Eon by Alison Goodman

[lightreads]

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


If I hadn’t been reading this book on a very expensive bit of technology, I would have hurled it against a wall. I believe my exact comment, upon reaching a particular moment of infamy towards the end was, and I quote, “what the fucking fuck was that fuckery?” I have all the feelings about this book. And so I share them. (Which is why you guys like me, don’t even try to lie).



Right, so, this is a fantasy about a girl posing as a boy in not!ancient China, and she impresses bonds with an ancient dragon who hasn’t been seen in 500 years, and there is imperial intrigue and stuff.



I would probably be less furious if this book were incompetent. But the thing is, it’s not. Its treatment of the ‘girl posing as a boy’ fantasy trope is genuinely interesting. This is not one of those books where a girl proves her worth by being able to pass for a boy, that being the important measuring stick, you know. And it has these great moments where our protagonist reflects on what living as male for years actually means, how eventually she’s doing more than just binding her breasts and wearing pants, that – and she doesn’t have the language for this, but it’s what she means – that her gender identity is complicated. And one of her friends in the book is an actual transperson. And the whole thing is done while maintaining the universe-appropriate and really medieval idea of gender, of woman’s place, etc. Hard to do, and parts of it genuinely interested and impressed me.



But then. Oh but then.



I had . . . inklings. The sense of thunder rumbling ominously in the distance. The lurking suspicion that something was going to go very wrong. Yeah, that interesting stuff Goodman did with gender even though she’s working in a constrained medieval framework? When it comes to disability, she just brought the medieval beliefs and called it good. Hint: it’s not.



Let me tell you what I learned from this book – from the protagonist’s culturally embedded narration, and far more damningly from the structure of the narrative and the meta implications. Disability is a curse. It means you are ugly and unlovable, and that no one should touch you. Absolutely no one should desire you. But if you are extra special, and you do everything right, maybe you’ll acquire power. And the way you’ll know you have is your disability will be magically cured! Because that way you’re finally worthy! And you are finally a whole person (being disabled being synonymous with being less than a person), and now you are not untouchable anymore! Disability is also a metaphor for being unwhole and not yourself -- it'll be imposed when you start pretending to be someone else, and then magically taken away again when you stop!



And I haven’t read the sequel, and do not plan to, but I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess it also means you can have a romance now.



And for God’s sake, please don’t anyone try telling me yet again that this sort of thing is okay in fantasy novels, it’s a different world and a different culture, and it makes sense for them to think that way. Yeah, and who designed that world? Who chose which societal biases to import and which to leave behind? Who designed a story that validated and supported every horrible and ablest thing the protagonist thought about herself?



Secondary world fantasy is not an excuse for something this offensive. There aren’t any excuses for something like this.





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Comments

[jadelennox]

see, I have so many feelings about this book.

Literarily: I loved it, except that the terrible-disability-politics ending was also bad storytelling. Disability as metaphor is the lazy lazy lazy writing, and I hate it, and I have gotten in shouting arguments with friends who insist that physical-traits-as-metaphor is poetic and of the core of good writing.

But other than the ending, I really did enjoy the book. Sure, many of the plot points came straight out of the Tamora Pierce/Anne McCaffery playbooks, but they were done better. I thought it was a walloping good fantasy adventure.

Gender politics: I loved how matter of fact they all were about Lady Dela, and her heterosexual relationship with a eunuch. That gave me the basis of trusting Eon's cross-dressing enough to give it a chance, and it deserved the chance I gave it, I felt.

Culture mashing: Urgh. I can't remember at this point is my feelings on the way it dealt with culture were from book 1 or book 2, so I won't comment.

Disability politics: well, you know how I feel. It involved damaging the book. Like I said, I think among other things it was totally untrue to the character's growth arc. And yet until that point, god, the reason I think I felt so betrayed was because I found myself in that book. I believed in Eon's chronic pain, and I believed in how shitty it felt for her to go through her days, fighting and eating and being a fantasy heroine, while in constant grinding pain. I loved that she was managing to be a fantasy heroine -- a sort-wielding fantasy heroine, at that! -- while in chronic pain. I loved that she wasn't a superhero, but she did it anyway.

Thus, violently hurling the book across the room.

[lightreads]

shouting arguments with friends who insist that physical-traits-as-metaphor is poetic and of the core of good writing.

Yeah, I need some pithy t-shirtable slogan for 'my identity is not your metaphor." Er. Something more explicable than that, I mean.

fighting and eating and being a fantasy heroine, while in constant grinding pain

Yeah, exactly! So much of it was also so matter-of-fact -- I woke up, I hurt, I coped, it sucked, meanwhile in plotland. And part of what's so damning about the ending is how unnecessary it was. I mean, she went through that entire adventure and she coped. It's not like you could even give Goodman that non-excuse of having her think, "well, for plot convenience, she has to be able-bodied for adventuring."

[ecaterin]

If I hadn’t been reading this book on a very expensive bit of technology, I would have hurled it against a wall. I believe my exact comment, upon reaching a particular moment of infamy towards the end was, and I quote, “what the fucking fuck was that fuckery?”

See, this is such an excellent service that you're doing for the rest of us! I have now been saved from this blood-pressure raising prose! :D A complete humanitarian you are, Light :P


I have all the feelings about this book. And so I share them. (Which is why you guys like me, don’t even try to lie).

*mumble mumble yeah? so what of it? mumble* Oh well - I cannot tell a lie, I'm here for the emotional AND intelligent discourse :D