#750 pages and it's book 1 classic Sherwood Smith

[nimblermortal]

So I'm reading A Sword Named Truth and I want to talk about survivorship and guilt, but first:

Sherwood Smith's books for adults are lovely and intricate and really finely worldbuilt and I love them. Her books for children are just. so. young. I tried to read Senrid and I couldn't finish it. So now I'm reading a sequel? Well, they're all in the same world on the same continuity and this one was shelved in the adult section... because it's longer and so the characters can cuss, and because there's war and torture, I think.

It's really interesting because it straddles that divide in plot and timeline as well. The children's books started out as CJ's Journals, things Smith wrote when she was a kid, and there's paragraphs here where I go, "Wow, this sure did start out as 'a girl my age who is totally not me fell into a world with magic and a girl her age who was queen adopted her and they lived in a palace over a city built on a cloud and their worst enemy lived under the cloud in a place called the Shadowlands and he was a boy their age and they defeated him by kicking him into mud puddles with a pair of magic boots!"

...and then you're out at, "and that is one tiny, unimportant country on a different continent from most of the action here, which is bound up in political realities between not just multiple continents but multiple planets."

...and they are trying to stop the Forces of Evil from taking over in sometimes-bloodless coups, led by a boy their age (Siamis) who has had a rough last couple thousand years, much like a couple of their allies (Senrid, Jilo). And because this is an adult novel, they can express the desire to kill him, rather than defeat him or kick him into a mud puddle, and because it's a children's novel they can express frustration at adults who try to keep them out of danger and seem to be doing nothing about their problems.

So last night Senrid expressed a wish to kill Siamis, and I had a very adult moment of, "Yes that's all well and good and it should be done, but also, he's a kid going through a rough time, just like you." Which was followed immediately by, "That's an interesting perspective from an adult, but even more so, these child protagonists have an interesting perspective in that it doesn't matter that Siamis is a child - he's their peer, he's not special and innocent for being several thousand years young."

And that brought me back round to Doctrine of Labyrinths and its thesis that having a tragic history can explain your actions, and be something you struggle with, but it can't excuse you. Felix's life sucked! a lot! and continues to! and he's still responsible for every time he pushes that onto another person, whether that's nearly killing someone in his wrath and madness or just snapping at Mildmay on a bad day. Yes, it's his past talking, but it's still talking through him, and he still has responsibility for what he's done because of it.

So these kids are absolutely right about Siamis. Yes, he's a child and he deserves better, but he's also a child perpetrating war crimes and he deserves to be held responsible.

I'm interested to see what happens to him.