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Because of the ARC contest…I started thinking about trying to host all (OK, only the main) characters for a big dinner myself….sort of a mini-convention of Paksworld characters.
The long, long table outside (hey, I get to control the weather for this one–crisp, cool, sunny. The best autumn weather.) The meetings, the greetings, the eating, the conversation–I really would love to hear them talking when there’s no need for it to fit into a story context. Who would arrive first? Would they walk or ride? (It would be interesting to see the interaction of Paks’s red horse with my two…) What would they bring to the feast, and what would they bring for entertainment (I’m thinking the children are off somewhere else, at their own feast, maybe in that orchard I don’t have.) And which age would they be? Backstory, first appearance, later in the books? It would be too confusing to have multiples–Kieri as Aliam’s squire, as young captain, as duke, as king, etc.
I can imagine Torfinn and Kieri and Mikeli having a quiet confab over the problems of kingship (“They never tell you everything, have you noticed that? They’ll say they didn’t want to bother you, or worry you, or they didn’t think it was important…” ) while Gird has managed to get Falk and Camwyn doing a line dance with him, arms over each other’s shoulders, belting out some old song they all sort of vaguely remember…much of the time having to say “Da-da-da-DUM-da-sweet…” when one or all can’t remember a line.
Master Oakhallow, Master Ashwind (whom you haven’t met yet), Kolya, and Dorrin might play a complicated game using bees for game pieces (live bees. Very happy live bees.)
We know some of them sing…someone will have a little skill with an instrument…there would be singing. And probably some swordplay or wrestling or something to get the blood moving between courses.
In this fantasy, old quarrels can vanish…at least among those invited. Siniava isn’t there. Alured the Black isn’t there. But Luap is, freed of his old interior wounds that made him unable to see himself. So is the Rosemage, romping like a girl with Rahel and (amazingly to me as I think about it) the Marshal-General and Torre (the Torre’s Necklace Torre.)
Elves and dwarves get along; gnomes even crack a smile (very quietly and they certainly don’t laugh out loud.) Alas, none of them have their story powers in this alternate-alternate fantasy space. Appearance, and actual talents (harping, singing) but not the ability to spread glamour or do rock magic. Other entities might even show up.
Food…well, I don’t have to pay for it, so I can imagine a feast of Renaissance-royalty proportions. Meat, fish, fowl, in abundance and exquisite preparation. Vegetables and fruits ditto. Over the top pastries and desserts (the Williams-Sonoma fall/winter catalog has some excellent photographs…little crispy things stuffed with savory things) and sauces to make any real-world chef faint with admiration. Foods familiar to the characters and foods new to them. Plenty of drink without drunken stupors or quarrels renewed. Nobody leaves the table hungry or thirsty or without the companionship they most wanted.
(Back in the real story-world, things progress. This was a brief vacation for the writer.)
Comment by genko — October 25, 2010 @ 2:35 pm
Sounds wonderful! Why can’t I have Thanksgiving like that? Ah, well, my Thanksgiving will be fine, after all.
I can see where it would be fun to hear (overhear) conversations just for the heck of it, not for any particular purpose. But I doubt that you could really pull that off. It’s like when I take a class, I take it double: once for the content of the class and once to see how the teacher is doing it, appreciating, critiquing, assessing how something works, figuring how I would adapt it to fit my own teaching style, etc. In your case, someone would just say something offhand, and you would be off — what did he mean by that? Ooh, a clue, a clue, say more, say more. Oh, that fits with (or doesn’t fit with) …
Comment by Zunni — October 26, 2010 @ 7:04 am
I just love the idea of the Rosemage romping about like a young girl. Her death/final battle always stirs me so – partly because of her heartbreak when she discovers what Luap is/has become and partly because I can picture her lowering her helmet and then riding to her death so clearly. So the idea of her playing light-heartedly is lovely.
Comment by Daniel Glover — October 26, 2010 @ 10:48 am
Kolya AND Dorrin playing with live bees? What haven’t you told us about Kolya yet!
Comment by elizabeth — October 26, 2010 @ 9:33 pm
Well..Kolya is kuakgannir…she’s not a Kuakgan, but she became a follower of that tradition after she lost her arm in combat…a consequence of the murder of Kieri’s wife and children; she was reckless the next campaign season. That much is in DEED, I think in the first book. But before that, she grew up in a village near a Kuakgan’s grove, and the Kuakgan saw potential in her…offered her the chance to train as a Kuakgan. She refused, despite a warning (a vision of the Kuakgan…not Oakhallow, but a woman.)
In her second career, as an orchardist, and learning the lore of the kuakgannir, she has become friendly with bees. It is difficult to manage bees one-handed (at least, I would have found it so) and so she has worked with a beeman, who helps her with her skeps.
It’s also worth noting that she and Stammel have had a sort of…deep friendship, I guess you’d say. They didn’t consider marriage, for reasons they haven’t told me yet, but there is bone-deep trust.
Otherwise–she’s on the Duke’s East council, where she’s considered a bit difficult–at least standoffish at times. Respected, but also feared a little because she’s got a razor tongue when she’s roused. Children find her gruff but fair–a safe person to come to with serious worries, though she’ll swat a bottom now and then. She doesn’t tolerate whining. She really doesn’t tolerate dishonesty.
Comment by elizabeth — October 26, 2010 @ 9:37 pm
I, too, would love to see her genuinely happy, untainted by the “tragedy queen” thing she had going on. If Luap hadn’t moved to Kolobia, if she had stayed in contact with Rahel, and the two of them with Aris and Seri…I think she would have come free of it, as Rahel would have come free of her deep grief over not being able to bear children.
Comment by Jenn — October 27, 2010 @ 7:00 pm
I think it is interesting that Dorrin can “play” with bees. What other animals can she communicate with?
Comment by tuppenny — October 27, 2010 @ 7:55 pm
there would be mushrooms. Lots and lots and lots of mushrooms. yum
Comment by Margaret — October 30, 2010 @ 6:25 am
I’d love to see the paladin Paks sit down over mushrooms and lamb stew with her parents and siblings. She could satisfy all her wonderings about happened to her family over the years, meet any in-laws,nieces, nephews that have been added, and heal the wounds of her leaving.
Btw, I just started listening to the Oath audio book. It is always interesting to talk with others who have read a book and hear how they pronounce character names. The narrator of Oath has a lovely accent, and I like hearing how she pronounces character and place names. But it was a bit of a jolt to hear Paks spoken as if it rhymed with “fox”. In my head it rhymes with “fax”! Elizabeth, is the narrator’s pronunciation a match with yours??
Comment by elizabeth — October 30, 2010 @ 7:33 am
Pronunciation–depends on whether I’m pronouncing words with my normal speaking voice or my supposedly “more sophisticated” (choir director’s words) singing voice, where flat short /a/ turns into “ah” (which is how most of us pronounce the /o/ in “fox.”) The name related, in my head, to the Latin “pax” which would have the “ah” pronunciation (again, as we sing it.) But I usually say Paks the same as “packs” as rhyming with “fax.”
(Is that sufficiently confusing?)
I
Comment by jillycrunk — October 31, 2010 @ 11:59 am
Hello all!
I’m new around here… well new to posting at least. But this particular post made me laugh. I have to agree with Margaret that i was quite jolted by the pronunciation of Paks in the audio version of Oath… mainly because it made me think of “pox”… as in “a pox on you!!!” And then i kept imagining Paks with chicken pox.
I am glad to hear that the name Paks is related to to “pax”. I made that connection when i loaned Deed to a teenaged girl i worked with in a play over the summer. I think she read the entire thing in 3 days and related a lot to the character of Paks… especially since she and i did a lot of sword fighting (foam swords) during rehearsal breaks. We also talked about the ethics of Paks and how one of the biggest battles in life is learning to have compassion for people. At the end of the summer i gave her a bracelet with a bead that had “PAX” inscribed on it. She laughed when she see saw it, understanding the reference to the character, but i also explained the that was Latin for “peace”. She thought that was cool. I now i think it’s cool that i wasn’t just making up a connection.
Sorry that was quite a bit off the original topic, but i just had to share.
Comment by Ray — November 5, 2010 @ 12:38 pm
For some reason, I haven’t brought myself to read the Gird prequals, but my interest is a little piqued now and I’ll have to go get them out of the library.
Comment by elizabeth — November 5, 2010 @ 12:58 pm
The Gird book is better, but the Luap book (though flawed by the fact that I wrote it too soon after my mother’s death) has a lot of “stuff” that directly bears on the current group, not only in its present, but in what it says about the past. However, if you don’t like ’em when you try ’em…don’t read ’em. Neither protag is as instantly likeable as Paks was. Gird is a big lump of granite, and it takes awhile to realize his talents. Luap…is a modern man, in some ways. I wrote him before a certain politician came into power in my state and later, in the nation, and it’s eerie how similar they seem to me in their inability to see their own flaws.
Comment by Arthur — November 7, 2010 @ 8:24 pm
I don’t recall the Rosemage being killed at the final battle with the kuaknomi/insinyi. Didn’t she lead the Mage-born out of the canyon? And I really felt a sort of role reversal between Luap at the end of Surrender None and Luap in Liar’s Oath, and the Rosemage. She tried to charm Gird when she went to see him, and was very snide and cool to Gird and Luap when he gave her the position of marshal. Luap seemed to have learned his lesson and berated her for not changing her mind. She was a sad character, sort of like Esmay before she went back to Altiplano and dealt with the stuff that had happened with her. She was like a rejuvenant, preserved but not changing herself. A girl who held her ideals but not changing herself until it was far too late. Sort of like Galadriel. The female marshal general after Gird was an interesting character. So was the female magelady– I forget her name, who knew Arranha and made that alter cloth. Reminded me of the bible.