Traveler of the Void
Part 1 - City on the Sea
Chapter 4 - The Deal
As the women of the royal palace of Sangal watched the sunset from the Flower Pavilion, the Rassharō girl Surina watched that same sunset aboard ship, all alone.
Since the day she'd been separated from her family, her circumstances had changed so drastically that she could scarcely believe it. She felt like she was living through a vivid extended dream.
Surina passed the night of that first terrible day on the beach of the deserted island, concealing herself in a thicket of shangal ferns. She'd swum a long way and was entirely exhausted. She fell asleep the moment she tumbled into the thicket and had nightmares all night. Her chest constricted with grief. She had no idea what to do next. She remained in the thicket until dawn.
Then she remembered her father, and Rashi, and Racha, and she cried without stopping for a long time.
Her father had ordered her to run away, but without a boat, how was she supposed to do that? And there wasn't even any fresh drinking water on the island. It seemed she had no choice but to try to make it to the nearest inhabited island, Rash—but the ship that had attacked her family had come from that direction.
What she really couldn't figure out was why the King of Sangal's soldiers would be on a merchant vessel. Why had those soldiers attacked Rassharō ships without cause? She couldn't figure out how it had happened at all.
As she thought about the situation, she heard the unmistakable sound of rowboats coming toward shore. She peeked out of the ferns to look and saw five small boats carrying soldiers gliding across the water. The movement of the oarsmen recalled to her something of how Rassharō oarsmen moved.
She saw soldiers clutching their bows and arrows. They called out to one another while looking at the beach. Surina concealed herself more deeply in the thicket of ferns. Were they searching for her? Probably...or maybe they were looking for anyone that may have escaped their attack.
They landed on the beach and started a search. She'd arrived yesterday, so her footprints might still be visible on the beach—unless high tide had come in and washed them away. That might save her. Surina stilled herself and listened to the sound of the rowboats, now just off shore.
Then she realized something.
Kon, ko ko. Koko koko ko kon.
It was the sound of the oars dipping in and out of the sea—but the rhythmic beats were ones that only the Rassharō used. There was a message concealed in that rhythm, one that she could interpret. She had learned these patterns and rhythms from Rassharō oarsmen since she was a child. The code was secret. Only the Rassharō ever used it. She listened with her whole body, struggling to interpret the message.
Is anyone alive? If anyone is alive, come to the beach at moonrise.
The message repeated, over and over again, to anyone within hearing range.
Had other Rassharō come to rescue her? She very much wanted to believe that. She clenched her fists and tried to hope.
Waiting for moonrise seemed to take forever. She spent some of the time walking around the deserted island, eating fruit from the trees and slitting open the vines twisting around their trunks to suck water out of them. She returned to the shangal thicket before moonrise and waited for someone to approach.
Finally, she heard the sound of oars on the waves again and stood up.
We've come to save you. Come out.
Surina understood the code of the oars perfectly, but she was still scared to leave the thicket. She mustered her courage, then stepped out of cover onto the moonlit beach.
Long, thin rowboats approached the shore. A man, alone, alighted from one of these boats and dragged the vessel up the sand with quick and practiced movements. Then he looked around, turning in a circle. He stopped and stood still when he caught sight of Surina.
"Are you Rassharō?"
He did not speak Sangalese, but the language that the Rassharō used among themselves. Having passed half her life on shore, Surina was not very used to hearing it spoken by other people that weren't her family. She hesitated, but then said, "Yes, I am Rassharō."
The man's shoulders relaxed. His expression was one of relief. "Come this way. Don't run. We're here to rescue you." He came closer to her. When he was close enough that she could almost make out his face in the light of the moon, she realized that the man was rather old. He stopped moving, his face clearly visible in the light of the moon.
"Oh...a girl, is it?" His tone expressed surprise—and disappointment. When he spoke again, though, his voice was kind. "You must have been through a lot. You've done very well to get this far. To live through something like that, all alone, you must be very strong and brave."
"Do you know what happened to my father?" she asked without thinking, then hastily added, "I'm sorry. I'm Surina. My father is—"
The old man approached the edge of the thicket near where she stood and sat down. He invited her to sit as well. "I don't know know who your father is, but not everyone in the attack yesterday died. Some were captured and still live."
"My father would have been carrying a baby," Surina said. "And he may have had a boy with him, around ten years old."
The old man raised his eyebrows. "Was he wounded? In the shoulder?"
Surina leaned forward. "Yes! Yes, that's him! He had an arrow in his right shoulder. I tried to pull it out, but..."
The man smiled at her. "Is that right? It's probably the man I'm thinking of, then. Since he didn't fight and had children with him, he'll probably be sold at the slave market, along with the children."
Her family was alive. Tears overflowed in Surina's eyes. She tried to ask about the safety of her uncles, too, but no sound escaped her throat.
"You probably don't understand what's happened at all, do you?"
Surina nodded.
"You think you were attacked by a Sangalese ship," the old man said. "But it wasn't a Sangalese ship. It flew Sangal's colors, but it was really a Talsh spy vessel."
Surina's mouth dropped open in shock.
"You were unlucky," the old man said. "Ordinarily, if they'd come across you, they would have just passed you by. But just at the time when your ships were rounding the cape, that ship was on the other side of it, measuring the depth of the ocean floor. They were searching for a safe route for their warships to take to the capital. Around here, there are many places where the depth of the ocean floor changes dramatically. That makes it a dangerous area for warships to sail, because they could easily founder in shallow waters. But if they could find a safe route from this direction, it would be the perfect one to take to launch a surprise attack.
"If they were discovered doing this work, they faced the danger of having their tactics exposed. In order to prevent that, they attacked your friends and family."
"Then my father..."
"No. I doubt he's been killed. If they took your family as prisoners of war, their secret would still be safe. It's not like the Rassharō are loyal to the King of Sangal, and with the Talsh being the Talsh, they could probably use the extra workers."
The old man's lips twitched upward in a bitter smile. "Take us, for example. My name is Dogol. I was born far to the south in the Sugal Sea, near the kingdom of Karal. I'm not sure if you know this or not, but two years ago, the kingdom of Karal was overrun by the Talsh Empire. The Sugal Sea is now under their control...and from that time, my people have ceased to be Rassharō."
Surina blinked. "We did not want to be Talsh slaves,” Dogol said through gritted teeth. We chose to be treated as citizens, like the other people of Karal. We thought that would be better than being chased by pirates until we die.
"But the Talsh Empire doesn't allow their citizens to settle in other countries. In exchange for the protections of citizenship, we have certain obligations. We pay taxes and send our sons to fight in their armies. If you're always tied to land, you can't be called a Rassharō anymore, can you?" Dogol related all of this dispassionately, concealing his emotions. He stared at Surina. "But you and I are the same. If the Talsh Empire conquers Sangal, the Rassharō of these waters will suffer the same fate as us."
Dogol lowered his voice and started speaking quickly. "I told you the Talsh Empire takes our sons for its armies. They are sent to the Talsh capital. They are called soldiers, but they are hostages. But you—you are Rassharō, a nomadic drifter of the sea. If you sailed to the capital, no one would think it strange or suspicious. You have the potential to become the best possible spy in all of Sangal.
"So go sail the seas of Sangal. Discover how the currents move and connect. Find out how the Island Guardians distribute their resources and armies, in detail. If you do well, you'll be rewarded with more gold than you have ever laid eyes on." He paused. "Help us find a secret way to attack the capital of Sangal."
Surina's body felt frozen through. How had her family ever gotten caught up in something like this?
"Please save me." Surina extended her hand as if searching for something, then found Dogol's hand in the dark and gripped it hard. "Help my family find a way to escape!"
Dogol dropped Surina's hand and shook his head. "That's impossible. Now is the time to keep your head down. If you or your family tried to run away now, you'd only be killed. But if you cooperate, your family and friends—along with the other Rassharō—will likely be given fair treatment."
"Then take me to my family," Surina said. "I want to be with them."
Dogol gripped her hand tightly. "I understand how you feel. This is something I'm begging you to do."
Surina frowned slightly. Dogol's eyes shone in the dark. "The Talsh still don't know you survived. You can be the arrow of our revenge upon them." His voice struck an impassioned note. Surina tried to extricate her hand from his grasp, but he just held on. "Listen. My son is dead. He was killed in a border skirmish. Do you understand? To the west of Talsh is a desert wasteland far from the sea. That's where my son died. A Rassharō dying on land!
"I've dreamed of it so many times—my son's corpse dried out and desiccated in the desert sun. You can't imagine the pain, the agony, of knowing Rassharō are being dragged off to that horrible place and killed..."
Dogol's eyes swam with tears. "I hate the Talsh. They killed my son. But no matter how much I hate them, what can I do? I can't destroy the Talsh. They're too strong. So I became their vanguard, to help the other Rassharō that become their war prisoners as best I can."
Dogol took a deep breath and looked directly into Surina's eyes. "You have been given to us by the goddess of the sea to be the instrument of our revenge. I will use you to bring down the Talsh Empire in a single blow—a small one, perhaps, but it will have a devastating impact.
"From here, sail to the capital. Tell the King of Sangal everything I told you. The Talsh Empire is tremendously strong, but the King of Sangal knows the ocean well. It is possible that Sangal will win. If they do win, the Rassharō from the Sugal Sea might be able to migrate to the waters of the Yaltash. Do you understand what I'm asking? Right now, we are all holding our breaths. We are being manipulated, so we're within our rights to manipulate them right back. So many of our sons have died on land. We have watched and suffered in silence long enough."
Surina took a step back hurriedly, freeing her hand. "You can't ask me to do such an outrageously difficult thing. I can't do it."
Dogol laughed. "I don't know... I think precisely because you are who you are, and because of how you appear, you will be able to do it. You're just a poor girl, and that in itself will deflect many suspicious eyes. And besides, you don't have much choice. If you help us, we'll give you food and access to a ship so that you can leave this place. If your father has been injured, we will find him and treat his wounds. I am the leader of the vanguard of the Talsh Empire. I have the power to do this.
"If your father has cooperated with the Talsh, he will be sent to one of two islands to work. I know where these islands are. The day when you can see your family again will come. It may take a few years, but certainly that's better than never seeing them again?"
Dogol smiled faintly as he spoke. He gazed steadily at Surina with a light in his eyes. "If you refuse, all we'll do is leave you here. You'll never know where your family is. If things go badly, your father might die of his wounds. I have lost my son, so I understand how you feel, but I'm under no obligation to save you or your family. Not without getting something in return.
"So what will you do?" he asked. "Will you accept this deal, or refuse it?"
Surina wanted to tell Dogol that he was crazy, but she was so terrified for her family that she couldn't bring herself to say such a thing. If she accepted, she would have to go on a long journey on a boat that was not her father's. She was scared, but she didn't see any better options. In exchange for aid for herself and her family, she was willing to give almost anything.
She drew herself up, gathered her courage, and answered in the same manner an adult woman of the Rassharō would when accepting a contract: "I accept the deal."
Dogol grinned happily at her.
"Well, then, miss, let's get you a ship. The three Talsh spy ships patrolling this island will leave tomorrow morning. There will be no others until noon. Tomorrow morning, climb up the cliffs and look down to make sure the ships have left." As he spoke, he dragged his rowboat down the beach and into the shallows of an inland creek. "When we capture your ships, we're usually ordered to destroy and sink them in order to prevent information about our movements from spreading. There is a ship at the tip of the coast, in a cave, that we sunk but did not destroy. Once you relieve it of some of its weight, it should float again.
"The cave where the ship is concealed is one that the Talsh usually use as a waste pit. No one should think to look for you or the ship there. After you recover the ship, the next part is up to you. You are still young, but you are a strong Rassharō. I am certain you will survive."
Dogol frowned suddenly and lowered his voice. "And I will teach you everything I know about the Talsh army. Its movements, its strategies, its numbers—listen well. This information is worth a barrel of gold to the King of Sangal." Dogol took her hand again and began tracing out a crude map of the three spy vessels on the island as well as the location of the sunken ship. Creating and memorizing maps based on hand tracings was an art among the Rassharō people. The direction of the wrist was north. The middle finger pointed south. The knuckles pointed to landmarks—or, for larger maps, to commonly known currents and islands in the area.
When he was done teaching her the placement of the ships, he covered her hand with his own. "Don't report to the wrong person by mistake. Not all who say they are Sangalese are loyal to the King. If you tell the wrong person, not just you, but your entire family may be killed."
Surina understood the precariousness of her situation. Her heart raced and she trembled all over.
Dogol's expression softened. He squeezed her hand once more for reassurance, then let her go. He stood up, said "Good luck," and left her there.
Surina managed to recover the sunken ship, just as Dogol had promised. Dredging the ship up all on her own was a challenge, though. She frequently broke down in tears. Concealed in the cave with the ship were food and water: smoked meat and fish, and confections and sweets that the poor Rassharō girl had never seen before. There were also two thousand ja coins, which were the largest denomination of coin that she knew of.
A warm feeling spread through Surina's chest when she discovered money in the cave. She remembered Dogol's face just before he'd left her. She now believed that he would keep his promise to help her father.
She also remembered the moment when his expression had softened at seeing her fear. She wished she would have hugged him then—cried and broken down and begged him to take her to her family. She thought about that moment over and over again. If she had broken down, he may have given up on using her and taken her to her father as she'd asked. She wondered why she hadn't done it, even though she'd wanted to. Feelings of regret consumed her.
Thinking about that moment made her anxious beyond description, but she did have hope—a small one. When Dogol had told her not to mistake her contact, she had imagined the person Dogol described in her mind. It was a boy—a boy she knew well. They'd gone deep water fishing together, dived together, played together—he was her friend. And he was someone that would never betray the King.
Prince Tarsan.
But Prince Tarsan was currently at the royal palace. The Prince Tarsan on Kalsh Island and the Prince Tarsan of the palace were as different as the sea and the clouds. A poor Rassharō girl could never expect to meet a royal prince on the beach outside the capital.
"I wish I'd cried and given up after all. It's impossible. I can't do this."
But she'd already agreed. No matter her regrets, she had no choices left.
And so, Surina's solitary sea voyage began.
It's kind of a bummer already knowing that the Talsh get Sangal, reading this. Their empire seems kind of a crummy place to live - the sort of place where you'd be tossed in prison for speaking your native language, say. And it also seems like they really shouldn't be trusting their conquered peoples - like, here this Dogol is working against them under their noses, and later Hyuugo, and I'm sure there are others. Y'know, I've been working on my own version of Blue Road (which I'd better finish before you get to that one! eep!), and when I was writing Raul trying to convince Chagum to join him, I found myself thinking, "Huh, he makes a good point" - like, it suddenly seemed to me like, why not? Chagum's dad is terrible and if the boy's only objection is not wanting to abet his father's death, that's not really a great reason not to go along with Raul's plan. But, this shows (to me) that the Talsh make empty promises. They would *say* "oh, you'll be able to keep your culture and everything, the only thing you'll have to do is give us taxes and conscripts", but then that would quickly become "jk nevermind, no more Tendou, no more Yaku, you can only sell your steel through Talsh brokers, and also no more migrant workers from Kanbal, only Talsh citizens can work in this country and all illegal aliens will be arrested and enslaved", etc. So it would end up being way worse than New Yogo under the lousy Mikado.
ReplyDeleteI'm really rooting for Surina, but.. I feel like she's doomed to fail. :(
I agree with your assessment of Talsh governance. (You've been translating Traveler of the Blue Road!? Do you have notes to share? That might help with speed :) ). What I like about the portrayal of Talsh is that the monolith is cruel and evil but the individuals, generally, are not. If someone managed to reform Talsh from within, it wouldn't necessarily be so unspeakably awful. If we're judging the country by its people and not its policies, Talsh isn't so bad. Unfortunately Talsh's policies make everyone suffer.
DeleteI think Chagum, even leaving his attachment to Sangal aside, is more than smart enough not to trust the promises of an autocrat. His father is an autocrat. Raul and the Mikado are contrasted strongly in the books, but at core they want the same thing: absolute dominion. The main difference is their level of contact with reality. Raul can do a lot more damage in the thick of things than the Mikado can on his lofty perch.
I don't think Surina fails, exactly...I mean, she manages to do what she sets out to. The problem is that even Dogol didn't know every element of the plan, nor could he foresee certain other events and complications, so the warning doesn't come soon enough to save everyone. :(
And I am intrigued on why you decided to skip 3 books and do "Blue Road" first, though you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. :) (At my current pace, I should start on that book in March or April next year.)
Ha ha, whoops, I see how my comment sounds in retrospect. Translating? Nooooo. Literally writing my own version. I recently started posting it on AO3 because two whole people commented on a story I had finished after a 2-year hiatus that they wanted more, so I figured I might as well. https://archiveofourown.org/works/27376003/chapters/66899413 I've been working on it for quite some time. I have some notes about the plot, compiled from a bunch of "impressions" on people's blogs and a few summaries, but this ain't no translation. Plus I deliberately changed some things. Like, I wanted Tosa to go down fighting, not simply for honor's sake. And obviously I ramped up the amount of time devoted to them Hunters, because of course I did. I also *kinda* ship Chagum and Senna pretty hard, but I haven't written much about them yet so probably nothing will happen but IDK. I picked Blue Road to do this to because, y'know, Hunters, but also because it has been very hard to find out information about Heaven and Earth, particularly the last volume. I think the various bloggers don't want to spoil the end? IDK. I also found some rather inspiring fanart, including a fan-drawn book cover, that made me want to write it (since I couldn't read it). But mainly... Hunters.
DeleteI did try to read Dream a few years ago using Google Translate, a tablet, and a copy borrowed from my university's library, but it was so difficult and the translations so clunky that I gave up and never attempted it with any of the other books. I'd never dream (lol) of trying to translate the books on my own. A single-volume manga is one thing; a book with like, 5 illustrations? Heck no. Yeah, sorry, I should have phrased my comment less ambiguously. >_<
I thought getting here myself (being able to do long-form translation, albeit with only 90-95% accuracy) would have taken a lot longer. But the first novel I ever read in Japanese was "Guardian of the Spirit." There were 672 words in the first chapter (so...10 pages?) that I didn't know, but I am stubborn (read: stupid) and kept going, and somehow it got easier, and made everything else I was reading easier, too. (Full disclosure, though: it took me four months to read it all the way through the first time. I am patient, but not a masochist.)
DeleteI am probably going to do a compare/contrast analysis of your fic and the actual novel. It will probably happen at some point. :) I can tell you that Uehashi is good at creating strong relationships, but generally bad (by Western standards) at portraying romance with much real depth. Every instance I can think of is very much a love-and-friendship marriage, with heavy emphasis on the friendship. That's not necessarily bad, but it doesn't feed into Western story tropes about romance at all.
Google Translate is not your friend with Japanese. For very short utterances, it is fine. For anything longer than a line or two...gibberish. *sigh* Learning to read took years in English...I remind myself of that every day. :)
*Are* there any romances in the books besides Balsa and Tanda? I mean, I guess Torogai and the Flower had a thing, but that was a one-night stand, not a romance. Toya and Saya are a thing, but they had SUCH a teensy weensy role in the books... only the anime did anything romancey with them. (I love them and I was also very disappointed at their small role in both the book and the drama. :( Not because of their romance, but because they're just fun characters imo.) The drama had that thing between Jiguro and Yuuka, which I can get behind, but that wasn't in the book at all, not even hinted at, as far as I'm aware. I guess Ihan and Torishia, maybe? But that's in the past...
DeleteYep, you're right. I was pulling in her other books that I've read as well (Erin in Beast Player), and it seems to just be habit that those relationships aren't commonly developed, or developed very deeply in certain directions. Again, I don't mind too much (I'm not the hugest romance fan) but it does seem to be an undeveloped place in the writing, especially compared to the detail we get elsewhere. *shrug* I'd rather have it as it is than overdrawn, but I always thought that stylistic choice a tad bit curious. I know that Japanese authors are just as capable of writing tooth-rottingly sweet romances as any other culture. XD
DeleteI definitely cannot imagine Balsa being toothrottingly sweet in *anything*, lol. All I remember about Erin and Ial was that I felt like he was way too old for her. And I vaguely remember a romance between one of the princes and... a princess from a neighboring country or something? I thought that was going decent until he did something totally douchey right at the end of the show. Maybe it's better in the books; they're on my list, since they've been translated into English and I want to support Uehashi's translation. XD But I also get the impression the anime doesn't include the whole story, either? IDK, that anime frustrated me because it was 50% flashbacks and then they had to rush to finish the finale and it just seemed rather unsatisfying. I started to read the manga but the scanlator hadn't finished it so I never finished. Beast Player never grabbed me like Moribito. It just felt like Erin was kind of a Mary Sue, and she can't hold a candle to Balsa as a compelling protagonist. I remember my favorite character was the old beekeeper dude, Jon. The others were mostly "meh"... like, I can't even remember them for the most part. I heard that the Deer King is set to be anime-ized, and I'm pretty curious to see how it compares to the other two.
DeleteThe anime of Beast Player only treats the first book (which I think has a more satsifying ending than the series overall, sadly). I liked Jon a lot, too, and I wound up liking Erin's mother's side of the family, but we spend so little time with them (especially in the anime) that it's disappointing. :( I would have liked more time with the ordinary folks and less time muddling through war and politics. (And of course Erin's parts are the least compelling, because she doesn't struggle with anything. The dragon takes care of all her problems, pretty much.)
DeleteI hadn't heard about Deer King! I'll have to check that out.
Balsa shows love by eliminating threats and making sure everyone important to her is alive ('cause that's her job), and I kind of dig that about her. :) She does get a few genuinely tender moments with all the children she saves, but her version of adult romance is definitely skewed from a Western perspective. And again, I don't really mind. I don't think Tanda does, either.
Yeah, no, I actually like that Balsa and Tanda have this unique sort of slow-burn thing going on, that's so different from a typical romance. Tanda is super patient, they both care deeply about each other but Balsa has to work through her issues before she can take on the kind of emotional commitment inherent in a formal relationship. And I feel like they've probably been involved intimately now and again, but it doesn't mess with their friendship. Mostly both of them are good at being understanding towards the other, especially Tanda being understanding, and that's a nice change from the pushy, uber-toxic masculine heroes of a lot of Western romance and the saccharine, helpless, spineless heroines of same. Or the flat female love interests of the male leads of many fantasies. Like, Balsa is special and refreshing on many different levels. But I've also realised that Tanda is also special and refreshing. I like that a lot of common tropes are turned on their head in this story: the man is the healer, the occasional damsel, the patient pining one with the emotional intelligence; the woman is the strong silent warrior who is an utter badass and has to work through their tragic past and save the world; even the wizard figure is a crotchety old lady instead of some wise old man with a long beard and not much personality. It's a very nice change.
DeleteI absolutely loved that the women seemed to have almost 100% of the power over the plot when I first read these. Like, women with *agency* and *purpose* and the power to follow through? Hell yes, sign me up for that.
DeleteChagum's mother, the second queen, also provides a decent model for women trying to rebel against strict roles and class strictures; I loved her in the first book and always wished for a lot more, but of course Chagum only became increasingly isolated from her as he grew up. Even in Guardian of the Dream, the First Queen manipulates the power of the Guardian of the Flower to honey-trap people forever. (She's not an not an example of a very good person, I'll grant you, but she *is* an example of a woman exerting agency and power to get what she wants, and by doing so she illustrates a lot of things that are wrong with her society and her world.)
And the thing is, these story roles should *not* be gendered, but they are. I tend to seek out stories like this (Ursula K. Leguin also writes outstanding heroes and heroines; I started watching Xena: Warrior Princess when I was four) and am always a little disappointed in stories that go the cookie-cutter all-male-dominated route. What I like about Uehashi specifically is that she manages to subvert these tropes without having an agenda: these characters are realistically drawn as people first, and she leaves it u to the audience to decide what they represent.
Precisely. Couldn't have put it better myself. And for me, coming at it from the anime first, it's even more different from most anime than it is from most books, because not only is Balsa well-rounded and strong, but she's not a teenager and there's no fanservice. Blew my mind, man. (and also made me realise that there was such a thing as really good anime, which I had never realised beforehand.) New Yogo might be utterly sexist, but that hasn't stopped Balsa, Torogai, Saya, or the three queens from doing everything they can to break out of their assigned roles, or at least carve out a livable niche within them. And the "good" male characters are there to assist the women, not there to save them (and often as not the women are the ones saving the men....).
DeleteBut also, everyone's well-rounded, even the bad guys. Like you said about the Mikado: he might be the absolute worst, but it's a fleshed-out absolute worst. LOL.
99% of anime is dreck, but occasionally you find something great in an odd corner. :) I appreciated how unique the artistic style was; it's not all that special compared to, say, something from Bones or Mappa, but it looks distinctly *different* from most other anime, and as a result the world it creates comes off as just that little bit more special. The drama loses something there because it always has to be somewhat realistically grounded (and I love the drama, don't get me wrong), but the anime accomplished something a little like "Death Note" in that if it were on TV, you wouldn't mistake it for anything else.
DeleteWe didn't make the world. All we have to do is live in it. :) I find the expectations that Balsa flouts (around what it meant to be a woman, but also just a person of a lower social class) to be rooted in our world, but her reactions to those expectations are quietly revolutionary. Just because people expect you to act a certain way does not mean you have to. When Chagum finally internalizes this message, it is beautiful.
I also appreciate Uehashi's male characters, even the ones that are more stereotypically coded for maleness like Tarsan. There are touches of chauvinism here and there, but no one could argue that Tarsan doesn't respect women (for far more than their looks). This is not a story where the big burly men rush in and save the day--Balsa usually does that--but characters like Tarsan are still pivotal and included in the plot. Uehashi doesn't hate men or shunt them aside; she uses them differently than other storytellers. I think most of her characters (and all of her viewpoint characters) are possessed of a certain dignity that makes it hard for her to jerk them around because the plot says so. The plot arises because the characters are who they are. The moments where the characters struggle with themselves (world vs. individual) are really strong, and common, and illustrate how this story could have been so completely different if a character had even a slight change in personality.
LOL, yes - if the Mikado were a better father, say. Or, if Yuguno were a little more mature. *eyeroll* Or, on the other side of the spectrum, if Shuga or Mon were more prideful, they'd both be in a position to really sabotage things, particularly in the first book.
DeleteI do like that Tarsan isn't a brute or a jerk - not even really a meathead. He's just a young jock who feels jealous of Chagum because his older brother compared him unfavorably to such, and once he realises that he did something stupid, he doesn't try to dig in or make excuses, he genuinely accepts responsibility for that stupid action, apologizes, and moves on. (Though it is still alarming he's a hard-drinking alcoholic at 14!) And he really respects his sister's opinions, even when he doesn't understand them. That seems realistic and admirable at once.
I think that's a hallmark of good writing, actually, and one of the things that makes this series so enjoyable and unique in any format. Even the "stereotypical" characters aren't only those stereotypes, but have a lot more substance. Like Yuguro in Darkness - he is certainly a deceitful, ambitious, self-centered villain. But, he's also a patriot with a chip on his shoulder extending from his experiences as a youth, he was started down his villain path by Rogsam, and even when he's being his villainous self he never comes across as evil or one-note.
I have a real appreciation for the Kanbal characters like Yuguro and even Rogsam precisely because we understand exactly how difficult their lives are. (Balsa was probably better off vacating Kanbal with Jigura ASAP than she would have been if she'd stayed, even if her father were okay. It really does seem like a hardscrabble life for most people in Kanbal.)
DeleteThe bad guys don't believe they're bad. Good villains never do. And who's the villain really depends on each character's perspective. I've always thought that being able to care about a villain makes a story richer. Black-and-white morality and clear-cut sides tend to make the end result of any story predictable. (I'm reminded, for some reason, of the Sword of Truth series. The books were just okay at this, but the television adaptation did SO MUCH with Darken Rahl. And, like, his name his Darken Rahl, which is about as cliched as you can get, but whenever I watched that show I really, *really* did not want him to die.)
Tarsan really does come off as just a kid, and not a stupid one, either. (A lot of European nations allow kids to drink at meals pretty young, but hard liquor for a young teen is admittedly alarming...no accounting for culture, I guess).
We're going to enter the Talsh mindset directly in just a few chapters. It's...interesting is a word for it, but I'm more tempted to label the Talsh as self-interested in the extreme. In short: I'm glad Uehashi bothers with making the characters that oppose Our Heroes actual people, and that her villains are not mustache-twirling villains a la Tim Curry (as fun as that is at times) :)
"What shall we name our bad guy? Evillest? Badman Von Badness? No, too on-the-nose. Malefactor? Groucho? Gloomster? Wait, I've got it: Darken!" "Oh, that's brilliant. It'll fit right in with Maleficent, Evilene, and Darth Sidious! Good show!" I've actually only seen one episode of that show, ever, and that was more than a decade ago. Never read the books, either. Darken Rahl is a pretty entertaining name, though. Which, to be fair, could just as easily belong to a brooding lone-ranger type - it doesn't scream EVIL, per se, more Tough Guy. Actually, Darken Rahl sounds like a good character for Tim Curry to play... XD
ReplyDeleteAs to Tarsan's alcoholism, I was thinking particularly of his comment about preferring to be drunk than sober (at least aboard ship). Tsk, tsk.
I appreciate that the different countries have such different socioeconomic landscapes. (Thank you, anthropologist Uehashi.) Like, Sangal is a land of plenty and excess, young, with not much distance between the commoners and royalty despite what Karnan and Adol would have us believe. Kanbal is an old country where everyone is poor and weatherbeaten, even the royalty, and there's not much distance between royal and commoner simply because there's no wealth to be had at all. I doubt the people would long tolerate it if their king was living like the Mikado in a pleasure palace while everyone else was out farming goats and potatoes to survive. Then you have New Yogo, which is rich and highly stratified, and steeped in custom. I know that Rota has a wealthy south and a poor north, and marginalized minorities like the Tal, but I'm still quite curious to get that last link in the geographic compare-and-contrast. (And of course the Talsh Empire seems a lot like ancient Rome, what with their need to expand and bring client states under their talons.)
Talsh economic policy is absolutely insane and when I think it through I regret taking economics. XD
DeleteWould you believe me if I told you there are legit reasons why New Yogo's class structures are the way they are, and that it's not totally dependent on history? (Yep, turns out Uehashi thought that one through, too.)
Kanbal reminds me of that bit in the Bible, what is it? "The poor you will have with you always." But where all have nothing, all are equal--and none poor. Rota will probably give you more fits of rage around racism than anything else (since that's what it did for me), but their social structure nastier than New Yogo's in a lot of ways because of their generally insular nature (stranger danger leaps to mind). Yes, New Yogo is insanely classist, but they're not isolationist snobs, at least when it comes to commoners settling on their land. (It would be pretty rich if they were, considering they're immigrants themselves.) A man from Yogo is going to do a highly amusing compare/contrast of old bloodlines using Shuga and Chagum that I 100% did not see coming (or remember), and I didn't know I wanted that until I got it. :)
Re: Tarsan, even his excessive drinking serves an explicit plot purpose. Oi.
ReplyDeleteI am definitely not surprised that Uehashi has thought out every nut and bolt of the socioeconomics of New Yogo... and Talsh, and Rota, and Sangal... It's like Tolkien creating the LotR stories to have a world for his language - I feel like Uehashi might have written these books just to set a story in the countries she'd created. XD
DeleteI'm kinda amazed that Shuga from his fish family has an old bloodline. XD "I come from the most respected fishermen in Old Yogo!" LOLOLOLOL
I bet New Yogo's cosmopolitan nature is directly responsible in part for its prosperity. I also quite liked how the anime captured how cosmopolitan and advance Kosenkyo is in its backgrounds and various street scenes. Like at night the streets are lit, and there are lots of people out and about, and the place always seems to be bustling. It gives a feeling of vibrancy. You can kind of understand why people would flock there to live and work.
"No, no, he wasn't mind-controlled, your highness - he was just absolutely hammered." -the Talsh spy to King Tafmur
What I really like about Uehashi's world in this series is that she's using grounded, realistic principles as part of her storytelling. There are some hand-wavy points here and there (magic is mysterious O_o), but even that gets expanded and explained more as the books go on. Everything fits. It's definitely better thought-out than most fantasy worlds I'm familiar with.
DeleteWhat I like about Yogo is that they are incredibly anti-militaristic, which is a big reason why their people and markets thrive. Why fight foreign enemies and get your hands dirty when you can trade and become rich? (Incidentally, that is an aggressively Japanese foreign policy idea, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.)
Rasugu, the Talsh spy (and Yogo native), identifies Shuga as having some of the same characteristics and features of his own people (not necessarily commoners, either), but mixed with...something else. The "something else" bothers his vaguely racist self, and he shifts from this topic toward a rant on Chagum and how much he resembles certain other people he'd rather forget. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense that Shuga's descended from Yogo nobility Consider who exactly it was that fled from Yogo 250 years ago--it wasn't the commoners.
IIRC, you'll get this rant in 2 chapters, along with a history of Yogo that explains a lot about both New Yogo and the Talsh.
Unfortunately, because of how this awful mind control works, Tarsan remembers absolutely nothing, and can only think to blame his behavior on drink. *sigh*
I'm a sucker for solid world-building, so I'm 100% sure that's one of the things that most attracted me to this series (plus, of course, Balsa the absolute badass protagonist who is also 30+ years old... and the Hunters but we can blame the anime for that, lol). I really love it when the world in which a story is set feels real and fleshed-out enough that you can easily imagine a completely different, completely unrelated story taking place in the same world, with completely different characters. I also like when the characters seem to have been influenced by the surroundings in which they grew up - like Balsa being take-no-nonsense and chill because she began her life in hardscrabble Kanbal, or Tarsan being a macho alcoholic because that's the culture he grew up in. I'm trying to think of examples where this is not well done and it shows, and I find myself thinking that Harry Potter doesn't seem to be a believable product of his upbringing (in a closet under a staircase...) but I also haven't read those books since, y'know, they came out, so that might be unfair. And the Potter books have good worldbuilding - but I think it's the worldbuilding that makes them so popular, not Harry, who's an unremarkable and kind of unlikeable protagonist imo. Good worldbuilding trumps boring characters? LOL
DeleteActually, come to think of it, I don't recall LotR having much characterization, either. So definitely good worldbuilding can make a good story almost by itself.
Wouldn't it be funny if Shuga was part Yaku? Torogai would sure get a kick out of that. XD I would think, though, that 200 years would be enough time to blot or blur out the ethnic resemblance unless you were actively trying to keep the bloodline "pure", like with the Mikado for example. But then, there's no reason why a fisherman couldn't also be racist and disinclined to mate with the native Nayoro Peninsula residents, too. XDX
I wonder if it's just coincidence that both the Talsh spies we've met are from Yogo? (Rasugu and Hyuugo) Maybe Old Yogo people make good spies? LOL
LotR has less characterization than HoME (History of Middle Earth), which is like the uber-expanded version of LotR and the Silmarillion. Unfinished Tales is my favorite (with "Narn i Chin Hurin being my favorite Tolkien work) because it's entirely character driven and pretty atypical of the rest of his writing style. (And I mean, it also has a 100 page novelette narrated by the Black Riders themselves, and what they were doing and thinking when they were tracking the Ring Bearer and it's just. Gah. People that never pick up HoME have no idea what they're missing.) War of the Jewels, it's companion volume, gets into Morgoth's (the guy that more or less created Sauron) head. So it wasn't that Tolkien couldn't characterize, but he tends, strangely, to do better with villains. Sam, Faramir, and Eowyn will always be close to my heart, too.
DeleteI agree with you 100% on Harry Potter. The supporting cast got some lovely bits of characterization. Ron especially, since he was both permitted to be racist and permitted to learn from his mistakes and be *less* racist, which is a powerful choice. Harry was kind of a blank slate; he never thought about the Dursleys when he wasn't with them, and at the end of the series it's kind of like they never existed. Harry Potter's past hangs lightly on him, if at all, and as a character he's kind of a blank slate. Not the worst I've ever read, but pretty darned generic.
I find Uehashi's world-building more balanced than Tolkien's (and waaaay more intelligent than Rowling's) because she's trying to tell a story in a mostly realistic world, and not just using the world as a vector for invented languages or whimsical fancy. XD Even comparing the magic systems of these authors is illustrative; in Tolkien, the world is steeped in magic (pretty much everything is magic in some way); in Rowling, magic works because it's an inherited trait (with all the eugenicist terror that goes with that), and in Uehashi magic is relational. It seems like a lot of people inherit a talent for a certain kind of magic, but their actual powers come from cultivating and interacting with an entirely different and fully formed world. I haven't seen this done in quite the same way anywhere else.
I'm pretty sure Shuga is part Yakoo. (Don't tell him, though. XD) I think part of the reason we're seeing Yogo spies is because Yogo was not just a power, it was THE power in the south when the Talsh took it over. Representation, I guess.
I'm typing up the delicious Talsh history chapter right now, and with any luck I will post it tonight. :)
Yeah, in the Potter books I remember really liking a lot of the side characters (Fred and George, for instance) and mostly just mildly disliking Harry for being whiny and a jerk to his friends... especially since Hermione basically does everything for him. It's funny to me that Rowling could be so good at characterizing people like Gilderoy Lockhart and that horrible Umbridge, but completely fall flat when it comes to the central character of the entire series.
ReplyDeleteI read the unfinished version of the Unfinished Tales (The Lost Tales, I think?) without realising that the Unfinished Tales existed. (Oops...) It took my a disgustingly long time to get through LotR (a year and a half.....) and by then I had lost my LotR obsession, so I never did read the whole History. I should probably do that eventually. XD I really did enjoy his books, and can one really be a true geek if they don't know the whole history of Middle Earth? I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek; I really ought to supplement that scifi with some fantasy, LOL.
I expect that a person's real-world background informs their worldbuilding style significantly. Tolkien was all about folklore and languages, Uehashi's all about the anthropological stuff like culture and economics. George RR Martin is a Hollywood screenwriter so his world is about gore and sex (LOL). IDK what Rowling's background is. ...Wikipedia says she did French and Classics, and I can definitely see a lot of callbacks to mythology in her stories. Sounds like her world is based on her real-life experience, though. So, uh, her worldbuilding is... British. ROFL
Having now seen Rasugu's point of view, I bet the Talsh get a lot of recruits from Old Yogo because they've all got these enormous chips on their shoulders about the former order of things. XD
I think the flat characterization of Harry is by design. It's easy for kids to project their own personality on someone who doesn't have one. XD And while I liked Rowling's whimsical (and very British) world, the tension between the Muggle world and the world of magic never felt especially real to me. And some of the "welp, the Muggles didn't notice dragons and massive explosions that likely caused earthquakes" because "magic" and memory-wiping got a little old. Even "Artemis Fowl" bothered to make memory wiping more realistic. (You can't actually wipe a memory, not completely, because of how neurons map to other neurons. I also had screaming problems with the Pensieve.)
DeleteThe Book of Lost Tales one is kind of...eh (reminds me of Edmund Spenser, not in a good way), but everything after that is good, and some details would have made the plot tighter...in the first draft, Aragorn married Eowyn, for example. I love "Unfinished Tales" because we get to hear from characters that are mysterious or sidelined--people from the First Age, or Numenor, or Valinor. I've forgotten more about Tolkien than I know at this point, but I used to know an awful lot.
I think that a lot of Yogo got appropriated because they were, well, useful. And powerful. IIRC there are vestiges of Old Yogo all over the Talsh capital. And if you fight the Talsh instead of serving them, they enslave or kill you, so...
Harry does feel a little generic.
DeleteI wish he would have shown a bit more tenderness and fear. He's mostly angry or sarcastic which doesn't make him feel huggable the way Chagum seems to be.
Harry, huggable? XD
DeleteI understand his anger in the early books, but I was hoping he'd grow up into someone with a bit more insight and compassion. He's at the center of the plot and usually has the best view of what's going on with Voldemort, yet he never really tries to understand his enemy--or his friends. I think he's a lot luckier than he deserves with his friends; he never seems to do much for them, and when he does (like for Ron in book 5) he seems kind of resentful and pissy about it.
I thought the ending book was a little weird with Harry going on this philosophical speech about love when he had spent the past few books being all angry and snarky
DeleteI never read the epilogue. Too cheesy/corny for me. I don't know if I even made it to the last page. I tend to think of the end as Harry's "death" and resurrection, because that was satisfying for me. I always wanted Neville to have more involvement in the end, too...but I'm not the writer. :)
DeleteThat's a good point. I think a lot of children's books do that, go sparse on characterization so that kids can self-insert. (Actually, plenty of adult books do that too....) The lack of realism in Potter never bothered me, I'm not sure why. I was bothered when Hermione wiped her parents' minds, but only because it was so callous and final. *shrug* I guess I never held the Potter books to the same standards as books that are clearly meant to be realistic or gritty or what-have-you; the "whimsy" of the Potter books always sort of put them into a category in my head where a lot of hand-waving is acceptable. Hmm. Perhaps that's why Fantastic Beasts (the movie, not the book... lol) bugged me - those movies seem to favor "gritty" over "whimsical" and that erodes my tolerance for hand-waving and poorly-thought-out world rules very very quickly.
ReplyDeleteSo Old Yogo is the Greece to Talsh's Rome. XD
I dislike flat characters. I've always found them difficult to attach to. But if you're reading to escape, it makes sense for the author to create a nice cozy personality-less container to project yourself on...I guess. I was upset when Hermione wiped her parents' minds, too. I gave the books a ton of rope until book 5, when there were SO. MANY. OPTIONS. left unexplored, and so many events seemed utterly ridiculous and contrived. I also became more critical as an adult, of course. Prisoner of Azkaban is still my favorite for the intricacies of plot (rereading that one is fun because there are a lot of clues peppered throughout) and for its depiction of depression, which probably helped a lot of children coping with problems they didn't yet have the words to express.
DeleteI'm with you 100% on Fantastic Beasts. Play by the rules of your own world, or don't bother playing, eh?
Greece and Rome is an appropriate analogy, I think, but I also think Talsh skipped civilization and went right to decadence...