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some Robin McKinley thoughts
Jan. 27th, 2021 10:06 amRobin McKinley is one of my most formative writers and also the writer of many of my own personal classics aka books that a) I have reread so many times that they're a part of my bones or b) I read at a particular time in my life and latched onto them so hard that they're...part of my bones.
There are a couple of her books I don't love to bits--I didn't particularly like Pegasus, so I'm one of the few McKinley fans who isn't heartbroken that it doesn't look like we'll be getting a sequel to that, and I've never actually managed to read Dragonhaven, though I should. I think there are "lesser" McKinleys, like Shadows and perhaps Chalice (though I think that one will grow on me in rereads), but the vast majority of her books just work for me in a very specific way.
So anyway, this is some very disjointed thoughts about various aspects of her writing and my relationship to it.
Many of her books (Beauty, Rose Daughter, Deerskin, Spindle's End) take place in what on the surface appears to be a very standard pseudo-medieval-European fantasy world of kings and knights and blacksmiths and witches. I am not quiet about my weariness with that kind of fantasy setting--what I like about historical settings is the specificity/local color of them (14th century France is COMPLETELY different than 18th century England which is COMPLETELY different than 16th century Italy. And even if you pick a specific year--say, 1376--it's going to look so different from country to country! Europe is anything but a monolith!) and most books set in that kind of world are just completely lacking in specificity/local color. They feel generic, and if there's anything I dislike in specfic, it's a world that feels generic.
So you would think I wouldn't be super into McKinley's worldbuilding, but as it turns out, she's not writing a pseudo-medieval-European fantasy world. Her books are set in Fairyland.
No other writer, imo, writes fairytale retellings that feel like fairytales. They feel cozy and lived in and domestic (I always leave her books wanting to live in a cottage in her world) but also suffused with magic. The practical and the magical are blended so well--indeed, dependent upon each other. You don't get dragons to fight without the attendant need to figure out how to make a fire-repelling ointment to protect yourself from the dragons!
The opening of Spindle's End is my favorite example:
*swoons*
That is so Fairyland!
Here's another example from the same book:
*swoons again*
The only other book that comes close to feeling like a fairytale in this specific way for me is Ella Enchanted, which I also love madly. But that one feels a little more...YA? The colors of that world are more vivid, almost neon. McKinley's worlds have softer colors, and tend to be focused on women's work, on the domestic realm, even if they also contain kings and such (Deerskin is a great example--for all that at least half the book takes place within palaces, the way it takes place within palaces feels different than most palace-set-fantasy. And also: much of the most emotionally deep sections of the book take place in a tiny cottage and deal with cooking and cleaning. So.)
The Damar books are set in a more Indian-subcontinent-inspired world. I do have mixed feelings about the colonial overtones of The Blue Sword, though I think it's far less egregious than books written at the same time, but the Damar books are very beloved to me. They also feel like a fantasy version of that kind of world (complete with dragons). [Sidenote: there's a reference to Aerin in Deerskin, which I had completely forgotten and took me by total, delighted surprise. So technically they're the same world, just different continents, presumably!] Sunshine and Shadows (ha! I never realized the connection with those titles!) are in contemporary versions of Fairyland--there are cars and computers, but they also feel like the fairytale retellings do, and are full of homemade charms and domestic magic and baking. Lots of baking.
Because of all of this, reading a McKinley book is like sitting down under a warm blanket with a cup of hot chocolate and a beloved book. It has that kind of cozy feeling.
While the setting of Beauty is very different than the setting of The Hero and the Crown or Shadows or Chalice, McKinley's style and her interests are very specific and show up again and again in her work, so that if you don't like one McKinley, you probably won't like most of her other books, either. (There are some exceptions to this--there are a lot of people who just like Sunshine and don't care about her other books, and I think that Outlaws of Sherwood is far enough afield from her other work that you might enjoy it even if you don't like her fantasy stuff.)
For instance, she pretty much only knows how to write one Big Climactic Scene. I hate to admit it, but nearly all of her books have as their climax a big scene involving magic that's huge and overwhelming but also kind of vague. I think these scenes mostly really work, but they're alike enough from book to book that I can see them becoming annoying. I don't know how to articulate what these scenes are like--I'd need to do a reread of more of the books in order to do so--but they just feel the same way to me.
These scenes often feature the heroine facing off against the evil/antagonist with her beloved animals by her side. A major throughline in McKinley's work is her love of animals, which you absolutely cannot miss when reading any of her books. I like cats, but I am not an animal person, so this is a hangup I don't share with her, but I am glad to go along with her stories, even if I feel that she anthropomorphizes her animal characters (which she can totally do! It's a fantasy world! Why shouldn't the animals be more human-like?). In some books, the major animal is a dog, in others a cat or a horse (or a pegasus). But in (almost?) all of them, the love between animals and their people is central to the story. Sometimes it's actually the main relationship (I would argue that this is the case with Deerskin), sometimes it's more incidental (Shadows, if you don't count [spoilers] as an animal character, which I don't). But it's almost always there.
Her books are generally categorized as YA, but imo they're YA in that 90s way and in a way that's almost unrecognizable today. Even though many of her characters are in their late teens, I don't think she'd be published as a YA author today. For one thing, her prose is too complex. She writes beautiful long, twisty sentences in many of her books. I had the thought on this reread of Deerskin, that perhaps my willingness to troop along with Faulkner on his mega-long sentences was because I was kind of primed by McKinley? Hers are not nearly as long as Faulkner's--some of Faulkner's go on for whole pages!--but they're certainly more complex than and stuffed with clauses and phrases and semicolons than most YA today. When you start a sentence, you have to make sure you're paying attention, because it might go in a direction you didn't think it would.
I think that the prose level of most YA today is abysmal, tbh. There is a richness and a depth missing that was taken for granted in the kinds of YA books that I grew up reading, which were written anywhere from the 1910s (L. Frank Baum) to the 90s. And that prose was perfectly clear! It wasn't dense in the way that can be a real barrier! These writers were easy to read, but they just weren't overly simple! I don't know how to explain it, but I feel this very strongly.
Another reason I don't know that she'd be published as a YA writer is that I think the cesspit that is YA Twitter would freak the hell out over some of her books. For instance, Deerskin is a retelling of the Donkeyskin fairytale. Lissar, our heroine, is raped by her father. It's not a detailed, graphic scene, but it is harrowing. Much of the book is about trauma and recovery (though not about forgiveness. Lissar is never asked to forgive, which I appreciate). It's pretty dark and very painful. But I think it's very powerful. None of McKinley's other books go quite that far, but I think there are a lot of things that YA fandom (which is, ridiculously, mostly made up of adults) would object to. Like the Damar books would probably get raked over the coals. Not that I don't think there's much to criticize there--I do! But I don't think the way YA Twitter does it is constructive in any way.
Which is such a shame because her heroines are so, so lovely! (Probably the reason I haven't read Dragonhaven is because I think it's her only book--besides the Robin Hood one--that has a male protagonist.) And heroic in different kinds of ways! Aerin and Harry are both action!heroines AND I LOVE THEM. And her Marian in her Robin Hood retelling is the most talented archer. But most of her other heroines are not physically formidable. Their powers come from their magic or their domestic skills (often these are tied together, like in Sunshine) and their virtues--their bravery, their loyalty, their compassion. This speaks very deeply to me as a girl and then a woman who never, under any circumstances, would be physically formidable.
She's not conscious of Representation in a way that YA authors today tend to be. Many of her books are very white. There are characters who aren't white--not enough, but the Damar characters, Takahiro in Shadows, etc.--and that matters. They are very rooted in their own cultures and don't feel like they're there for the sake of representation. (Not that that's bad! It's better than the alternative! But you know that feeling you get sometimes when you're like, "This character is [minority demographic] for the sake of representation?" That's not present imo in McKinley's books.) There are also characters who are physically disabled or deal with mental illness. There are people of all ages. There's a sad lack of queer characters. I do think that much of that is because the majority of her books were published in the 70s-90s, when it was much harder to get that thing published in the fantasy genre, especially in YA. But still. It is a big disappointment.
Another weakness of her work: I don't think she's super great at romance? Which is fine with me, because I don't read her books for the romance. Her romances are not bad or anything, but they just don't grab me the way a really good romance should imo. (I am extremely picky about romances, though.) The heroine is always so busy with doing other things that there's less of a focus on her romantic life. Which, honestly, now that I think about it, is great: the male leads end up being the way female leads are in much of mainstream (read: aimed at men) narratives: not all that well fleshed-out. But I don't have strong feelings about her romances because I don't feel like she spends enough time focusing on the characters getting to know each other. She's better at non-romantic relationships. But it's 2021 and I still think that Rosie from Spindle's End should have ended up with her (female) bff instead of the guy she did. He's not terrible or anything, but her bff!!!! Their beautiful, beautiful relationship! Write me a f/f romance, Robin! You would do it so well!
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever get a f/f romance from her or perhaps any other books at all. Since her husband, the writer Peter Dickinson, died, she's retreated from view. She was clearly plunged into deep, deep mourning by his loss. She used to have a regularly-updated blog, but that has fallen by the wayside, and her last published book was in 2010, which doesn't sound like that long ago, but feels like ages. (It was also by far my least favorite of her books.) I don't know if she's writing at all or at least writing for publication, but I've kind of made my peace with the idea that her canon is now complete. It's entirely possible she'll at least manage to publish the Pegasus sequel, but as I'm not interested in reading that, I will probably never have a new McKinley to read (except Dragonhaven. I really need to get on that one).
Which is heartbreaking! I would love more McKinleys! But since it probably won't happen, I am just so grateful for the books she has given me. I love her.
There are a couple of her books I don't love to bits--I didn't particularly like Pegasus, so I'm one of the few McKinley fans who isn't heartbroken that it doesn't look like we'll be getting a sequel to that, and I've never actually managed to read Dragonhaven, though I should. I think there are "lesser" McKinleys, like Shadows and perhaps Chalice (though I think that one will grow on me in rereads), but the vast majority of her books just work for me in a very specific way.
So anyway, this is some very disjointed thoughts about various aspects of her writing and my relationship to it.
Many of her books (Beauty, Rose Daughter, Deerskin, Spindle's End) take place in what on the surface appears to be a very standard pseudo-medieval-European fantasy world of kings and knights and blacksmiths and witches. I am not quiet about my weariness with that kind of fantasy setting--what I like about historical settings is the specificity/local color of them (14th century France is COMPLETELY different than 18th century England which is COMPLETELY different than 16th century Italy. And even if you pick a specific year--say, 1376--it's going to look so different from country to country! Europe is anything but a monolith!) and most books set in that kind of world are just completely lacking in specificity/local color. They feel generic, and if there's anything I dislike in specfic, it's a world that feels generic.
So you would think I wouldn't be super into McKinley's worldbuilding, but as it turns out, she's not writing a pseudo-medieval-European fantasy world. Her books are set in Fairyland.
No other writer, imo, writes fairytale retellings that feel like fairytales. They feel cozy and lived in and domestic (I always leave her books wanting to live in a cottage in her world) but also suffused with magic. The practical and the magical are blended so well--indeed, dependent upon each other. You don't get dragons to fight without the attendant need to figure out how to make a fire-repelling ointment to protect yourself from the dragons!
The opening of Spindle's End is my favorite example:
The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. (It didn't have to be anything scary or unpleasant, especially in a cheerful household - magic tended to reflect the atmosphere of the place in which it found itself -- but if you want a cup of tea, a cup of lavender-and-gold pansies or ivory thimbles is unsatisfactory.)
*swoons*
That is so Fairyland!
Here's another example from the same book:
Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic—which was what all magic was—it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that looked more or less the same from day to day and might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody’s knee and purred.
*swoons again*
The only other book that comes close to feeling like a fairytale in this specific way for me is Ella Enchanted, which I also love madly. But that one feels a little more...YA? The colors of that world are more vivid, almost neon. McKinley's worlds have softer colors, and tend to be focused on women's work, on the domestic realm, even if they also contain kings and such (Deerskin is a great example--for all that at least half the book takes place within palaces, the way it takes place within palaces feels different than most palace-set-fantasy. And also: much of the most emotionally deep sections of the book take place in a tiny cottage and deal with cooking and cleaning. So.)
The Damar books are set in a more Indian-subcontinent-inspired world. I do have mixed feelings about the colonial overtones of The Blue Sword, though I think it's far less egregious than books written at the same time, but the Damar books are very beloved to me. They also feel like a fantasy version of that kind of world (complete with dragons). [Sidenote: there's a reference to Aerin in Deerskin, which I had completely forgotten and took me by total, delighted surprise. So technically they're the same world, just different continents, presumably!] Sunshine and Shadows (ha! I never realized the connection with those titles!) are in contemporary versions of Fairyland--there are cars and computers, but they also feel like the fairytale retellings do, and are full of homemade charms and domestic magic and baking. Lots of baking.
Because of all of this, reading a McKinley book is like sitting down under a warm blanket with a cup of hot chocolate and a beloved book. It has that kind of cozy feeling.
While the setting of Beauty is very different than the setting of The Hero and the Crown or Shadows or Chalice, McKinley's style and her interests are very specific and show up again and again in her work, so that if you don't like one McKinley, you probably won't like most of her other books, either. (There are some exceptions to this--there are a lot of people who just like Sunshine and don't care about her other books, and I think that Outlaws of Sherwood is far enough afield from her other work that you might enjoy it even if you don't like her fantasy stuff.)
For instance, she pretty much only knows how to write one Big Climactic Scene. I hate to admit it, but nearly all of her books have as their climax a big scene involving magic that's huge and overwhelming but also kind of vague. I think these scenes mostly really work, but they're alike enough from book to book that I can see them becoming annoying. I don't know how to articulate what these scenes are like--I'd need to do a reread of more of the books in order to do so--but they just feel the same way to me.
These scenes often feature the heroine facing off against the evil/antagonist with her beloved animals by her side. A major throughline in McKinley's work is her love of animals, which you absolutely cannot miss when reading any of her books. I like cats, but I am not an animal person, so this is a hangup I don't share with her, but I am glad to go along with her stories, even if I feel that she anthropomorphizes her animal characters (which she can totally do! It's a fantasy world! Why shouldn't the animals be more human-like?). In some books, the major animal is a dog, in others a cat or a horse (or a pegasus). But in (almost?) all of them, the love between animals and their people is central to the story. Sometimes it's actually the main relationship (I would argue that this is the case with Deerskin), sometimes it's more incidental (Shadows, if you don't count [spoilers] as an animal character, which I don't). But it's almost always there.
Her books are generally categorized as YA, but imo they're YA in that 90s way and in a way that's almost unrecognizable today. Even though many of her characters are in their late teens, I don't think she'd be published as a YA author today. For one thing, her prose is too complex. She writes beautiful long, twisty sentences in many of her books. I had the thought on this reread of Deerskin, that perhaps my willingness to troop along with Faulkner on his mega-long sentences was because I was kind of primed by McKinley? Hers are not nearly as long as Faulkner's--some of Faulkner's go on for whole pages!--but they're certainly more complex than and stuffed with clauses and phrases and semicolons than most YA today. When you start a sentence, you have to make sure you're paying attention, because it might go in a direction you didn't think it would.
I think that the prose level of most YA today is abysmal, tbh. There is a richness and a depth missing that was taken for granted in the kinds of YA books that I grew up reading, which were written anywhere from the 1910s (L. Frank Baum) to the 90s. And that prose was perfectly clear! It wasn't dense in the way that can be a real barrier! These writers were easy to read, but they just weren't overly simple! I don't know how to explain it, but I feel this very strongly.
Another reason I don't know that she'd be published as a YA writer is that I think the cesspit that is YA Twitter would freak the hell out over some of her books. For instance, Deerskin is a retelling of the Donkeyskin fairytale. Lissar, our heroine, is raped by her father. It's not a detailed, graphic scene, but it is harrowing. Much of the book is about trauma and recovery (though not about forgiveness. Lissar is never asked to forgive, which I appreciate). It's pretty dark and very painful. But I think it's very powerful. None of McKinley's other books go quite that far, but I think there are a lot of things that YA fandom (which is, ridiculously, mostly made up of adults) would object to. Like the Damar books would probably get raked over the coals. Not that I don't think there's much to criticize there--I do! But I don't think the way YA Twitter does it is constructive in any way.
Which is such a shame because her heroines are so, so lovely! (Probably the reason I haven't read Dragonhaven is because I think it's her only book--besides the Robin Hood one--that has a male protagonist.) And heroic in different kinds of ways! Aerin and Harry are both action!heroines AND I LOVE THEM. And her Marian in her Robin Hood retelling is the most talented archer. But most of her other heroines are not physically formidable. Their powers come from their magic or their domestic skills (often these are tied together, like in Sunshine) and their virtues--their bravery, their loyalty, their compassion. This speaks very deeply to me as a girl and then a woman who never, under any circumstances, would be physically formidable.
She's not conscious of Representation in a way that YA authors today tend to be. Many of her books are very white. There are characters who aren't white--not enough, but the Damar characters, Takahiro in Shadows, etc.--and that matters. They are very rooted in their own cultures and don't feel like they're there for the sake of representation. (Not that that's bad! It's better than the alternative! But you know that feeling you get sometimes when you're like, "This character is [minority demographic] for the sake of representation?" That's not present imo in McKinley's books.) There are also characters who are physically disabled or deal with mental illness. There are people of all ages. There's a sad lack of queer characters. I do think that much of that is because the majority of her books were published in the 70s-90s, when it was much harder to get that thing published in the fantasy genre, especially in YA. But still. It is a big disappointment.
Another weakness of her work: I don't think she's super great at romance? Which is fine with me, because I don't read her books for the romance. Her romances are not bad or anything, but they just don't grab me the way a really good romance should imo. (I am extremely picky about romances, though.) The heroine is always so busy with doing other things that there's less of a focus on her romantic life. Which, honestly, now that I think about it, is great: the male leads end up being the way female leads are in much of mainstream (read: aimed at men) narratives: not all that well fleshed-out. But I don't have strong feelings about her romances because I don't feel like she spends enough time focusing on the characters getting to know each other. She's better at non-romantic relationships. But it's 2021 and I still think that Rosie from Spindle's End should have ended up with her (female) bff instead of the guy she did. He's not terrible or anything, but her bff!!!! Their beautiful, beautiful relationship! Write me a f/f romance, Robin! You would do it so well!
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever get a f/f romance from her or perhaps any other books at all. Since her husband, the writer Peter Dickinson, died, she's retreated from view. She was clearly plunged into deep, deep mourning by his loss. She used to have a regularly-updated blog, but that has fallen by the wayside, and her last published book was in 2010, which doesn't sound like that long ago, but feels like ages. (It was also by far my least favorite of her books.) I don't know if she's writing at all or at least writing for publication, but I've kind of made my peace with the idea that her canon is now complete. It's entirely possible she'll at least manage to publish the Pegasus sequel, but as I'm not interested in reading that, I will probably never have a new McKinley to read (except Dragonhaven. I really need to get on that one).
Which is heartbreaking! I would love more McKinleys! But since it probably won't happen, I am just so grateful for the books she has given me. I love her.
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