{"id":16166,"date":"2004-01-31T15:58:30","date_gmt":"2004-01-31T20:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/01\/31\/1745.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:45:20","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:45:20","slug":"book-report-kingdom-of-the-gra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/01\/31\/book-report-kingdom-of-the-gra\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Kingdom of the Grail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Judith Tarr, Kingdom of the Grail<\/a><\/I> (New York: Roc 2000).\n\n

Nothing much to say about this fantasy novel; Merlin’s descendant takes on Ultimate Evil and finds True Love in the Medieval Pyranees. I found it readable, but my Best Reader did not.\n\n

I was irritated, again, by what seems to me to be a recurring theme in fantasy novels: the importance of blood relation. I have read many many many many many novels in which the kitchen boy (or occasionally girl) turns out to be of Royal Blood, and, after growing into manhood (or occasionally womanhood) during the uprising against the Evil Usurper, takes the throne. Sometimes the discovery of his (or occasionally, fine, you know) illustrious ancestor is revealed only at the end, after we know he has proven leadership in whatever way the particular book wants it, and sometimes we and he know that he is of the True Blood from the beginning, or nearly. Ultimately, it is the hero’s lineage that confirms his right to rule, though.\n\n

Now, Tolkien had some excuse for this; he lived in a monarchy, and was born into a monarchy where the monarch had a role in government. Furthermore, he was an old-fashioned pre-war racialist, and believed in blood; disgusting to me, but at the time pretty common. Not that there was all that much malice in it; he seemed to believe that the French were that way because they were French<\/I>, and so it makes sense that he believed that the men of Gondor were that way because they were men (and occasionally women) of Gondor. Besides, Aragorn is king, by right of descent and by his own right (tho’ the powers by which he becomes kingly are implied to be part of that descent), but Frodo is the main character, and Frodo does what he does only partly because he is a hobbit. The Took blood is more of a joke than an explanation; the Baggins relationship is more one of emulation than blood (on either side).\n\n

What excuse does Judith Tarr have? She lives in Arizona, for crying out loud! What about Tad Williams? Or Garth Nix? Or ... well, I can look up half-a-dozen more I’ve read, but I can’t bring them to mind. We live in a society that does not, on the whole, think that a person is qualified to rule by right of descent (note that Your Humble Blogger did use this opportunity to disparage Our Only President)(but feel free to let your own thoughts wander), but who expects and receives major plot points involving that right. Your Humble Blogger is a pathetic anglophile himself, so it can’t just be pathetic anglophilia. Is it Heinlein fantasy eugenics? Is it some Jungian thing? Is it part of the same spooky subdermal racism that insists that if you are not genetically related to your parents, they aren’t your ‘real’ parents? Or is it just an obsession with kingship that starts when we learn that only a Real Princess could feel a pea under seven mattresses?\n\n

I don’t know. Perhaps I should give up swords-and-sorcery for a while, and go back to zap guns and neutron flows.\n\n

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judith Tarr, Kingdom of the Grail (New York: Roc 2000). Nothing much to say about this fantasy novel; Merlin\u2019s descendant takes on Ultimate Evil and finds True Love in the Medieval Pyranees. I found it readable, but my Best Reader…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16896,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16166\/revisions\/16896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}