Feedback on Ravenwood?

[annoyance]

just finished.  No Mother Pinecrest?  Maybe I was right in my previous post.  Great story! Thanks Nate. 

As to the notion of clay worth more than silver.  Not really.  the clay is worth more than unrefined silver ore.  This is easily believable, most of the ore is just plain rock and the refining cost both labor and silver that evaporates in the process.  Clay that is already pure and ready to manufacture has many uses.  I wonder if the fine china that William gave to Amber when they first came to their town was made from this clay.  It stands to reason that it was.  and don't they line boilers with ceramic to better circulate the heat and keep them from bursting?  The right kind of clay is worth a lot of cred.

[nlowell]

Exactly so.

The clay "is worth more than the silver ore we get around here."

A fine point

[quandmeme]

Unnecessary comparison to the Shares:

The sense of an unfinished journey really heightens the desire to know what happens in the next adventure. I assume it will be next January so you're not competing against yourself in the Parsecs again. The build up right up to the end for the Mother Pinecrest installment has me happy for the completed arc but anxious for more--not just looking to feed the addiction of a Nate story.

Ish's promotions to half share and full share were not great anticipations. He was carried along in the current of his life (in a way that totally worked). All I'm saying is that you eschewed the emotion of a cliff hangar even when there was the narrative cliffhangar in Quarter Share with the staring out the lock. Even the promotion to captain was surprising to Ish and us (except for the title, of course). Double share would be the exception (even though Ish was, again, swept along to the academy instead of striving for it) where we know what Ish was expecting in the next book. Even there, you defied natural expectation by not dealing with the University life at all.

From your title change I expect that the Ravenwood episode surprised you along the way to write the Pinecrest installment which explains why we, Tanyth, and maybe even you are looking forward to the next adventure.

[quandmeme]

More details: I liked that the women nurse Tanyth with willowbark tea--and that she hates it.

I chuckled when you explained what lip balm was for. Like everything in the world is a source of wonder--even if it is the most mundane supermarket-check-out-lane item in our world.

I'm glad that Tanyth got to minister and teach the women. I suspect it will help her not feel like a moocher as she looks back even though its clear the village valued her without the training.

[quandmeme]

Not a lot of chatter about this book, so I'm mostly talking to myself, I think. I know that reader/listener/consumer of a text usually "normalizes" the text to fit it within his own value system. Normalization subjects texts to prodigious stresses so that those someone who wants to see one thing sees it.  

I am musing what it says about me that in the Age of Solar Clipper, I am refreshed to see some spirituality but I'm constantly turned off by the paganism of the more old-fashioned Lammas Woods Chronicles. Part of me is glad for an honest context for magic rather than than the sanitized/decontectualized power of Harry Potter or LotR which I enjoy but like to criticize for being too fake and convenient.

The weird part is that in the Shamanism of Ish, Otto, and Sara is not discernibly different from Tanyth's witchery. The invocation of the phrase "so mote it be" forces me to recognize the traditions that in RL I find distasteful. In contradiction to what I said in an earlier post, the futurism of Age of Solar Clipper turns out to be more comfortable for me. I can be grateful for some acknowledgment of spirituality in an typically hypertechnologized setting without being confronted by characteristics of terrestrial paganism. Haven't been able to do the same with Tanyth's magik.

At the heart is this: as a christian I believe in God's power, and so power that doesn't come from Him comes from Satan. Though I have learned that the "so mote it be" owes as much to Freemasonry as wicca, I am amused at my inability to normalize the links of Tanyth's magik with modern and historical paganism when I can do it with the Solar Clipper-era stories.

[annoyance]

i don't wish to get into an argument here.  but the word "amen" means either "so be it" or "it is so".  That's awful close to "so mote it be".  I myself, am a non-ethnic eastern orthodox christian (which probably categorizes me as a pagan in your view).  I ascribe all power to God.  There is no power in satan, save for, the power to confuse and cause disputes.  when I was much younger i heard a folktale about Martin Luther.  According to this story, he was visited by demons and laughed in their faces and turned around and farted at them.  Satan and his minions have no power that we haven't relinquished.

[quandmeme]

Don't worry Annoyance, I'm not attempting a threadjack about "who's god is better" or any of that.

In this forum, I'm more interested in the comparison between the Shamanism of the solar clipper age and the witchcraft of the Lammas Wood. And whether the substance or the context changes it for anyone else.

[annoyance]

I'm not sure I know what witchcraft is...  but I think it's practitioners must have control of their "powers" and know what they are doing.  I see Tanyth as a prayerful person giving respect to whomever it is she sees as God.  If she is doing magik it's not on purpose.  It's again an old argument.  Is Michael Jordan a witch?  He played basketball with such aptitude that it could have been considered magik. I think an argument could be made either way.   Baseball, not so much.  In the other universe,  Otto and his father listened to the world?  Meditation is a form of prayer.  even in some christian sects.  The similarity that I see is that in both cases.  The so-called religious leaders view life as a journey.  as do I.

[nlowell]

Interesting take on spirituality.

There are strong parallels between the South Coast shamans and the "magic" that Tanyth seems to have. The key difference is genre driven. In South Coast, there is no overt magic. There can't be and have it stay SciFi. In the Lammas Wood? There has to be, or it's not fantasy.

There's more here than simple wicca, in spite of my adoption of some of the tropes. The sequels should inform this discussion a bit.

[quandmeme]

Nate, I've never read someone who deals so much with bathrooms. Now I'm not saying it's all a product placement opportunity for flomax. In Double Share, the san and what did and did not go on there was an important part of the plot line. Now again in Ravenwood, the privy figured in the defensibility of the village and who and when the residents could expect to be harassed.

*Edit: I remember now that the discovery of the pancho in South Coast came as part of a description of what's happening in the san.*

Is it a conscious way of using the mundane to punctuate the day (and, in the broader role of your bodily functions narratives in Ravenwood, in life). If everyone talks about eating and drinking all the time, why not deal with the counterpart?

[nlowell]

Yes. It is conscious. Not only is it punctuation but in a lot of ways real people have lives that are dominated by biology. I purposely use the bathroom in its various incarnation to ground the character in that reality. I really do try to tell stories about life -- with an operating definition of "life is what happens while you're planning what you're going to do." We mark our day by meals, potty breaks, and sleeping. All the adventures have to fit in between and by emphasizing those marks instead of the adventures - or at least on an equal footing - my intent is to create a kind of "white space" in the story telling. By making the people real, the fantastical has more contrast to play against.

Whether or not I succeed in this, I'm not sure. Some times it works better than others.

[WillShattuck]

Hi Nathan,

I finished Ravenwood this past Friday on my drive home.  Another wonderful story.  We are all so fortunate to be able to listen to such a wonderful writer and storyteller.  I look forward to buying your books for myself as collectibles and for my family as gifts.

I must say, that one phrase I dread in any Nathan Lowell audio book is "This is the final episode of <insert wonderful Nathan Lowell book here>".  

I think the pacing of the book was well done.  There is only one thing that I would like to suggest taking a second look at.  During the last 4 or 5 episodes the phrase "more grumble than prayer" comes up frequently when you listen to the episodes back to back as I did.  I don't know how it reads and if it reads differently, but I kept chuckling everything I heard it. heh.

Another good one.  I look forward to more of the journey.

[nlowell]

"more grumble than prayer" was actually on purpose. She's getting more and more grumbly as she goes.

but i'll definitely look at it.

[WillShattuck]

OH I see.  That does make sense in those later chapters then.