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i_read_whatSo one of the things that came to my mind when I was reading Dragonsinger was that, as a kid, I'd gone through a phase where I was really into the idea of bards. And I was reminded of one of the book series that I remember enjoying quite a lot as a kid was Mercedes Lackey's Bardic Voices.
And one thing that kept popping into my mind as I read Dragonsinger for the first time in years was how much certain aspects of the first Bardic Voices novel, "the Lark and the Wren", seemed like a direct response to Dragonsinger's flaws. For context, "the Lark and the Wren" was published in 1992.
Both stories involve calm, quiet, pragmatic heroines who are musical prodigies and seeking to establish themselves in what was exclusively a male profession. Both have much older mentor figures that they have romantic feelings for. Both lead characters create their signature songs based on a formative experience, and the song becomes very widely known. I think there are even implications that Alanda, like Pern, might have been some kind of post-Cataclysmic colony planet in the later books of the series, though it doesn't come up in "the Lark and the Wren".
I have no idea if Ms. Lackey wrote this particular novel with Dragonsinger in mind at all, but it would not surprise me in the least if she did. It does mean that I will probably reference Menolly, Robinton, and the first two books of the Harper Hall Trilogy a lot in this review.
Now there's a pretty big elephant in the room which may be a dealbreaker to a lot of people. Bardic Voices is a fantasy setting, but despite that, the series heavily features Roma characters, or Roma-themed characters, who are referred to by the word "Gypsy" throughout the novel. I apologize for using the word there, but I wanted it to be very clear what I meant. Any time that the word comes up in a passage that I quote, I will replace it with "[Roma]".
To be honest with you, I am far too ignorant of the subject to weigh in on whether or not Ms. Lackey has done sufficient research to portray the Roma people with sensitivity. I can only present the book as it's written.
So without further ado, let's start "the Lark and the Wren".
So we start by meeting our possible Menolly-expy, Rune. Rune works at an inn with her mother, Stara. She was hoping to have some time to practice her fiddle before the arrival of evening customers, but her mother has chores for her instead.
We get our first hint that this isn't necessarily a normal mother/daughter relationship when Stara snaps at Rune and tells her not to call her "Mother." So Stara apparently doesn't have the greatest maternal instinct.
Stara and Rune aren't apparently the only employees of the inn. There's also a cook named Annie and a girl named Maeve who appears to be mentally disabled. We get another hint of characterization here:
Rune went to the farthest corner of the room and started sweeping, digging the worn bristles of the broom firmly against the floorboards. The late Rose, wife of Innkeeper Jeoff, had called Maeve "an innocent." Annie said she was "a little simple."
What Stara called her was "a great lump."
I'm not sure that Ms. Lackey is doing much better than Ms. McCaffrey when it comes to nuance at the moment. But we're still fairly early in the story.
Rune gives us a bit of insight into Maeve's issues.
Poor Maeve was all of those, Rune reflected. She lived in a world all her own, that was certain. She could-and did, if left to her own devices-stand in a window for hours, humming softly with no discernible tune, staring at nothing. But if you gave her clear orders, she would follow them to the exact letter. Told to sweep out a room, she would do so. That room, and no more, leaving a huge pile of dirt on the threshold. Told to wash the dishes, she would wash the dishes all right, but not the pots, nor the silverware, and she wouldn't rinse them afterwards. Of course, if anyone interrupted her in the middle of her task, she would drop what she was doing, follow the new instructions, and never return to the original job.
I feel like I remember Ms. Lackey using this set up, a character working at an inn as a child alongside a disabled girl who only seems to be able to follow direct instruction, in one of the later Valdemar books as well.
Anyway, Rune notes that if not for Maeve, Rune would have far more work, and she'd never have time to practice. Apparently, Stara's "don't call me mother" thing is new, and Rune, understandably, finds it pretty annoying that Stara is choosing now to try to downplay their relationship.
We get some backstory: Stara came to town as a supposedly widowed woman with a baby. But no one actually believes that story, including Rune. The real story is that Stara had been a serving wench who had an unwise liaison with a peddler and ended up pregnant and fired. She lived on the charity of the Church until she gave birth, then she went off to look for work.
Unfortunately, Stara's prospects weren't great: she had no credentials or references, and she never approached the women of the household, but instead used her looks and charm to weedle sympathy from the men. This led to her getting fired quickly by the "jealous old bitches" who believed that she was after their husbands. Rune engages in a bit of slut-shaming by thinking she'd have probably done the same thing in their place.
Eventually, Stara was lucky enough to get a job at this inn, working for the aforementioned saintly Rose and her husband, Jeoff. Rune is the one who tends to bear the brunt of Stara's bad reputation: the village children aren't as polite as their parents, who pretend to believe Stara's story, and they throw Rune's bastard status in her face. Apparently, Stara does too, while angry.
Anyway, Stara doesn't care and likes to dress provocatively whenever she's anywhere that isn't the inn. Which, well, good for her. But I do sympathize with Rune's frustration. Especially since, when Stara is not so happy with her life, she apparently keeps Rune awake with bitter complaints and rants at night.
We find out a bit more about Rune and Stara's employment: they work for room, two suits of clothing per year, and all the food they can eat. I wonder how the two suits of clothing thing actually works for a growing adolescent, but I suppose the clothes are likely to be one size fits all. Rune theoretically has her own room: or at least a part of the attic blocked off by a curtain, which she appreciates when her mother doesn't keep her up at night.
So we follow Rune through her chores, then as she wheedles a bit of food from the cook. The cook is a bit gruff, but gives her the food, observing that she's "into her growth".
Unfortunately, the cook's dialogue is written at least partially phonetically, and I'm going to have to get used to that because as I recall, Lackey tends to like that sort of thing. Egads.
Now Rune finally has time to practice. It's much harder now than when the saintly Rose had been alive. Rune and Rose were apparently quite close, and Rose had supported her in many ways, especially when it came to music. But now that she's dead, Stara has taken over Rose's work, and Rune has had to take over a lot of Stara's work as well as her own. The innkeeper keeps passing up chances to hire additional workers, so Rune's basically stuck.
Rune's biggest disappointment though is that because she's stuck with Stara's work, she's not able to play for the guests like she used to. She believes her music is one of the big draws of the inn, and sometimes people even came from the next village to hear her play a tune they could sing or dance to. But now she's only allowed to play if someone specifically asks for her.
Meanwhile, Stara, apparently, is busy making a play for Jeoff, and has started dressing sexy and using cosmetics. And she's less happy to be reminded that she has a fourteen year old daughter. Rune does understand this a little bit: Jeoff's an eligible bachelor, and Stara has competition from the village girls, many of whom are much younger and come complete with dowries.
I'll give Lackey a bit of credit here. Stara has very few positive traits, but her situation is at least somewhat sympathetic. Rune has a simple view and is judgmental toward her mother, but I think she's missing a significant factor: mainly Rune and Stara only have their jobs because of the tolerance of Jeoff's wife. If Jeoff marries someone other than Stara, it's possible that Stara will be out on her ear.
That said, I will acknowledge that Stara seems very difficult to live with.
So anyway, Rune starts practicing. She's reasonably sure that once she starts practicing, she won't be made to stop, because Jeoff actually does like the music. We also get some backstory on the fiddle and her lessons:
The gift of the fiddle had been Rose's idea. She'd watched as Rune begged to play with traveling minstrels' instruments-and had begun to coax something like music out of them right away-she'd seen Rune trying to get a good tune out of a reed whistle, a blade of grass, and anything else that made a noise. Perhaps she had guessed what Rune might do with a musical instrument of her own. For whatever reason, when Rune was about six, a peddler had run off without paying, leaving behind a pack filled with trash he hadn't been able to sell. One of the few things in it worth anything was the fiddle, given immediately to Rune, which Rune had named "Lady Rose" in honor of her patron.
It had taken many months of squealing and scraping out in the stable where she wouldn't offend any ears but the animals' before she was able to play much. But by the time she was eight, minstrels were going out of their way to give her a lesson or two, or teach her a new song. By the time she was ten, she was a regular draw.
This is a bit contrived, admittedly. Someone HAPPENS to leave a fiddle. Minstrels just HAPPENED to come by, and they just HAPPEN to decide to teach the cute kid. That said, I appreciate how Rune's backstory gives her a very patchwork set of skills and emphasizes both how lucky she's been and how hard she's worked to get them.
And this is one of the first points that makes me feel like Rune was written as a direct response to Menolly.
I mentioned before in my Dragonsong review that one of the parts of Menolly's backstory that never quite worked for me is how she had time to learn every single skill and every single instrument from Petiron, despite the fact that her parents are completely unsupportive and she lives in a Hold that requires a lot of work contribution from everyone. Sure, she was his primary caretaker while he was dying, but at some point he would have had to be well in order to teach her. And, while I didn't complain at the time, it does play into why Dragonsinger's conclusion felt so empty: we never actually see Menolly WORK at being a musician. She already has the necessary skills before the series began.
Let's look at Rune, in contrast:
1) Rune's mother might be semi-hostile to her music, but she has had other adults who supported her and gave her the opportunity to learn. It's only now that that's really being threatened.
2) Since Rune doesn't have the world's best teacher living in her home, we get more of a sense of the hard work involved in becoming a talented musician. Rune has had to teach herself primarily, and cobble together her education from what she can scrounge. I believe that Menolly was hardworking, but Rune's efforts are a lot easier to appreciate.
3) Also, the patchwork nature of her education hopefully means that Rune still has a lot to learn, and we'll be able to witness that process.
(Another point that makes me think that Rune is a response to Menolly is that they're described very similar. Rune, like Menolly, is tall and thin and not particularly feminine, in contrast to specific female relatives.)
Anyway, we're (again) told that Rose's investment started to pay out, because Rune's music attracted more customers. Stara and Jeoff apparently believe that now that the customers are here, they'll continue coming, so they're less interested in having Rune perform when she could be doing more important tasks.
Rune starts practicing specific songs and reminiscing about where she learned them. She starts with a jig, learned from a tiny flautist named Linnet who had been a member of a trio. She remembers playing it at the tavern and being paid a pair of copper bits for it, which was the first time she'd ever received money for performing.
The next song is a love song that she learned from a "villainous-looking" man wearing "[roma]-colors". He had been an actual fiddler and had taught her a number of techniques over a few days. It sounds like Rune had a bit of a crush on him, though thankfully the man acted properly. His name was Raven.
Apparently Raven returned a number of times, during winter and summer, and she hoped he'd be back again in a few months to teach her more. And we get another Menolly counterpoint here, where Rune thinks about how much she still needs to learn, particularly reading and writing music since she's got a lot of songs in her head that she wants to write down. Rune is only just literate enough to read a few bits of "the Holy Book" and she finds this very frustrating.
Rune reminisces about other teachers: a piper who didn't give her any formal lessons, but played all of his songs three times over so that she could learn them; an elderly Guild Minstrel who taught her many popular court songs, and finally a Roma harpist girl who didn't come into the village at all, but somehow knew Rune's name and what instrument she played.
This last girl, Nightingale, played a kind of music that was too complicated for Rune to learn all at once, but we're told that the laments stuck into Rune's mind. Unfortunately, this causes an end to her practice session as the songs make Stara and Jeoff uncomfortable.
Jeoff is at least polite about it, but Stara calls it "[Roma] howling" and compares it to lost souls, wailing for the dead.
The chapter ends here, with Rune noting undercurrents between Stara and Jeoff and wondering what that'll mean for her.
Do you see what I mean about Rune feeling like a response to Menolly? Lackey isn't the craftsman that McCaffrey is. She's more repetitive, for example, and tends to err on the side of having characters spell things out that don't necessarily need to be. But I think she does a good job in crafting reasonably vivid characters and I think she's very invested in having the reader experience Rune's journey to become an amazing musician with her.
I particularly liked Rune's little mini-tour of her musical education. It really reinforced the idea that Rune is aggressively cobbling together everything she can from everyone she can.
And I really like that she only plays the one instrument. It not only makes more sense, because it was sheer luck that she ended up with the instrument that she has, but also actually makes her look like a more skilled musician in certain ways, because we know she's had to take songs that she learned by ear from harpists and pipers and all sorts and CONVERT them into fiddle songs. And that's not an easy thing to do at all.
Rune as a character reads a lot like Menolly did: calm, quiet, contemplative. I could do without the slut-shaming and lack of empathy toward her mother, but I feel like there's actually a chance that Rune might improve on that score. She's a work in progress, and that's not a bad thing at all.
And one thing that kept popping into my mind as I read Dragonsinger for the first time in years was how much certain aspects of the first Bardic Voices novel, "the Lark and the Wren", seemed like a direct response to Dragonsinger's flaws. For context, "the Lark and the Wren" was published in 1992.
Both stories involve calm, quiet, pragmatic heroines who are musical prodigies and seeking to establish themselves in what was exclusively a male profession. Both have much older mentor figures that they have romantic feelings for. Both lead characters create their signature songs based on a formative experience, and the song becomes very widely known. I think there are even implications that Alanda, like Pern, might have been some kind of post-Cataclysmic colony planet in the later books of the series, though it doesn't come up in "the Lark and the Wren".
I have no idea if Ms. Lackey wrote this particular novel with Dragonsinger in mind at all, but it would not surprise me in the least if she did. It does mean that I will probably reference Menolly, Robinton, and the first two books of the Harper Hall Trilogy a lot in this review.
Now there's a pretty big elephant in the room which may be a dealbreaker to a lot of people. Bardic Voices is a fantasy setting, but despite that, the series heavily features Roma characters, or Roma-themed characters, who are referred to by the word "Gypsy" throughout the novel. I apologize for using the word there, but I wanted it to be very clear what I meant. Any time that the word comes up in a passage that I quote, I will replace it with "[Roma]".
To be honest with you, I am far too ignorant of the subject to weigh in on whether or not Ms. Lackey has done sufficient research to portray the Roma people with sensitivity. I can only present the book as it's written.
So without further ado, let's start "the Lark and the Wren".
So we start by meeting our possible Menolly-expy, Rune. Rune works at an inn with her mother, Stara. She was hoping to have some time to practice her fiddle before the arrival of evening customers, but her mother has chores for her instead.
We get our first hint that this isn't necessarily a normal mother/daughter relationship when Stara snaps at Rune and tells her not to call her "Mother." So Stara apparently doesn't have the greatest maternal instinct.
Stara and Rune aren't apparently the only employees of the inn. There's also a cook named Annie and a girl named Maeve who appears to be mentally disabled. We get another hint of characterization here:
Rune went to the farthest corner of the room and started sweeping, digging the worn bristles of the broom firmly against the floorboards. The late Rose, wife of Innkeeper Jeoff, had called Maeve "an innocent." Annie said she was "a little simple."
What Stara called her was "a great lump."
I'm not sure that Ms. Lackey is doing much better than Ms. McCaffrey when it comes to nuance at the moment. But we're still fairly early in the story.
Rune gives us a bit of insight into Maeve's issues.
Poor Maeve was all of those, Rune reflected. She lived in a world all her own, that was certain. She could-and did, if left to her own devices-stand in a window for hours, humming softly with no discernible tune, staring at nothing. But if you gave her clear orders, she would follow them to the exact letter. Told to sweep out a room, she would do so. That room, and no more, leaving a huge pile of dirt on the threshold. Told to wash the dishes, she would wash the dishes all right, but not the pots, nor the silverware, and she wouldn't rinse them afterwards. Of course, if anyone interrupted her in the middle of her task, she would drop what she was doing, follow the new instructions, and never return to the original job.
I feel like I remember Ms. Lackey using this set up, a character working at an inn as a child alongside a disabled girl who only seems to be able to follow direct instruction, in one of the later Valdemar books as well.
Anyway, Rune notes that if not for Maeve, Rune would have far more work, and she'd never have time to practice. Apparently, Stara's "don't call me mother" thing is new, and Rune, understandably, finds it pretty annoying that Stara is choosing now to try to downplay their relationship.
We get some backstory: Stara came to town as a supposedly widowed woman with a baby. But no one actually believes that story, including Rune. The real story is that Stara had been a serving wench who had an unwise liaison with a peddler and ended up pregnant and fired. She lived on the charity of the Church until she gave birth, then she went off to look for work.
Unfortunately, Stara's prospects weren't great: she had no credentials or references, and she never approached the women of the household, but instead used her looks and charm to weedle sympathy from the men. This led to her getting fired quickly by the "jealous old bitches" who believed that she was after their husbands. Rune engages in a bit of slut-shaming by thinking she'd have probably done the same thing in their place.
Eventually, Stara was lucky enough to get a job at this inn, working for the aforementioned saintly Rose and her husband, Jeoff. Rune is the one who tends to bear the brunt of Stara's bad reputation: the village children aren't as polite as their parents, who pretend to believe Stara's story, and they throw Rune's bastard status in her face. Apparently, Stara does too, while angry.
Anyway, Stara doesn't care and likes to dress provocatively whenever she's anywhere that isn't the inn. Which, well, good for her. But I do sympathize with Rune's frustration. Especially since, when Stara is not so happy with her life, she apparently keeps Rune awake with bitter complaints and rants at night.
We find out a bit more about Rune and Stara's employment: they work for room, two suits of clothing per year, and all the food they can eat. I wonder how the two suits of clothing thing actually works for a growing adolescent, but I suppose the clothes are likely to be one size fits all. Rune theoretically has her own room: or at least a part of the attic blocked off by a curtain, which she appreciates when her mother doesn't keep her up at night.
So we follow Rune through her chores, then as she wheedles a bit of food from the cook. The cook is a bit gruff, but gives her the food, observing that she's "into her growth".
Unfortunately, the cook's dialogue is written at least partially phonetically, and I'm going to have to get used to that because as I recall, Lackey tends to like that sort of thing. Egads.
Now Rune finally has time to practice. It's much harder now than when the saintly Rose had been alive. Rune and Rose were apparently quite close, and Rose had supported her in many ways, especially when it came to music. But now that she's dead, Stara has taken over Rose's work, and Rune has had to take over a lot of Stara's work as well as her own. The innkeeper keeps passing up chances to hire additional workers, so Rune's basically stuck.
Rune's biggest disappointment though is that because she's stuck with Stara's work, she's not able to play for the guests like she used to. She believes her music is one of the big draws of the inn, and sometimes people even came from the next village to hear her play a tune they could sing or dance to. But now she's only allowed to play if someone specifically asks for her.
Meanwhile, Stara, apparently, is busy making a play for Jeoff, and has started dressing sexy and using cosmetics. And she's less happy to be reminded that she has a fourteen year old daughter. Rune does understand this a little bit: Jeoff's an eligible bachelor, and Stara has competition from the village girls, many of whom are much younger and come complete with dowries.
I'll give Lackey a bit of credit here. Stara has very few positive traits, but her situation is at least somewhat sympathetic. Rune has a simple view and is judgmental toward her mother, but I think she's missing a significant factor: mainly Rune and Stara only have their jobs because of the tolerance of Jeoff's wife. If Jeoff marries someone other than Stara, it's possible that Stara will be out on her ear.
That said, I will acknowledge that Stara seems very difficult to live with.
So anyway, Rune starts practicing. She's reasonably sure that once she starts practicing, she won't be made to stop, because Jeoff actually does like the music. We also get some backstory on the fiddle and her lessons:
The gift of the fiddle had been Rose's idea. She'd watched as Rune begged to play with traveling minstrels' instruments-and had begun to coax something like music out of them right away-she'd seen Rune trying to get a good tune out of a reed whistle, a blade of grass, and anything else that made a noise. Perhaps she had guessed what Rune might do with a musical instrument of her own. For whatever reason, when Rune was about six, a peddler had run off without paying, leaving behind a pack filled with trash he hadn't been able to sell. One of the few things in it worth anything was the fiddle, given immediately to Rune, which Rune had named "Lady Rose" in honor of her patron.
It had taken many months of squealing and scraping out in the stable where she wouldn't offend any ears but the animals' before she was able to play much. But by the time she was eight, minstrels were going out of their way to give her a lesson or two, or teach her a new song. By the time she was ten, she was a regular draw.
This is a bit contrived, admittedly. Someone HAPPENS to leave a fiddle. Minstrels just HAPPENED to come by, and they just HAPPEN to decide to teach the cute kid. That said, I appreciate how Rune's backstory gives her a very patchwork set of skills and emphasizes both how lucky she's been and how hard she's worked to get them.
And this is one of the first points that makes me feel like Rune was written as a direct response to Menolly.
I mentioned before in my Dragonsong review that one of the parts of Menolly's backstory that never quite worked for me is how she had time to learn every single skill and every single instrument from Petiron, despite the fact that her parents are completely unsupportive and she lives in a Hold that requires a lot of work contribution from everyone. Sure, she was his primary caretaker while he was dying, but at some point he would have had to be well in order to teach her. And, while I didn't complain at the time, it does play into why Dragonsinger's conclusion felt so empty: we never actually see Menolly WORK at being a musician. She already has the necessary skills before the series began.
Let's look at Rune, in contrast:
1) Rune's mother might be semi-hostile to her music, but she has had other adults who supported her and gave her the opportunity to learn. It's only now that that's really being threatened.
2) Since Rune doesn't have the world's best teacher living in her home, we get more of a sense of the hard work involved in becoming a talented musician. Rune has had to teach herself primarily, and cobble together her education from what she can scrounge. I believe that Menolly was hardworking, but Rune's efforts are a lot easier to appreciate.
3) Also, the patchwork nature of her education hopefully means that Rune still has a lot to learn, and we'll be able to witness that process.
(Another point that makes me think that Rune is a response to Menolly is that they're described very similar. Rune, like Menolly, is tall and thin and not particularly feminine, in contrast to specific female relatives.)
Anyway, we're (again) told that Rose's investment started to pay out, because Rune's music attracted more customers. Stara and Jeoff apparently believe that now that the customers are here, they'll continue coming, so they're less interested in having Rune perform when she could be doing more important tasks.
Rune starts practicing specific songs and reminiscing about where she learned them. She starts with a jig, learned from a tiny flautist named Linnet who had been a member of a trio. She remembers playing it at the tavern and being paid a pair of copper bits for it, which was the first time she'd ever received money for performing.
The next song is a love song that she learned from a "villainous-looking" man wearing "[roma]-colors". He had been an actual fiddler and had taught her a number of techniques over a few days. It sounds like Rune had a bit of a crush on him, though thankfully the man acted properly. His name was Raven.
Apparently Raven returned a number of times, during winter and summer, and she hoped he'd be back again in a few months to teach her more. And we get another Menolly counterpoint here, where Rune thinks about how much she still needs to learn, particularly reading and writing music since she's got a lot of songs in her head that she wants to write down. Rune is only just literate enough to read a few bits of "the Holy Book" and she finds this very frustrating.
Rune reminisces about other teachers: a piper who didn't give her any formal lessons, but played all of his songs three times over so that she could learn them; an elderly Guild Minstrel who taught her many popular court songs, and finally a Roma harpist girl who didn't come into the village at all, but somehow knew Rune's name and what instrument she played.
This last girl, Nightingale, played a kind of music that was too complicated for Rune to learn all at once, but we're told that the laments stuck into Rune's mind. Unfortunately, this causes an end to her practice session as the songs make Stara and Jeoff uncomfortable.
Jeoff is at least polite about it, but Stara calls it "[Roma] howling" and compares it to lost souls, wailing for the dead.
The chapter ends here, with Rune noting undercurrents between Stara and Jeoff and wondering what that'll mean for her.
Do you see what I mean about Rune feeling like a response to Menolly? Lackey isn't the craftsman that McCaffrey is. She's more repetitive, for example, and tends to err on the side of having characters spell things out that don't necessarily need to be. But I think she does a good job in crafting reasonably vivid characters and I think she's very invested in having the reader experience Rune's journey to become an amazing musician with her.
I particularly liked Rune's little mini-tour of her musical education. It really reinforced the idea that Rune is aggressively cobbling together everything she can from everyone she can.
And I really like that she only plays the one instrument. It not only makes more sense, because it was sheer luck that she ended up with the instrument that she has, but also actually makes her look like a more skilled musician in certain ways, because we know she's had to take songs that she learned by ear from harpists and pipers and all sorts and CONVERT them into fiddle songs. And that's not an easy thing to do at all.
Rune as a character reads a lot like Menolly did: calm, quiet, contemplative. I could do without the slut-shaming and lack of empathy toward her mother, but I feel like there's actually a chance that Rune might improve on that score. She's a work in progress, and that's not a bad thing at all.
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Date: 2020-06-03 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 05:53 pm (UTC)