Well, I’m not really sure what happened, but here is it, already May 14 and I was supposed to pop this post up on May 1! So let’s get right to it.
This month, assuming you aren’t way ahead of me and haven’t already done so, we will be reading two more stories! First up is Sunbird, by Neil Gaiman himself (I’m looking forward to this one!). Second, we have The Sage of Theatre, by Diana Wynne Jones. Diana is (was) a British novelist, and has been described by Neil as “quite simply the best writer for children of her generation”.
Read on, my friends, and feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments as soon as you like, given the month is already half over. I’ll be back at the end of the month to add mine.
Disclaimer: These are my points of view only, which may be different from yours. Don’t hate me. I will try to be brief.
We used to know a diver that would get hired once in awhile by people on luxury yachts (in Alaska) to dive to the sea floor, gather anything he could find and bring it up to the boat. The host would kill the animals and serve them raw to the waiting guests. Ugh! This seemed weirdly barbaric. … All that to say, “Sunbird” was a satisfying read, and when the consumers got ‘consumed’, it felt like an appealing karmic reward. I liked the cyclic nature of the Sunbird encounter, and how all the questions introduced at the start of the story were resolved by the end, including the “two feathers” nickname, the burnt pages from the book, etc.
The Sage of Theatre: I didn’t get it. Multiple worlds, Gods with special powers, different beings that can travel from one world to the next yet understand each other’s language, a preordained destiny that cannot be changed. If you have any insights please share….
Chrystal, your points of view are very thoughtful and interesting to read! Keep them coming! That’s the great thing about book discussions – we all bring different experiences and insights to the reading.
Sunbird: I agree that it was great to see the switch of nature using humans in Sunbird. I was fascinated by the main character, who was basically the sunbird’s minion and seemed to live forever, gaining wealth and then descending into poverty. Was he bored with life? Was he making choices or just letting life happen to him? Imagine having multiple lifetimes so you can build wealth and then do other things…I have so much I want to do and want as many good years as I can get, so I was a bit jealous 🙂
The Sage: In many ways, this was standard fantasy fare, for all the reasons that Chrystal listed. But like all these stories it seemed to have a moral, though I’m not sure what it was. Something about fate or predestination? Something about inherently being ourselves, even when we don’t see it clearly? So many questions…
Great insights about the Sunbird main character. I didn’t like or trust that character, so I tried not to focus on his role in the story; only a skillful writer could create that kind of a response in a reader!
You guys …! Such interesting insights! I feel like I read these stories at a moment when my brain was set to “low” so I had very little in the way of interesting insights.
Sunbird bothered my at first, scratching the edge of my eco-anxiety because of how frivolous the characters’ eating of every animal on earth struck me. And how perfectly ok they all were to kill and eat the rare Sunbird, which, frankly, for all they knew, might have been the only Sunbird on earth. I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, at this interesting take on the story of the Phoenix and I did find a kind of delight in how the Epicureans were all consumed at the end (even though another generation was waiting in the wings to continue the tradition).
I enjoyed the Sage of Theare (even though I misread and misspelled it in the blog). However, I concur with you both, in that I don’t really understand what the moral is. Just seemingly that the gods of Theare made their world so organized that there was no room for randomness and therefore no free will? And ironically that is what brought about their own doom? Unlike most short stories, this is one that maybe could have been longer.
Yes about the eco-anxiety with the Sunbird. Totally.
The Sage of Theare: it reminds me of star trek. Kirk and Spock want to intervene but they know that ultimately the culture will dissolve with or without them!