Recent Reads

The Books of Great Alta, by Jane Yolen (omnibus edition of Sister Light, Sister Dark and White Jenna.) Yolen has taken a fairly standard fantasy trope -- that of the mysterious or marked child who is prophesied to overturn the existing social order -- and souped it up with some novel feminist world-building concepts, some clever pastiches on old English folk-ballads, and a witty, indirect running commentary on the way that legends, myths, and stories eventually become history. It's a good recipe.

"Thrice mothered and thrice orphaned", white-haired and black-eyed Jenna is fostered to a forest-dwelling matriarchial Hame, or community, that lives apart from the society around it and worships Great Alta, a dualistic mother-goddess with both light and dark sides to her personality. Yolen has given these sisters an unusual and intriguing gift, the ability to call forth "dark sisters", or personal doubles, who can only appear as shadows at night, in moonlight or candlelight. These are not mere dopplegangers of their "light sisters", but independently thinking and acting beings whose personalities echo, but do not duplicate, those of their "light sisters". This is an intriguingly original concept, especially in a genre (epic fantasy) which all too often treads its way tiresomely around the same old cliches of graceful elves, sturdy dwarves, and filthy orcs without introducing anything new to the mix. It's possible that Yolen pulled the basic inspiration of this concept from Jung's concept of the Shadow, but she develops it in a way that is distinctively her own, and reveals it so gradually and subtly that a naive reader may be well into the story before recognizing the nature of the "dark sisters".

Outside the safe haven of the Hame, there is turmoil and social upheaval. The Dales seem to be a fantasy-analogue of medieval England, complete with an arrogant, exploitative class of foreign-born aristocrats and a good many ballads, dirges and other songs which Yolen has cleverly derived from historical English folk songs like "Lord Randall", The Lyke Wake Dirge, et al. On top of the cultural conflict between ruling Continentals and native Dalefolk, Yolen has also superimposed a clash between matriarchial and patriarchial cultures, creating a theater in which the hypotheses of Robert Graves' The White Goddess can be played out. Inevitably, the fateful child Jenna is drawn into these conflicts.

Interspersed throughout the story is a commentary by a "modern" historian, whose conjectures and commentaries on other historians' views cast an ironic light on the whole concept of history itself. (And yes, The White Goddess does get cited by Yolen's imaginary historian!)

It's fine fantastical fun with just enough mythological, historical and intellectual games(wo)manship to keep the synapses happily perking away.