Readers - email exchange with Angeline Adams 8_11_6

this is the second part of an email exchange that I had with Angeline Adams which she has kindly allowed me to put on this site...

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Angeline: Nearly halfway through The Standing Dead, and very struck by the difference in tone and pace - fitting for someone whose world has just been turned upside down.

Ricardo: I'm curious as to how you would describe this different tone... and in what way do you think the pace different...?

Angeline: Perhaps not surprising that Osidian isn't coping with it as well as Carnelian - we only really know people when we've seen them in the worst circumstances, and Carnie was lucky (or unlucky, in light of how things are turning out) to have originally found his lover in his private kingdom...

Ricardo: and in some ways, it was Osrakum that was the alien place for Carnelian...

Angeline: Even with the threat from Molochite hanging over him, Osidian - in the Pillar - came across as very controlled and subtly controlling. I got the feeling that even if the Wise had caught them in the library, he'd have got them out of trouble somehow...

Ricardo: *grin* I've no doubt he would.

Angeline: But now it seems that the loss of a level of control which Osidian probably prided himself on even more than the rest of the Masters is proving to be fatal. I do wonder if any Master would react the same way as he's doing now, or if he's particularly prone to delusions of invulnerability because of some combination of his circumstances...

Ricardo: even among the Masters, he was an elevated being... so, I think it's likely he is reacting more extremely...

Angeline: Maybe it does all go back to surface images - tell someone they're going to be a god, and that could be a very difficult belief to remove...

Ricardo: especially in the violent and degrading way in which it was done...

Angeline: Ironic that he might well end up getting worshipped in some form, if Ravan's behaviour is anything to go by. Very disturbing undercurrents there...

Ricardo: *grin* indeed

Angeline: I think Osidian is using Ravan's regard for him as a sort of Trojan horse in hopes of finding a way to control the people. And of course there was the significance the Plainsmen attached to his birthmark...

Ricardo: I'm saying nothing :O)

Angeline: Speaking of them, I really love how this book is turning out to have a strong female perspective. It was the one thing I missed in The Chosen...

Ricardo: you're not alone. This point was made at the time by many people...

Angeline: though that doesn't make its absence there a fault: in a society like theirs, political power does tend to rest with men, and characters like Carnelian's grandmother and the Syblings (not to mention Ykoriana) suggest that their world is not without scope for women to influence things...

Ricardo: but they are still trapped, like birds in cages...

Angeline: Comparisons between the supposedly "civilised" on one side and "barbarians" on the other make me wonder if the contrasting societies arose together: one in reaction to the other. As things stand, they exemplify the dualistic tension in the overall story, and I'm noticing more and more ways in which some tradition or belief in one society is inverted in the other (eg. the Chosen believing the land can pollute them, while the Tribe fear the opposite happening)...

Ricardo: again, it's very pleasing to me to have someone notice these subtleties... I won't say yea or nay, but, I think just about everything... even tiny details... are significant and contain important implications...

Angeline: Finally, I find myself becoming less credulous about anything presented in the books as received wisdom. That aside which I quoted (in the context of that daft article about future humans), about how the Quyans had "tamed" the Sartlar, for instance... suddenly it seems all too convenient, and just the sort of revisionist history that a culture might develop in order to avoid having to deal with the unpalatable truth that the "animals" they enslave might be distantly related to them. I see it as being a bit like the problem some fundamentalists have with Darwinism - they don't just find it unbelievable that we might have descended from the same creature as the apes (indeed, a lot of them seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that the scientists are saying we "came from chimps", but that's simplistic dogma for you); they're revolted by it. It disgusts and offends them on some very deep levels, because it affects their perception of themselves as unique in creation, spiritually and morally...

Ricardo: another perceptive point... which I won't comment on directly... except to say that I spent a lot of time thinking about the origins of and the relationships between the cultures in the books... I hope you may be pleased to learn that, for all your intuitions, you are feeling down through some of the layers... but there are a great many of these... and even now, I sometimes discover new depths which I hadn't even realized my subconscious was putting into the books... There's all kinds of reasons for this... one of them being that I've lived and breathed this story now for 12 years working full time... perhaps another 12 years gestation... and the whole thing is vitally rooted in my childhood... Taking all this into account, it would be rather sad if the books were merely what they appear to be on the surface... don't you think?