The Searcher and the Sword

[annathepiper]

As I mentioned in my last long post, I just bought The Searcher and the Sword, the newly released full-color, hardbound graphic novel by Wendy and Richard Pini. This is the first new Elfquest material we've had in years, and while I was initially reluctant to fork over twenty-five bucks for it, I am now glad that I did now that I've gotten it and read it.

I'd already read some good commentary over the EQUEST-L mailing list, and gotten a good spoiler-free review from a friend. For those of y'all on my Friends list who are EQ fans, especially those of you who are Two Moons MUSH players, here now is my extended commentary. I'll split it up into spoiler-free and spoiler blocks, because some of what I have to say about the book includes spoilers--but stuff which will be of potential interest and impact on game play on Two Moons MUSH. (Pending, of course, any staff decisions on the matters in question.)

Picoreview: Not bad at all, and while it's not spectacularly good, it definitely entertained me all the way through and gave me interesting matters to mull, not only for what may come in future EQ, but for the future of Two Moons MUSH as well. It's still rolling around in my brain even after I read it, which tells me that there's enough there to make me milk a lot of entertainment out of it. So! Go buy it, folks.


Review Without Spoilers

First, the spoiler-free commentary. The length of the book, and it being hardbound and in full-color, helps offset the price. I got mine at Barnes and Noble, and when I looked at their shelves I found several copies in shrinkwrap but one without--so there was one to browse. If the ability to look at the book beforehand is a selling point for you, you might consider checking a local B&N if you have one, and looking for their display copy. I didn't need to browse much, though, since I'd already decided I was going to get the thing anyway.

What you'll see if you'll browse is some color work that's not half bad at all. It's not up to the glorious days of old with the Starblaze/Donning editions, but it's a damn sight better than the cartoony coloration in the versions released just after of the original Quest, Siege at Blue Mountain, and Kings of the Broken Wheel. It's not as prettily colored as the first hardbound Hidden Years graphic novel, but I'd put it ahead of later Hidden Years in terms of quality of coloration.

And, for those of you for whom this is a selling point, yes, the work is in fact done by Wendy.

In terms of the story--I was initially skeptical, just based on what I'd heard about the plot beforehand, but once I actually started reading it it began to work for me. And there are some pages where the dual plot threads reflect one another beautifully in the art and in the dialogue of the characters.

We see many old faces doing well-loved and familiar things. We see some new faces with some startling new tricks to go with them. And we see some new looks to go with old faces. We get an interesting little tip about a certain matter of elfin biology which gets asked about over and over again on the EQUEST-L list. And we get a really, really interesting little tip right on page one that a matter about which Leetah herself commented way back in Siege--that the magic in humans on Abode is sleeping--may be about to change. I'm really hoping that this tip plays out in upcoming work, because that is one of the biggest things that made me go, "Okay, that was good, let's see some more."

All in all, definitely recommended for purchase and reading if you can cough up the twenty-five bucks.



Review With Spoilers--if you don't want to know anything else about what happens, stop reading now!
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Okay, that should be enough buffer space on top of this section.

As I mention up in my spoiler-free commentary, I was initially skeptical of the dual plot threads of Treestump learning the art of forging and of Shuna trying to unite the humans and elves in peace. As I have remarked elsewhere (specifically, over on mizkit's journal in response to her own thoughts about this release), one of the biggest beefs I've had with the culture of the elves of Abode as depicted since day one (and indeed, this is a problem with elves in most fantasy treatments of them as a character type, so it's not necessarily an Elfquest-specific flaw) is that they are stagnant. They do not grow or change their cultures, and do not seem inclined to do so even if the world around them is changing in dramatically impressive ways. Treestump's decision to take on a new skill seemed to me to be too little, too late to address this.

But yet, it did rather work for me once I started reading it. It does at least show us that if the elves have a personal motivation for doing so, yes, they can be inspired to try to take on a new skill and to take pride in the learning. (I still, however, would like to see an elfin character decide to learn something new or take on a new challenge just because of intellectually curiosity. But! I'm the weirdo who made up the character Wayfound, the only Wolfrider scientist who will ever likely walk the face of Abode. Hee.)

On the other hand, and more in the spotlight, we have the plotline with the human girl Shuna, who is adopted by the Wolfriders at the tail end of Shards and who goes back with Cutter and Leetah and most of the elders of the original Wolfrider tribe to re-settle the old Holt. Her side of the plot is all about how she tries to fit in with the elves, and yet wants to inspire others of her kind to live with them in peace. This, too, was something about which I was initially skeptical--though it, too, began to kind of work for me once I was actually reading it.

There are two really interesting things in this story, next, that I'm absolutely certain Two Moons MUSH players are going to be all over in terms of possible things they might want to do with their own characters on the game. I've called these out to the staff already, but am mentioning them here as well.

First and foremost--the story is presented from the point of view of Shuna as an old woman, telling the tale of what happened to her in the small handful of years just after she is adopted by the Wolfriders. But here's the kicker--she's doing it through sending. Her sending stars are scattered all over the narration. And while we never learn why the hell a human is sending to the reader, we get a very tantalizing hint from old Shuna about how she doesn't get the ability to send until much, much later than the events in the story. So already, I'm all over speculating about what the heck awakens the ability in her. She is the first documented human telepath we have in unmistakably canon material that isn't Jink or The Rebels, and this story is set a good thousand years or so before that time, if I understand the later EQ timeline correctly.

(And for those of you who are as up on your EQ trivia as I am, I am not forgetting the appearance of Riwen Fire-Mouth in the prologue of the novelization of the third original graphic novel. However, my personal jury is still out on whether that's a "true" telling of events, or something that's been modified as it's been handed down in retellings, till it's become a legend. There is plenty of leeway for weirdness in legends!)

So it'll be a really interesting question of how Shuna's life proceeds; this isn't the only tantalizing hint we get in her narration. There are others which make me want to learn more about what happens to her, and I hope that the Pinis will oblige us. They've sold me on wanting to follow more of her life story and to see how far she'll get with the whole uniting humans and elves in peace thing. And I'm really, REALLY curious to see what sparks the ability to send in her, when it happens, and whether it's due to semi-regular exposure to the Palace or whether it's more active, direct elfin intervention that gives her the ability.

Secondly, we see a non-High-One pulling off a magical ability that to date has only been the province OF a High One: i.e., shapeshifting. We see Kimo learning to change himself into a wolf under Timmain's tutelage in the Palace of the High Ones. So it's clearly possible for a non-High-One to do this... but did it require the power boosting ability of the Palace to pull off? Or was it enough to have Timmain herself there for the teaching? We hadn't see the slightest sign of magical ability in Kimo before, as I recall. (Again, I'm not forgetting that Rahnee the She-Wolf shows some signs of shapeshifting in Blood of Ten Chiefs--but here, too, is the question of how canon that material is.)

With these very interesting points out of the way, I turn my attention to other random details that are of lesser significance, but which nevertheless are fueling amused thoughts in my brain and making me glad that I did buy the book.

We finally get the verdict on whether elfin females menstruate. They don't. This keeps coming up over and over on EQUEST-L, and I'm glad to see that the Pinis finally addressed this little point. How the story did it was also surprising and amusing--I grinned at the panels of the wolves going nuts when Shuna was on her cycle, as I hadn't actually realized that well, y'know, that probably would happen! Her scent would be all about the richness of life-blood, and I'm sure that had to be playing havoc with the wolves.

Some fun things come out with how the humans across the continent of Iceholt--which is where the original Holt is set--have developed their cultures, patterning their ways of life and the structure of their villages on insects! Now, y'all remember, this is the same continent where the tribe of Olbar the Mountain-Tall used to live, as well as the Hoan g'Tay Sho. The cultures we see depicted in this story are significantly different from either, at least in terms of how they have patterned their societies. So it's interesting to see that difference. They are still primitive nomads, which is a bit of a jolt if you've grown accustomed to the more advanced society that Shuna comes from--but y'all remember, Shuna's society is on a different continent entirely. So it seems to be very much a situation of Shuna's continent being the Abodean answer to Europe, while the original Holt's continent is very more along the lines of North America, with the Amerindian tribes still in charge all over the land.

On the other hand, I was less thrilled with what we see depicted with the trolls that show up as the Big Threat of Treestump's half of the story. I didn't see a satisfactory answer in this plot as to why the hell the trolls degenerated into shambling, near-mindless, treasure-obsessed monsters... but then again, I'm also less than versed on the New Blood and Fire-Eye storylines that ended in the destruction of Sorrow's End and Ahdri's vanishing into wrapstuff. So there might have been some detail in there that I've missed that might explain this degeneration on the part of the trolls.

And I was simultaneously a little disappointed and yet pleased that Shuna's first husband turns out to be a bastard. It was definitely one of those situations where the story really was better for going that way--even if it meant that Shuna had to take some hard lessons before she gained the wisdom and determination to learn from her mistakes and throw Nunkah out of her life. I kept thinking of Gaston in the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie, actually--the guy was all big and handsome and dark... and a little too muscular. ;)

But really, even the weaker parts of the plot didn't really hit me too badly, and didn't make me sad that I bought the book! So! It's all good in the end, and I may indeed re-read it a few more times as I mull over all the interesting little details. Such as:

Newstar lost her goofy hairdo! YAY! Newstar actually also took a stand I'd been pursuing with Wayfound in my play of her, and what I want to write about her, as well--i.e., as Newstar puts it, "The old ways of hating and hiding are over!" I was very pleased to see an elf speaking up in favor of human and elfin peace.

Strongbow and Moonshade got a new cub! YAY! I do wonder why the cub never actually got a name on camera--we see Dart musing to the infant about whether she will have her tribe-name by the time he and Kimo and Shuna return. But I don't remember infants going unnamed for that long in the Wolfrider tribe before.

It was good to see the Palace actually occupied and tended by the Sun Folk. And good to see Timmain actually interacting, even if briefly, with other elves. I do have to wonder how Kimo summoned the courage to ask Timmain to teach him, given how all the other interactions with her have gone for other elves--this is something I would actually liked to have seen on camera. But of course, since Shuna was telling the story, she probably wouldn't have seen it. As I have learned at Writer's Weekend, this is one of the perils of telling a story in first person!

I do have to wonder if Dart and Kimo are still lovemates. One of the things I do recall from New Blood and Fire-Eye is that they did become soul-brothers and lovemates... and it was good to see something of their old bond in force here, though I was vaguely disappointed to hear Kimo refer to Dart only as his "friend". Sigh. :)

More, I think, as I mull it. For now, more spoiler bufferage!
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Comments

[avram]

Man, I barely recognized any of those names! It’s been a long time since I read any Elfquest.

Isn’t complaining about elves being static a bit like complaining about them being immortal or having pointed ears?

[annathepiper]

Isn't complaining about elves being static a bit like complaining about them being immortal or having pointed ears?

That's exactly my problem and my point. Just about every single depiction of elves in fantasy, whether or not the depiction is actually bothering to label them "elves" (many fantasy books try to get around it by using some other name for their pointed-eared wood-dwellers, but let's face it, if it looks like an elf, it probably is one), generally has the culture of the elves being a stagnant one.

But therein is my objection. Who says that elves have to be stagnant? Why is it that this is considered a staple of depiction of elves? I mean, if you really are an immortal, and you're a thinking, sentient being, what is it about you that is going to make you likely to sit on your hands for three thousand years and--to paraphrase Jim Butcher describing Elrond in Rivendell--compose poetry in your country estate?

Now, I've often heard this justified by a story saying how the elves in it won't advance their culture because they don't need to--because they have magic, they have no need to develop science. But part of me is really dubious about that. Just because you happen to have magical ability doesn't necessarily mean that you are somehow incapable of having basic curiosity about how things work--that you are somehow deprived of the intellectual capacity to discover and learn new things.

To put this in Elfquest terms, is there not a single elf who wonders what exactly happens when a treeshaper sticks their hand on a tree, thinks in just the right way, and makes that tree change shape? An elf who might think, "Okay, so what's different between a treeshaper and a rockshaper that they are doing more or less the same thing, but it only works on one thing for each of them? Why does the magic work one way for one person, and a different way for another person?"

In other words, while I can kind of buy that possession of magic in a culture lessens the need for technology, I don't buy that possession of magic eliminates all rational, intellectual thinking. It's just that that thinking is directed to what is in the elfin culture rather than necessarily thinking about developing technological ways to do things.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Okay, on your say-so I went and bought it, and it was in fact pretty good. I liked the art a lot more than a lot of Wendy's recent stuff; less soft edges and soft focus. That was good.

I seem to recall somewhere that Cutter had his name from an unusually early age, but possibly that was knowing his soul name. I was delighted at Strongbow and Moonshade's new cub, although I kind of expected that from long ago. Overall, not bad, although I thought the ending was kind of lame.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, I agree with you about the losing of the soft focus style (the Dreamtime series comes to mind) being a good thing. :) There were glimmers of her older style coming back out in here, and that was a Good Thing.

Cutter did know his soulname since birth, pretty much, though I suppose that you can extrapolate that out to "since he was old enough to remember". But more relevantly to the whole "getting a tribe name" thing--I remember that when Tyleet was born we see Nightfall and Redlance presenting her to the tribe and announcing that they'd named her Tyleet. Now, granted, I don't recollect that this was specifically stated as being just after the kid was born, but I got the definite impression that there wasn't so much lag time there.

And every other infant we've seen born on camera seemed to pick up a name pretty quickly--Mender. Tyleet. Sust. Pool. Cheipar. (Just thinking, at least, of the ones born among the Wolfriders.)

[wrog]

Hm. I guess rather a lot has happened since Kings of the Broken Wheel

[annathepiper]

*chortle* Um, yes. If Kings was the last you've read, you've actually missed a great deal of the later plots--everything in Hidden Years (at least, once it shifted over from being one-issue vignettes and into a continuous storyline following Ember and the younger elves in the tribe she establishes at Howling Rock), Shards, New Blood, Fire-Eye, and other series which had shorter runs. (E.g., Rogue's Curse, which follows Rayek and Ekuar around after a Very Significant Thing happens to Rayek at the end of Shards.)

Some of it's worth checking out; Shards doesn't suck, and most of Hidden Years is pretty good, too. Those are the series I was most willing to follow despite Wendy backing off on the art; that art was the stuff I liked the best out of the non-Wendy material. New Blood and Fire-Eye, which were done by Barry Blair, I really disliked. Rogue's Curse is fun if you're a Rayek fan, though there are a few annoying things about it as well.

[mnemozine.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember - having not reread EQ for the past few years - that 1) the trolls were always gold-grubbing (as Timmain-elf commented when she first shifted back) and that 2) there is a niggling thought that it was that Greymung took control of a group and left the Iceholt lands with other younger trolls. So it was under his leadership that kind of gave structure to the original group of trolls - but they were still mining and creating pretty things that they did not want to barter. The greed was there. Without the Palace for the ice-trolls, they probably had nothing to focus on, and without Greymung the younger trolls (Picknose' sons?) were pretty rotten, weren't they?

Uhm. Okay. Did not mean to let that go on like that. Just showing my true EQ-geekiness. I need to go buy that book.

[annathepiper]

Greymung and the younger trolls he took off with during his rebellion were still on Iceholt. They split off from the Northern trolls and moved down to the lands near where Cutter's folk had their original Holt--they became the tribe that TM has always called the Southern trolls.

The only trolls we know about to date that have gotten onto another continent in canon material have been Picknose's little tribe, which we see in Shards after the Palace comes back. Drub and Flam, later troll characters, are part of that group. (Presumably, all of them are descended from Picknose and Oddbit, since the only trolls that made it over there originally were Picky, Oddbit, Old Maggoty, and later, when the Palace comes back, Trinket.)

And you're not misremembering the greed and the gold-grubbing... but the trolls we see in the new book are, well, barely sentient. It's not entirely unreasonable that they've been reduced to those drives alone; the part that makes me scratch my head is what caused that reduction in the first place.

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

I would have to do some reading up on anthropology and things to be sure, but in Tolkien-esque elves in any case, it seems to me that their stagnant, unchanging culture is less a lack of intellectual curiosity as it is more of a feeling of... we're perfect, we're the best, our way is the right way, and in any case, we're just hanging out here until we go to Really Cool Place over there, so what does it matter anyway? Tossed with a dash of We've-Been-Doing-It-This-Way-For-5-Million-Years-I-Know-Because-I-Was-There, plus a bit of "we hardly ever bear children so the majority of our population is old fogies."

It often puts me in mind of the Roman Empire and complacency and decadence and Visigoths and all that- which is probably one of the reasons why I liked Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn- the elves have sort of the flavor of fallen empire about them- we used to be mighty, we used to be great, but dangit we're still right even if those yahoos over there are living in our old castle, now, and would as soon spit us as look at us.

It does seem to me, though, that EQ elves ought to be a lot more dynamic- they're a totally different kind of elf, really. Well, except for the High Elves, they seem more like the snooty we-always-know-best sort.

[annathepiper]

Well, in the movie adaptation of The Lord of th Rings, we certainly do get a bit of a feeling of superiority out of Elrond. And even from Galadriel, in her narration about how the race of Men desires power above all things. I don't know necessarily that I get that impression out of the books, though it's been a few years since I last read my way all the way throuh the trilogy.

I recollect liking Tad Williams' Sithi in his trilogy, yeah. I need to re-read that at some point, too. :)

As for the EQ elves--well, we don't have any more High Ones running around except for Timmain. And it's hard to know what sort of attitude she has just because she's always portrayed as this remote, goddess-like figure. We don't much get inside her head. But when you consider the Wolfriders and the other tribes... the Gliders absolutely have the snooty attitude down pat.

But they, as well as the other tribes, all seem to have a general way of life that they stick to hardcore until circumstances make them change. In the new book we even have the Wolfriders showing the attitude of 'Wolfriders aren't meant to forge metal, it's against the Way!' So yeah, they have this whole 'we've done it this way forever, so this is the way we'll keep doing things'. The Sun Folk and the Go-Backs don't show much sign of thinking any differently, either.

And it occurs to me that this is actually a very human attitude. Many people IRL are that way too--"we've done it this way ever since I was a kid, and if it was good enough then, it's good enough now!"