Alexander, Alma - The Secrets of Jin-Shei

[oyceter]

I was very wary about picking up this book because it's about a) a mythical China and b) sisterhoods. I am normally very pro-a and -b, but when they go wrong, I start frothing at the mouth and attempting to chuck things at walls.

I was almost going to write a glowing review in which I talked about how the author didn't fall into the associated traps that I thought she would, how refreshing I found that, how awesome it was to get a book with eight different female characters and their relationships.

And then the ending fell into all the associated traps and I avoiding chucking the book at the wall only because I didn't want to pay for any potential damage (to the wall, not the book).

Sigh.

In the fantasy China analogue Syai, women can swear into a bond of sisterhood, called jin-shei (the sworn sisters are then your jin-shei-bao). Tai somehow manages to become sworn sisters to the Empress, the circle increases, and much plot ensues.

The potential traps that I was desperately hoping to not have to read about were: 1) the circle of friends falling apart because of envy of each other, 2) the insane-sounding character from the cover flap to be the insane envious character who ruins everything, 3) tragic fates befalling everyone except the narrator, and 4) circle of friends falling apart because of envy. I know 1 is 4, but this is very important to me.

I have a vague feeling that many stories of sisterhood tend to end up with the sisterhood falling apart because of envy or jealousy, but I cannot substantiate this at all. I also have a vague feeling that many stories of brotherhood tend to not fall apart because of envy or jealousy, but I also cannot substantiate this at all. Mostly, I have a general impression that whenever female friendships are written about, the focus is on competition and cattiness (unsubstantiated generality on my part).

I was very, very happy with this book at first. The eight women all had different personalities and different jobs; there were writers and healers, empresses and warriors. It wasn't limited to one specific thing. And the author didn't seem to be weighting one occupation over the other. I also liked that the women listened to each other, that they respected each other in spite of their differences, that there weren't Stupid Misunderstandings.

Alas and alack, Nhia lost her personality mid-way, the empress indulged in multiple Stupid Misunderstandings, as did nearly everyone else, and the story collapsed into what felt like largely pointless gloom and doom.

I feel that if you want the gloom and doom to be less pointless, you should not write a prologue that strongly foreshadows said gloom and doom and generally makes the reader not care about characters that they know won't make it.

Also, in the very end, despite the diversity of the characters in the beginning, in the end, the happiest ones are the ones who have gone away from the public sphere and settled down with a husband and kids.

I am even more mad because the book was going so well until the last two hundred pages or so! I mean, I liked the China analogue! It felt real and non-cliched and non-stupid.

Needless to say, by the end, I really wanted to throw the book at something.

Giant honking spoilers so I can rant at everyone










- Why the rape of Nhia?! WHY? It would have been ok, except after that, she lost any semblance of a personality and instead had to be protected by everyone. And was never any discussion after that about continuing with her path, or any mention of what she was doing as Chancellor.

- I froth at the mouth on what happened with Liudan. Blah blah blah wounded Empress destroys country through her own hubris blah blah blah. Could we for once not have this storyline? Particularly when said empress is the first one who tries to rule without an emperor? And her increasing insanity and instability is completely unconvincing, as she is very rational in the beginning. I also hate the portrayal of the woman who is so insecure and jealous that she cannot do anything but destroy all her relationships.

- I liked Tai a lot. I did. Then there was all the verbage about Tai having the perfect happy life and the perfect happy husband and the perfect happy children, and how she had something that all the other women (who, by the way, were pursuing other things) didn't, and how the other women who were pursuing medicine and helping the poor and learning alchemy and etc. felt unfulfilled when they looked at Tai's happy family life.

- That message could have been undercut, but was instead reinforced when Tammary escapes the city and is happy with her husband and child and Khailin escapes and also reproduces.

- May I also mention the completely needless deaths? Having Yuet stoned by a crowd was unnecessary and felt like it was just there to be dark. Then Xaforn gets herself killed for Qiaan. This might have been touching, except Liudan condemns Qiaan to be put to death in the most painful way possible (because she must seem insane), and Nhia gives Qiaan poison so she can poison herself. Then Nhia drinks poison meant for Liudan. All dead, so long, bye bye.

- And then, of course, at the end of the book, everything is set to rights again. There is a male emperor on the throne. Tai is playing with Tammary's grandchildren.

- I don't think Alexander meant to put all this subtext in, I really don't. But when the plot has all this happen, it's very hard to read it as otherwise.

- It just felt so gratuitously dark and depressing, like the author had constructed the sisterhood only so she could tear it apart and make everyone feel bad.

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like the general progressive-writer problem (not just feminism, see also China Mieville's novels) where there cannot ever be a happy ending because in the Real World people are Horribly Oppressed All The Time and not rubbing people's noses in it is bourgeois bullshit that saps the cadres of their will to revolution.

[oyceter]

It's not quite the same -- I know what trend you're talking about, and this one feels a little different, just because it doesn't concentrate on all the squalid and sordid details the entire way through. It's actually rather emotional and uplifting in the beginning, which is why I wanted to write a good review on how Alexander handled all the different relationships among the women.

But then it sort of jumps ship and doesn't quite do the Slammerkin thing, but seems to fit into all the "sisters always end up fighting" type thing.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I think what bugs me is when sisterhoods break up over a man. Brotherhoods occasionally break up over a woman, but more often over conflicts of honor, means to an end, and life directions.

Plus, there are so few stories of sisterhood to begin with, that each fight over a man is a larger percentage of the whole.

[oyceter]

Oh me too. And usually when brotherhoods break up over women, it feels more like it's the evil women's fault and the brothers really just couldn't resist her. While when sisterhoods break up over men, it feels like "Oh, women, they are so catty."

I mean, this one didn't end with a break over a man, thank GOD, but it was the general feeling of envy and discontent that felt a lot like one of those narratives.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Huh. I've been pondering of one of my back-burnered story ideas, in which one woman character semi-betrays a female friend, to see if it's guilty of what you're describing. In my brain, the difference would be that the betrayer doesn't act the way she does because that's some inherent quality of her sex and gender; she makes the choice she does because that's all the power that her (deeply sexist) society has left her. But I wonder how it would read to others.

Like Rachel, I am also irked when sisterhoods break up over a man (and really, generally, when characters make stupid decisions because Romance Is The Only Thing That Matters).

[oyceter]

I dunno! It's hard because as a reader I'd probably still get grumpy, just because I feel like so many stories about female friends end up with betrayal and jealousy and angst and woe. Maybe it would work counterbalanced with another, unbetrayed female friendship? Or showing that it is the only power she has is pretty effective.

Er, well, in this book it wasn't mostly because Liudan (the empress) tried to grab power and the subtext of the book read as though it was the wrong thing to do and made a whole bunch of woe and angst for everyone. I mean, again, I seriously doubt that the author meant for it to come off that way, but when everything reverted happily to the emperor, I growled.

One of the reasons why I was going to say I liked the book so much was because there were so many different female friendships! And then they fell apart.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

It's an indirect betrayal in lots of ways, and it's not the only female friendship in the book, by any means. But I sort of thought your reaction might be what it is in your comment. It's an interesting thing to ponder; I mean, I can want it to be read one way, but authorial intent doesn't mean a whole bunch if most readers seem inclined to see it differently!

[oyceter]

It's really weird now that I've started to sort-of write; in some ways I resent it because I miss being a pure reader, if that makes any sense.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

If you don't already have an idea for your Secret Project, maybe you could do your version of a similar idea. If you could figure out how to really, really, really simplify it, of course. Maybe just the concept of "sisterhood in ancient China?"

[oyceter]

Oh that would be neat! Except there would have to be much research for clothing and etc.

Though I'm wondering if it would translate nicely into a present-day analogue...

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

You could do that, or also, if you're doing a simple story, the research might not be that bad, because you'd only have to find out what women of a certain class wore at a certain time, and then all your characters might be dressed like that.

[oyceter]

Oooo. I will run that past VM too. I am just chucking ideas at her like mad now.

[fresne.livejournal.com]

"I have a vague feeling that many stories of sisterhood tend to end up with the sisterhood falling apart because of envy or jealousy, but I cannot substantiate this at all."

I know what you mean. It's this sort of vague... hmmm, "Lord help the sister, who comes between me and my man," sort of thing. To throw in an example, I remember how disappointed I was watching "The Craft." Spoilers in subsequent paragraph.

Going from outcast (at least in high school) women joining together and finding empowerment by doing so, to the community falls apart due to general crazyness/bitchyness, with the final shot being about punishment/confinement. Very unsatisfactory. I want empowerment, and I want to stay empowered.

Course, my mental revision turns into Charmed, but whatever.

[oyceter]

Very much so! At least this book didn't have them fighting over romantic interests, because then I really would have thrown it at a wall.

I keep wracking my brain to try and think of examples of brotherhood that fall apart like this -- Mely suggested the Knights of the Round Table, but all the examples of brotherhood that I can think of are the war movie "We share a bond deeper than romance" type thing.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Mely suggested the Knights of the Round Table

The question is, would The Secrets of Jin-Shei have been improved by the addition of routines, chorus scenes, and footwork im-pec-cable?

[oyceter]

I feel like the answer to that question should always be "Yes!"

Really, what couldn't be improved by footwork im-pec-cable?

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

I have a vague feeling that many stories of sisterhood tend to end up with the sisterhood falling apart because of envy or jealousy, but I cannot substantiate this at all. I also have a vague feeling that many stories of brotherhood tend to not fall apart because of envy or jealousy, but I also cannot substantiate this at all. Mostly, I have a general impression that whenever female friendships are written about, the focus is on competition and cattiness (unsubstantiated generality on my part).

look! it's a wiscon panel! ;)

fyi, alma alexander goes go to the con.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Oh, it is!

[oyceter]

Hee! I need to sit down and write out my panel ideas, because right now they're rough concepts instead of actual coherent sentences.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I put the book down partway trhough and never picked it back up again. And after reading this, I don't think I will bother to do so. :)

It really bugs me when people look at a group of women and insist that there will be backbiting and so on. I especially remember one of the BPAL blowups over something-or-other, probably swaplifting, when one of the women in the comm said that it was inevitable: whenever a group of women get together they act like that ... and nobody called her on it. (Mind you I didn't because I didn't want to get into a flame war, so I'm hoping that was everyone else's response, not that they agreed with her.)

[oyceter]

I HATE the whole "women catfight all the time" stereotype. Especially because the majority of my friends through life so far have been female, and I like that, and I really like my friends and enjoy my relationships with them. So every time someone in real life comes up to me to say something like, "Oh, I have lots of guy friends because girls are too catty or something" (I've gotten this quite a few times), I see red.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord yes. At the moment, the majority of my offline friends are male and the majority of my online friends are female, but the reason for that is that I make friends based on shared interests and offline I hang out with a geeky crowd that happens to be primarily male.

I'm the girliest girl of the offline bunch, which says quite a lot, actually. I mean, I actually put makeup on once last year (New Year's Eve. I attended a wedding), which is more than the others did.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I'll probably never be able to sell my circle of girl adventurers because they are a tight bond, and though they squabble, they always ally against the enemy. And they stay tight...and only one of them goes off to marry, and no one envies her.

[oyceter]

Oh, I would read that! That sounds excellent!

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

My thoughts on this book. (http://helen-keeble.livejournal.com/13269.html) (from awhile ago)

I was sufficiently irked by the worldbuilding that I seem to have managed to miss the exceedingly unpleasant subtext that you spotted. Now that you've pointed it out, though, it's obvious, and I suspect that it was an additional subconcious factor to my reaction to the last quarter of the book (where I kept going "Buh?" and wondering how it had managed to so dramatically death-spiral into suckiness).

Did you know that there's a sequel?

[oyceter]

There's a sequel? About what?

You know, I didn't even think about the worldbuilding wrt the development of the women's language, and while I figured out the historical part of the women's language from the notes in the back, I don't know that much more about it. But that makes sense.

I suspect I was less picky about the world-building because I knew from the flap that it was a fantasy kingdom. And still the weird variety of names bugged me!

Like you, I loved the first bits and then threw my hands up in disgust around the arrival of the Main Villain.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

Apparently the sequel is set X hundred years later (400? Some large number) in the same world. Sisterhood-pacts are still around, though very diminished, and the society is much more male dominated.

I'm vaguely curious, but my library doesn't carry it. And I'm not curious enough to part with cash. :-)

[oyceter]

Huh, that's weird. Well, I might look for it if it's available, but won't shell out.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

Oh, also a Le Guin poem (http://www.bpj.org/PDF/V43N1.pdf#zoom=100&page=5) on real-life Chinese secret women's writing and sisterhood-vows. I love this one...

[oyceter]

Thank you for the link! That is awesome!

[keilexandra]

Have you read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan? It deals with a sort-of similar topic, except that the bonds aren't so convoluted and they don't all die and it's a pretty good book. And it's set in historical, non-analogue China.

[oyceter]

I haven't -- I tend to avoid a lot of China fantasies because when they're badly done, they make me want to throw things. I'll look that up though.

[keilexandra]

I haven't read a lot of fiction about China, but the only (good) ones that come to mind are Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and Empress Orchid (about Cixi). Can't remember the author of either, unfortunately.