Liu, Marjorie M. - The Fire King

[oyceter]

Soria is a Dirk & Steele agent who can understand and speak any language someone living is speaking. Karr is a long-imprisoned shapeshifter whom no one can understand. Together, they have adventures!

First, I would like to note that Soria's superpower is the one I currently want most. OMG. Immediate language proficiency! I swoon at the notion!

Second, Soria has one arm due to an Angsty Background that is later revealed. I am ambivalent about this. I love having a romance novel heroine with a disability in which she is portrayed as attractive, sexy, capable, and strong. Thankfully, Soria's superpower is not "compensation" for her disability and she seems to avoid many (but not all?) tropes out there. On the other hand, I was bothered by the focus on arm loss as Angsty Background (a la so much manga) and the relative dearth of characters with disabilities sans Angsty Backstory or characters with disabilities who have had a disability for a while and are living with it fine thank you.

It feels as though the stories All About Ablism or about people first adjusting to having a disability are written for people without disabilities to give them an easier way to sympathize with the character and to emphasize that having a disability is the exception and Other, and it reminded me a lot of books about characters of color that are all about OMG Racism! It Exists! And Sucks!

I am still trying to educate myself about a lot of this, so I may very well be totally wrong. I also do not want to discount the positives of having a POC (!) heroine with a disability (!!) be sexy and awesome (!!!): ergo my ambivalence. I just want more so that we aren't counting on a handful of characters to represent vast continuities of experiences.

I also found the commentary on shapeshifter interbreeding interesting. Had it been someone other than Marjorie Liu, I would have been annoyed at the implications re: mixed-race people, but since Liu has so many multiracial characters in all her books (including Soria), the chimera can be read as chimera instead of as metaphors for people. (Other SF/F authors who use supernatural creatures as metaphors for real people, please take note.)

Unfortunately, while I thought a lot about things in the book, I wasn't that into the book itself. There was a lot more adventure and not as much character/relationship, which may work for some people but didn't as much for me. I know Liu frequently has characters who are irrationally attracted to each other and trust each other, and in some of her other books, I believe it more than in this one.

Still, I loved the return of several minor characters from previous D&S books (older women for the win!), and I continue to be taunted by the presence of Eddie in books not about him!

Overall: fast-paced with lots of plot, but it didn't actually stick that much in my brain.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Immediate language proficiency!

Yes, please.

[oyceter]

I WANT IT SO!

[(Anonymous)]

I just got my copy and I'll get to reading it after I go through Stephen Baxter's Flood.

[ladyjax]

Of course I wasn't signed in. It's how I roll.

[oyceter]

Hee!

Will be interested to see what you think!

[lea_hazel]

I want that superpower. So bad.

I do find that with disability, the trick authors have most difficulty with is the idea that PWD cannot do certain things but can, in general, do some things. Like: they feel as though they need to focus on the "yes I can!" mentality to avoid making CWD look helpless. In today's risky parallel-drawing, it's a bit like writers who can't fathom that women can have a brain and a vagina and use them both, I.E. "strong women" are too good to fall in love.

I don't really know enough about the technical details of arm amputation to comment on specifics, but in general that's the pattern. I could go into a whole tangent on how it touches on people's fear of mortality and their own inevitable limitations, but it would take too long.

Anyway, I am really interested in Marjorie Liu, mainly because of your reviews! So thanks.

[oyceter]

Yay! I'm always glad to turn more people onto Liu. I enjoy her a lot.

Also, yeah, what you said. And in general, I did think Liu did a good job of showing how Soria is coping with not having her dominant hand anymore while still demonstrating that Soria continues to be kickass and competent. It's just the pervasiveness of one type of narrative and not of another that I am slightly worried about.

[oracne]

I think she is slowly building towards MASSIVE EDDIE ANGSTFEST!!!!!

I await with bated breath.

[oyceter]

That's what I'm hoping! Also, still hoping he is POC haha...

[oracne]

He can be POC and ON FIRE.

[oyceter]

AWESOMESAUCE.

[oracne]

Yes, you may add sauce if you like. *lick*

[oyceter]

But you have to wait till he's not on fire to lick!

[oracne]

Maybe it's like s'mores.

S'meddies?

[oyceter]

Mmmmmmm.....

[daedala]

*dies*

[meganbmoore]

I wasn't really bothered by Soria's angsting over her lost arm because it had only been a year, and she was shown as adjusting to it and getting past it instead of hiding and angsting and wallowing in self pity. And it helped that there was the one-eyed mercenary mom, who was totally ok with her eyeloss and all "I have a grandbaby and it is cute and you will take it gifts and fawn over it and we shall now go kill things."

I'm not sure if the chimera were meant to be a deliberate allegory regarding racism, but if they were, they may actually be the rare one that works. (Certainly better than vampires.)

[oyceter]

No, I definitely think she had reasons to angst! It's more... I am wary of how several character arcs I've seen/read for characters with disabilities (this, Kevin in Joan of Arcadia, more slips my mind) focuses on them becoming disabled and learning to cope with it. It's not that I have a problem with the narrative itself, but more that I am somewhat skeptical of seeing that narrative be more dominant than other types of narratives and wondering why that might be so.

I didn't actually read the chimera as deliberate allegories, since I figured saying mixed shapeshifter kids were prone to go crazy and kill people was not a great message ;). Ergo my being happy with lots of multiracial characters already in the universe, so I didn't have to read it that way.

[meganbmoore]

Yeah, I don't really think it was deliberate, but that's so common that it's almost instinctual to read it that way.