Good fantasy page-turners

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah, well, there is that "show" on Starz right now.

[Errant Bard]

Um -- I never anywhere described Outlander as a feminist novel. I would describe it as historical romance fantasy, if I described it as anything. Nor do I know anyone who describes it as feminist.

I know you did not, sorry for not being clear, I just meant that we were not talking of the same thing, I was just commenting on how offensive and at odds with feminism the subtext is, even as some say the book is feminist.

I agree with your assessment of the book, of course :)

[Lyanna Stark]

Yeah, well, there is that "show" on Starz right now.

OMG I saw that. What the hell. The labelling of it as "feminist version of GOT" nearly gave me an apoplexy. Are these people without functioning brain cells? Obviously the TV version had done its best to insert gratuitous nudity, random misogyny and even more "grit" enhancing prostitution than I could ever had imagined possible, let alone palatable, but that still doesn't change the problems in "outlander". It feels like a race to the bottom instead.

Are we going to get "Conan the barbarian" nominated for the next feminism award after outlander?

[Galactus]

There's no fantasy in there

Time travel.

[Galactus]

I have no idea, but probably not academic works? You'd had to think that a basic understanding of how economy works if nothing else would dissuade people from this dumb idea that half the women anywhere were prostitutes. But it was a Time of War, so stuff like agriculture, crafting etc. didn't exist. Instead the men bought sex and the women sold sex and nobody tilled the fields.

I can actually see the idea. There's a statistic somewhere, that in the early 19th century about half of working-class women in London had at some point prostituted themselves. (There was a fairly long article in one of my academic essays about what this statistic actually means and implies)

It's relatively easy to figure out exactly how wrong it is to go from that statement to "Half the women were prostitutes".

[Darth Richard II]

We'll I consider time travel to be more scifi, but the point is I don't understand how it can be called epic fantasy.

Hmmm Conan actually probably WAS more feminist than Outlander in some respects.

[Zorral]

But the time travel is accomplished via "druid magical stone henge" not Continuum technology, for instance. It's the same as in The Time Traveler's Wife, or The Magic Bed Knob. And so many more.

Time travel seems to be able to take the contours of both fantasy and sf.

However, as Diana Gabaldon, the author, is a scientist: MS in marine biology and Ph.D in ecology, and a university faculty member until she became a full time writer (starting with Disney books), there is some interesting aspects to the question -- which, to give Gabaldon credit, within this first volume, Claire ponders to a degree --a degree that won't interfere with the non-stop talk and action.

[aceluby]

I can actually see the idea. There's a statistic somewhere, that in the early 19th century about half of working-class women in London had at some point prostituted themselves. (There was a fairly long article in one of my academic essays about what this statistic actually means and implies)

It's relatively easy to figure out exactly how wrong it is to go from that statement to "Half the women were prostitutes".

This keeps getting brought up, and I probably chose my words wrong in saying 'the most common', but throughout history prostitution has always existed, and I would guess that if it isn't the 'most common' trade for women to make their own money throughout human history, it's definitely 'one of' the most common.

[Zorral]

Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy asked serious questions about the relationship of the dynmics of time and the connection between life and death. As I posted Elsewhere, I was very disappointed with the conclusion:

[ "In the first two novels Harkness brought up so many deep questions between what makes life and the nature of time, and there is a great deal of time travel too. This is what lifted her series out of the commonality of most fantasy fiction, particularly fantasy fiction that features witches, demons and vampires. She was using fantasy tropes to delve into serious scientific questions. But she drops all these matters in The Book of Life in favor of the usual business of which alpha is the most alpha of all, and saving the world for supernaturals. Deeply disappointing -- and rather dull too. The saving grace for The Book of Life is, as in the previous books, the purely delightful witches' house. This is the most mysterious and wondrous element of the series." ]

[Zorral]

Cities like London and New York -- or Paris -- in the early 19th century -- or even the middle 19th century -- and the level of prostitution, need to be examined within the economic forces that were destroying traditional forms of employment all through Europe. Early 19th century we have:

The French Revolution;

Jefferson's Embargo to keep the U.S. from trading with anyone!]

Napoleon's Wars;

The Embargos Against Trade on the part of both Britain's Council in Trade, and Napoleon -- and not only against the U.S. who was supplying much of the cotton that was fueling the early industrial textile revolution;

Simultaneously, these same industries who were laying off workers for lack of cotton were also, where the capital existed, modernizing with machinery that also threw the men, women and children out of their factories' labor force;

While their traditional way of making money beyond farming, with farming, such as knitting sox and stockings, was destroyed by the machines -- i.e. the Luddite uprisings;

Then the War of 1812, which further kept U.S. cotton from coming to Europe -- just when the cotton industry was, ah-hem really ginning up ....

Crop failures;

Failures to have crops planted at all;

The flood of men turned out of the armies with the end of the wars -- with no way to make a living now, many of them maimed, and ill with tuberculosis, and so on.

Not to mention the escalation of enclosing public lands in all of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and England;

It was a very awful time for Britain and France particularly, whereas, things in England at least, had been fairly stable until the Revolution, enclosure and industrialization.

And it didn't get better for a long time.

But -- most people even then, did not live in cities, and that level of prostitution can only be supported by an army or a very large city.

[Darth Richard II]

Wait, feminism issues aside for a moment, how the hell is Outlander like Game of Thrones?

[Zorral]

Wait, feminism issues aside for a moment, how the hell is Outlander like Game of Thrones?

It's not. It's not an epic either, by any definition of the term.

Nor is it a feminist novel, but it is a novel that people who happen to be feminists as well as the many other aspects that make up their characters can enjoy, because most of the characters in Outlander are characters in the round, whether male or female, and particularly is Claire. The women aren't window dressing, rewards, or motivations, they are fully interesting people, possessed of agency -- the sorts of characters we readers want to find in our entertainment. adherence to family, home, lover-mate, children, nation and land; honor, loyalty, courage -- these are all present (at least in the non-villains, and even the villains have understandable motivation) in the characters. These are all played out among all of them.

Mostly, gender isn't a motivator, other than culturally for the 18th century males, who have certain ideals of what a man is and should be that were whaled into them by their fathers and other male relatives.

[Darth Richard II]

Not sure how being raped til you like it gives one agency.

[Lyanna Stark]

Wait, feminism issues aside for a moment, how the hell is Outlander like Game of Thrones?

Because someone*** on the internet said so which means it must be true. Now go get your smelling salts and have a lie down, DR2. :p Don't want things to end up like Hereward with a tractor, Salma Hayek and the rugby cup.

*** present thread/company excluded of course

[Zorral]

Nobody's raped until they like it, not in Outlander anyway.

[Toblakai]

Nobody's raped until they like it, not in Outlander anyway.

See, that is even more disturbing. There is a problem with some men believing that the women secretly like it, and this plays directly into it.

[Darth Richard II]

Nobody's raped until they like it, not in Outlander anyway.

I disagree 100 percent with your interpretation.

Getting slightly back on topic, because I was thinking about it, most of the books I consider page turners, which is to say I stayed up later than i should to finish them, have been almost exclusively first person. Other than Abraham the last OMG I NEED TO FINISH IT books I remember reading that are third person pov were Harry Potter. I wonder if it's because my tastes have changed, or the genre has shifted, or it's just coincidence.

[Zorral]

I disagree 100 percent with your interpretation.

Getting slightly back on topic, because I was thinking about it, most of the books I consider page turners, which is to say I stayed up later than i should to finish them, have been almost exclusively first person. Other than Abraham the last OMG I NEED TO FINISH IT books I remember reading that are third person pov were Harry Potter. I wonder if it's because my tastes have changed, or the genre has shifted, or it's just coincidence.

Tell me where this happens and I will go back to those pages and re-read it again, and take the trouble to transcribe it here.

I just re-read Outlander last week after many years, and nobody in Outlander is raped until they like it.

I think I know what you are referring to, and that is not what happened at all, if you read through the entire, terrible confession Jamie makes to Claire, and why he thinks he should die.

[Toblakai]

I just re-read Outlander last week after many years, and nobody in Outlander is raped until they like it.

.

If you don't understand why this sentence is wrong, you need serious help.

[Darth Richard II]

If you don't understand why this sentence is wrong, you need serious help.

Yes well, that pretty much is everything wrong about Outlander and its fans wrapped in a nutshell.