Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts, ‘Daughter of the Empire’ (1987)

 

In my recent blog on Feist’s Magician (1982) I wondered if I should reread the trilogy he wrote with Janny Wurts:

There are, as I said, thirty-or-more Riftwar novels. I have not read all of them. Those unread titles might be Tolstoy for all I know. Back in the 1990s I did read the ‘Empire Trilogy’, set in Kelewan/Fantasy-Japan: Daughter of the Empire (1987), Servant of the Empire (1990), Mistress of the Empire (1992). All three books were co-written with Janny Wurts, and my memory is that they were less male-centric and better written than Magician (Wurts is no Nabokov, but she is a more skilled writer than Feist, I’d say, so this perhaps won’t surprise us). Though, again, my memory for all three books is hazy. Maybe I should revisit them.

After I posted that blog, I decided I would revisit them. Perhaps they are better. And, having looked again at Daughter of the Empire (1987), so it proves.

The underlying story of Daughter (that is, the fabula, not the sjuzhet) is similar to Magician: a kid—Pug, in Magician, the 17-year-old Mara in this novel—overcomes adversity, passes through various adventures and eventually achieves power and prominence. The key difference is not just that Pug exists in a fictionalised medieval Europe and Mara in a fictionalised medieval Japan, although that is a difference. It’s that Pug’s ‘power’ is the arbitrary exteriorised folderol of ‘magic’, a  manifestation of the jejune belief that power means the ability to manipulate externalities at a distance, by waving one’s hands or a wand or whatnot. Mara’s ‘power’ is power as it actually manifests, in the world: control over interpersonal dynamics, attracting or compelling obedience from other human beings, being able to get them to do what you want them to, or to support you doing what you want. Power is a politics, not a sparks-and-levitation conjuring trick. Power is an index of human intersubjectivity. And that’s what Mara works towards and finally achieves in this novel, using the structures of belief of her society and her own resourcefulness and determination to bend people, and eventually the whole of her society, to her will.

This is a good story, a better one than in Magician. It’s decently written too—workmanlike and sometimes a little bland, but the prose here gets both story and backstory across and doesn’t litter its paragraphs with solecisms and idiocies. And there’s an attractive cleverness in the way Mara uses her disadvantages—her youth, her vulnerability, her femaleness in a highly structured patriarchal society—as weapons against her combatants, turning the honour-code hierarchies and warrior-logic of her world against her adversaries. There’s nothing so sophisticated as this in Magician. And, setting questions of cultural appropriation aside, it’s refreshing to turn from a Yet-Another-Medieval-Europe Fantasy world to one based on an Eastern society and culture.

Not that it’s a flawless novel. The pace sometimes slows and stagnates. The prose is sometimes awkward and tangled. The inclusion of the interspace rifts, and the presence of Midkemia on the far side of them, mandated by the fact that this is a ‘Riftworld’ novel, is a little clumsily, distractingly done (my memory, though I haven’t reread them yet, is that the next two novels in this trilogy integrate this aspect better).

I have no idea how Feist and Wurts (and might I add how delicious I find Bavaria’s traditional feistenwurst sausages ...) [clears throat] ... I have no idea how Feist and Wurts divided up the practicalities of co-writing this novel. I have written 25 novels, and I work alone. The closest I have come to collaboration is a series of four novels I’m doing with Dave Hutchinson, and there Dave wrote vol 1, I wrote vol 2, he has written vol 3 and I’m now working on vol 4. But I know other writers don’t lurk Oscar-the-Grouch-like in their dustbin, as I prefer to do. Friendship between writers is common, and so is professional collaboration.

When writers collaborate they do so in a number of ways. They might divide up the writing that needs to be done chapter by chapter, or section by section; one might write a section, pass it to the other to rework and continue, they passing it back when they are finished and so on. The two writers might sit side-by-side and wrangle each emerging sentence between them for all I know; though this would, I think, be a laborious way of proceeding. More usually, Writer A will produce a chunk of writing, Writer B a succeeding chunk, Writer A the next bit and so on. So it’s possible that a 600-page novel might be produced by one writer writing the first 250 pages, a second writer adding a couple hundred more, and then the first writer finishing everything off. I have no idea how Feist and Wurts divided up the practicalities of co-writing this novel.

Accordingly I offer the following observation without prejudice or implication. In the first 250-or-so pages of this novel, Mara is described in terms of her resourcefulness and determination. Where her physicality is described the novel mostly stresses her smaller size, her poise, her control (after an opening section in which she is grieving the death of her family, and is more extravert in her bereavement) the beauty and impassivity of her face. Then, for a couple of hundred pages, the tenor of description shifts. Mara is suddenly described almost exclusively in terms of her mammary glands.

Buntokapi watched the rise and fall of Mara’s breasts beneath the flimsy fabric of her day robe … by the time the wine was finished and his goblet thrown aside, he closed his sweaty hands upon that maddening obstruction of silk. [Feist and Wurts, Daughter of Empire, 227]

A toss of her head dislodged a river of loosened hair and the light shone warm on her breasts. Buntokapi licked his lips [289]

The tips of her breasts pressed clearly through the scarlet cloth, and her hair tumbled sensuously over a shoulder artfully left bare. [292]

All Chipaka could remember was she had large breasts … Lord Chipaka might perhaps have thought Mara’s breasts large, since his nose had hovered within inches of her chest as he spoke to her. [304]

A ripe, soft figure with breasts that were high and well-formed despite being large, a small waist and flaring hips. [346]

Mara emerged from behind the screen, swathed in soft towels. The old woman waved the servants aside and dabbed an exotic essence upon the girl’s shoulders and wrists, and between her breasts. Then she lifted the towels aside; regarding the nude form of her mistress, she resisted an impulse to cackle. ‘You’ve a fine, healthy body on you, Mara-anni.’ [380]

Mara turned towards the reflecting glass … Her breasts were slightly larger than before, but her stomach was as flat as ever. [393]

Mara fanned herself, then pulled her bodice open and exposed most of her breasts to Bruli’s view. The effect was immediate. [401]

Her robe gaped further, and Bruli caught a teasing glimpse of [Mara’s] nicely formed breasts and the hint of a taut stomach. Mara smiled as she noted the focus of his attention. With slow, provocative movements, she rebound her sash. [448]

She slipped her robe from her shoulders and bared her lovely breasts. [449]

The curve of her breasts beneath her thin robe [489]

And then, around the 500-page mark, the breasts … stop. Stop, that is, in terms of being a feature of how Mari is described in the novel. Instead the focus shifts back to her resourcefulness, her petite-ness and poise, the way others underestimate her, as she works towards her final triumph.

I have no idea how Feist and Wurts divided up the practicalities of co-writing this novel.