you fling it across the room. (It wasn't... horrible? I think? Well, one of them was. But she wrote fewer stories than he did, I already know I don't like his stuff that much, and one of her two stories was indistinguishable in tone from his, leaving one story I think I liked out of a hardcover anthology of five. A letdown, especially since I liked Water (at the time I read it). Now I'm more nervous about going back and reading her stuff.)

[malka]

If she were to write a YA book about Opal, I'd like to hear about Opal's separation from her mother. In Sky Gyp sees that Opal has a separate, more Opal-controlled bond than the rest of them -- how did they come to that arrangement? How did Anise, with her issues and personality, deal with her first child leaving? I admit to an older-sister bias, but really, there's good stuff there that's more properly YA than "twenty-something Opal does nothing much".

McKinley has said that Beauty and the Beast is her favorite story. I...understand how she got from there to the fixation on older, personality-full man helping and bonding to younger woman. (As a side note, if you find a differently-gendered version of B&tB that's not the one about the prostitute, I will love you forever. I can't even come up with one myself, that's how hard it's gender-stuck in my head.) I can even ignore it, much of the time, because I hard-core adore her writing style. (I would buy any phone book she cared to write. I would also get a boring phone book if I ever wanted to look any numbers up, but such is life.) But yeah, it's wearying.

I look forward to flinging your book. :) I hate it when the inferior (to me, at least) person influences the superior, instead of the other way around.

(Also, tiny rant: she got the physics of spinning and spindles utterly, utterly wrong in _Spindle's End_. Not just not how anyone does it, but not how anyone *could* *ever* do it. Argh. And I still love that book.)