o l d e r - l a t e s t - g u e s t b o o k - p r o f i l e - d i a r y l a n d
Blood and ashes. Blood and bloody ashes. :-)
Doug brought up a good point- I never did say where I was going. :-) Tomorrow morning, I'm leaving for my favorite camping spot ever, Cowan's Gap, PA, a beautiful lake among beautiful mountains with adorable suicidal frogs and pretty mountain laurel. Hope that clears up the confusion.
My sister and I were just talking about fantasy novels, after talking in somewhat excited and giggly tones about HP5, which neither of us have yet read. We reaffirmed that Dragonlance is the best, the classic, the perfect blend of humor and drama, and to demonstrate this, I would like to present a quote. Context: Caramon was reminiscing and got caught in a rabbit trap. If you haven't read the books, that isn't likely to clear anything up, but if you have, that ought to spark your memory enough to appreciate this.
"Marjoram. The name of the spice... is marjoram."
Let me take a moment to praise this line. This is the greatest of all testaments to brotherly love and hate, to the complexity of human emotion, to the light that sleeps within all dark souls, waiting to be sparked by the receptiveness of another. Hidden in the simple words and act... pressing a bag of spice into his brother's hand... Raistlin has conveyed years of bitterness and longing. In the simple statement of the name, he has shown how difficult it is to communicate the truth to his brother- he can only speak one word initially. It gets easier, but even then he has to pause, because when he is naming the spice, he is admitting his affection. "The name of the spice... is marjoram" may as well be "The truth is, Caramon... I do love you" and for Raistlin Majere, that is nearly impossible to articulate without adding some derisive qualifier.
The rest of this is going to be a discussion of sacrifice in two series: Dragonlance and WoT. Lauren and I were talking about this stuff, and it's too complicated to explain why, but I want to get the thoughts out there so if I need to come back to them, I can.
Dragonlance gave me two examples of sacrifice types that I hadn't seen in books before. This wasn't hard, since I read the Chronicles in fifth grade and the Legends in sixth, but whatever. First example: Sturm. He redeemed the Solamnic Knights by his death (and unbeknownst to us at the time, he was also killed by the mother of his child... what this means, I've never taken the time to think about), even though he was never accepted as anything but a Knight of the Crown, and even then was discredited at every turn. The institution he loved never loved him back, and yet he became their sacrifice and their hero. This somehow tied into our conversation tonight, but I don't remember why.
Secondly, Par-Salian sent Caramon back to Istar to save a soul... not Raistlin's, but his own. Caramon fluctuated between trying to redeem Raistlin and trying to bring himself to kill him and finally just giving up and helping him so he and Tas could get back home, but in the end, Raistlin was saved. Not before surrendering at his moment of greatest triumph, not before suffering horrifically at the hands (and claws, and teeth, etc) of the Goddess of Evil, who he sought to supplant, but by protecting the world which would have been destroyed in the battle, he ultimately proved himself a human being ... and thus unworthy of being a God. Or too good for the job, considering who our gods are. Paladine notwithstanding... he's the bestest. *glomps paladine/zifnab/fizban* He's a chibi-Gandalf, almost. Fizban, that is, not Raistlin. Raistlin's not a chibi-anybody.
"May the Light shine upon you, Lord Ingtar, and the Creator's hand shelter you... The last embrace of the Mother welcome you home." Who would have ever thought Ingtar was a darkfriend?! This is the kind of stuff that makes Jordan great. Ingtar, a fairly beloved character (at least to me) reveals himself to be a traitor, at which our main character can only stare at him, stunned, and whisper, "Oh, Light, Ingtar..." But throughout the whole book, and this is what's so neat, Ingtar has been trying to redeem himself. We have never known him as an unrepentant servant of Shai'tan. He initially joined with the Dark One to save Shienar from being swallowed in the Blight, going the way of Malkier. He sold his soul not for personal gain, but for the fierce love of country that only Borderlanders really exhibit. He hunted the Horn of Valere, thinking he could be redeemed by calling down the heroes bound to it to battle the forces of the Dark One. Finally, he could do nothing more than give his life, and Rand's mournful benediction seemed to give us some hope that it had been enough.
The last Green Man, standing in the middle of the Da'Shain Aiel, sworn to the Way of the Leaf. They sang to him, trying to bring his mind back, and one by one he slew them while the rest kept singing. He listened to the last one for almost a whole day before cutting him down as well. Why did the Aiel sing? This is more of Jordan's brilliance, that I miss so much in his recent books. The conversion of the Da'Shain Aiel to the black-veiled Aiel we know today is one of the tragedies/triumphs of the races in the Wheel of Time, and the reflection of the way the Aiel used to be in the Tua'tha'an and the hatred between the two groups is really indicative of how even the most different groups of people can be exactly the same, but with flipped circumstances. We've already seen with Aram that a Tinker can become like an Aiel once he decides that living is more important than not killing, but the transition was painful for both. There's awesome beauty in the story of the Green Man and the Aiel, but there's also a lot of beauty in the misery of how they became violent, and the pride of a hard, self-sufficient people surviving and thriving in the Waste while the "wetlanders" grow soft. It's no mistake that our Dragon was reborn in a son of both Andor and the Aiel. To do what needs to be done, he needs to understand both Daes Dae'mar and ji'e'toh. Sorry, but the Way of the Leaf ain't gonna cut it for anyone anymore.
Oh! And did you know that Thom and Moiraine were in love and he's gonna rescue her from the Aelfinn and Eelfinn? I didn't! That's apparently the buzz on the internet, although I don't know why anyone talks about this series anymore. Stupid Jordan. ;-) I thought the letter was just about his nephew, but no. Sweetness... If he could be tamed by any woman, it would be our darling Moiraine, wouldn't it? Take that, Morgase!