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A Sudden Wild Magic
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The restraints of knowledge harmed this wild power. In order to use it, Zillah could not know what it was. It would only answer a being as untrammeled as itself.
Time for elves, centaurs, demons, gods, witches, monks, princes, soulbonds, spaceships, sex, death, and an ever-present toddler, in undoubtedly the wildest book of Diana Wynne Jones' career to date.
Transcript available here, and we'll be back in two weeks with Hexwood!
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Transcript
Introduction and Initial Impressions
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the fourth episode, the halfway point of our third season of Eight Days of Diana Wynne-Jones. I'm Rebecca Framow.
00:00:21
Speaker
fourth episode the halfway point of our third season of eight days of diana windjone and'm rebecca fraau Emily And I'm Emily Tesh and today we are discussing A Sudden Wild Magic Diana Wynne Jones' first fantasy book for
Re-reading Insights: Significance and Style
00:00:37
Speaker
adults. Now, Becca, you told me you had not read this one since you were a teenager and you had could not remember anything about it. So having just read a Sudden Wild Magic for the first time since then, impressions?
00:00:52
Speaker
So the reason that I, like when I read this when i was a teenager The impression that I had was basically I picked it up. I was like, this is a Diana Wynne-Jones I've not read, so I must read it. And I was like, well, this isn't like any of the other Diana Wynne-Joneses that I like. And I put it down again and none of it stuck.
00:01:07
Speaker
Having read it for this project has been a whole different experience because i think that where it sits in her career, none understanding where it sits in her career and what this book represents for her made reading it really impactful for me. I still don't know that I like i would rank it high among my favorite Diana Wynne Joneses. I don't know that I would do that, but I think it's an important
Themes of Sex, Death, and Chaos
00:01:33
Speaker
book.
00:01:33
Speaker
I think it's an important book for her, and I think it's an important book for us to read and talk about. Yeah, the thing about A Sudden Wild Magic is, is it good? No.
00:01:46
Speaker
I've literally just taken a sip of my drink.
00:01:51
Speaker
But is it special? I think it is. i think it's a special book. I think it's an astonishingly brave book. Because at the time when Diana Wynne-Jones writes A Sudden Wild Magic, she is nearly 60 years old. She is 20 years into a but fairly successful career as a writer of children's books and she has got children's books down pat.
00:02:15
Speaker
She has at this point a 14 or 16 chapter structure that she used has used regularly since the mid-1970s and has it to perfection.
00:02:28
Speaker
She's got this mastery of the very close child point of view. She can do a a children's book, I think in her sleep at this point. But it takes something. It takes, I think, some real courage as an experienced creative to throw everything you know you're good at out the window and start again from scratch. And it does feel like a sudden wild magic is that moment of daring Yeah, the thing that strikes me about this book is that it's a book that has, I think, very little, a lot of joy, a lot of exuberance, very little control about having a lot of joy and a lot of exuberance and very little control. Like this is the thing. It's thematic.
Comparisons with Other Works
00:03:13
Speaker
Exactly. This is the thing that she's thinking about.
00:03:18
Speaker
yeah but this is above all, this to me is the book where Diana Wynne-Jones goes, oh, finally I am allowed to write about sex and then wildly overshoots how much sex it is reasonable to write about.
00:03:31
Speaker
yes This is the one with the orgy. I love the orgy. I love this ridiculous book. Again, i don't think it's good. Those are not the same thing. i but I think it's very, the word I keep coming back to is vivid.
00:03:47
Speaker
um What was I saying? ah Sex. Lots of sex. Sex, lots of sex, yes. I mean, I do enjoy a book with lots of sex. And so did Diana. You get the feeling that she was just so excited to be able to write about sex and death that she threw as much of it as she possibly could into the first...
00:04:07
Speaker
several sections of this book there is so much sex and death um but no the word i went was thinking about was vivid yes if you compare this book to the most recent children's book she wrote which is not black mariah because that's from the 80s yes she didn't publish it till later but she wrote it a while ago the most recent children's book she wrote was castle in the air and castle in the air is i think strikingly anemic by comparison mm-hmm It's good, like it's a competent, well-structured children's book, but it doesn't have the the punch, the weight, the life.
00:04:42
Speaker
I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Well, it doesn't feel like, it does feel like this is a book that she was excited to write.
00:04:52
Speaker
um And she was having fun with it every stage. It's stuffed full of jokes. You could tell she was making herself laugh with every section. There is so much that's
Experimental Structure and Character Dynamics
00:05:03
Speaker
funny.
00:05:03
Speaker
Not that Castle in the Air isn't stuffed full of jokes. Castle in the Air does have a lot of jokes. But it's not as funny. It is not as funny. And there is something else about Castle in the Air, which is that the main plot of this book focuses on stealing other people's ideas and how eventually, if you do too much of that, it starts to destroy your own kind of inner world.
00:05:28
Speaker
Diana at Diana, I've got to stop mining the Arabian Nights. told yourself this so many times. But you actually pushed out we're on the back of a whole run of books that are about failures of imagination and limits of creativity. We have Lives of Christopher Chant is a book about the imagination being exploited and turned to a mere profit-seeking monstrosity.
00:05:55
Speaker
ah We have Castle in the Air, which is about failed daydreams, stupid daydreams, daydreams that come up to nothing and the necessity of of finding a real instead and black maria mariah we have our storyteller girl for the first time her storytelling is very much not what saves the day it's a trap yeah and the idea of the the storytelling becoming a trap is i think quite shocking if you look at the arc of jones's work and i think it basically all of these in a row following caroline ear
00:06:31
Speaker
the short story about the creative well running dry and you don't know what to do. Diana, are you okay?
1990s Setting and Real-world Issues
00:06:40
Speaker
A sudden wild magic is okay.
00:06:43
Speaker
There we go. And I mean that in the in the most loving possible way. This is a book that is once more coming from a place of ah creative abundance. yeah Boy, that's the word I want. Boy, is it abundant.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yes. And we're not, this is the only thing going to say that looks forward because we don't do that. But having better knowledge of all the books that came immediately after one than this one.
00:07:05
Speaker
Reading this one, it feels like it was necessary for this book to be written in order for those other books to exist. and That's all I'm going to say. We'll talk more about that. one yeah Yeah, no, I do agree with you. I think the the back half of the 90s contains some of Diana Wynne Jones's most impressive books.
00:07:22
Speaker
and they couldn't exist without this. This is this is also experimental. but yeah Wildly experimental. She really has thrown out all the things she's good at and started again. Yes. I don't think she should thrown of them out. think she should have thrown all of them Like just speaking as a writer. Yeah. Someone told me like you need to write a book that is completely different to everything you've done before. Yeah.
00:07:44
Speaker
And you can't use any of your usual tricks. Or you can, but you have to use them differently. I'd be like, oh my God. Yeah, it's scary. And it is. So like the broad plot outline of this book is again about a woman who is depressed, who is hung up on past choices she's made. She's specifically hung up on a bad love affair.
00:08:07
Speaker
And so she makes a choice to leave, to make a clean break with everything behind her, to throw herself into a very scary situation in order to just put herself in a new place and with a new mindset where she can't think about the stuff she's left behind her anymore. Ah, no, you're right. That that that that is the um the emotional heart, isn't it? and yeah And what Zilla, the main character, calls it is a sort of death. yeah I read it in conversation with Christopher Chan, which is the suicidal depression book.
00:08:44
Speaker
Zilla is suicidally depressed and she escapes to another world, but in a very different way to Christopher. Yeah. And there's a lot more going on. So a lot more going on. A lot more going on. I'm not quite sure how we're going to do usual thing of like talking through the plot as we go. don't have that much time. I need to be out of here in an hour and a half. Yeah, we're going to do our best. Okay.
00:09:09
Speaker
So I think we can get through the beginning setup pretty quickly. It's the ninety s We're on Earth. Bad things are happening.
Character Introductions and Relationships
00:09:18
Speaker
Chernobyl has happened. So the 90s. AIDS is happening. Precisely the 90s. And this I thought was interesting that um many of ah the children's books, there's a sense of timelessness about them. and We know it's intentional. She thinks about story time, which is always now. And you have to like really be paying attention to notice that Eight Days of Luke is is a book from 1973. Right. And it's literally just that he's got a radio rather than a phone to play his music on.
00:09:46
Speaker
This one, again, setting it in a very specific moment feels like something she was excited to do because now she's writing a book for adults and adults are allowed to know that it's the 1990s and AIDS is happening and climate change is happening. Yeah, this is a book about climate change also. Yes.
00:10:01
Speaker
ah Climate change, it turns out, is the fault of a parallel universe. I actually, i enjoy the setup. Basically is, we have our hero, question mark, we'll come back to that, is a guy called Mark, who is a boring nerd who works with computers, but secretly he's fantasy.
00:10:21
Speaker
yeah And I'll tell you how you know that secretly he's fantasy. He always wears a broad-brimmed hat. to nod to the magician card and the tarot. And I read this and I was like, Diana, are you making a joke about Terry Proudgett? And I kind of think she was. If so, it's a mean joke. Because Mark is, so the thing about Mark, we will find out what Mark's real deal is later on in the book. The thing about Mark is that he's boring.
00:10:48
Speaker
He's a very, you know, when he's first introduced, and it again, it makes his whole fantasy deal later on so funny, because when he's first introduced, he's just Mr. Boring Man, who happens to do fantasy. he goes, so he discovers this problem, which is that a parallel world.
00:11:05
Speaker
has been sort of using our world as like a little test site to solve their problems for them. So they've got a climate change thing They've been starting wars. They've been introducing technological difficulties. They've most recently introduced epidemics and climate change. So they're responsible for AIDS. They're responsible for Chernobyl.
00:11:23
Speaker
They're responsible for the global warming. Yes, and they just wait to see how we solve them because we're so fun and creative. And then they take the solutions. Specifically, the UK is so fun and creative. Congratulations, um your country is the best at doing magic and solving problems. like why this this is This is not unique to Diana Wynne-Jones. All British fantasy authors secretly seem to think this.
00:11:47
Speaker
So he goes to, there's clearly sort of like a, in the structure of this magical organization that works on behalf of Britain, there's clearly a sort of maiden mother crone setup going on, although that is not really explicitly stated, maybe me except for the one.
00:12:01
Speaker
And he decides to go to the crone. Now, I think this is very much a book that is in conversation with Black Mariah. And I think that Gladys, the crone that he meets, is very much a sort of reflection of and anti-Aunt Mariah in a way that's really fun.
00:12:19
Speaker
Can i read the opening description of Gladys? Yes, do. A fat and freckled old woman wearing a red dress and pink ankle socks, squashily embedded in a floral plastic garden chair and busy shelling peas or something. Her hair had been dyed a faded orange and fussily curled.
00:12:35
Speaker
Her cheeks hung around her lax mouth, white where they were not freckled, and her guardian was strewn with objects into swarm with cats. As usual. He had forgotten all those cats. The place reeked of cat.
00:12:46
Speaker
His foot pushed aside a saucer of cat food lurking in the grass, and he was unable to avoid fanning at the smell with his hat. And on top of all this, her name was Gladys. It was hard to believe she was any good.
00:12:58
Speaker
Expecting me, were you? Gladys looked up. Until you saw her eyes, Mark amended. Her eyes knew most things. So we have Gladys. I love Gladys. Gladys, the this is ah a weird, but it's actually a book with multiple centers, which I think adds to the chaotic feeling of it. Gladys is a main character.
00:13:17
Speaker
Mark is a main character. Zilla is a main character. The high head when we meet him is a main character. You're like, all of these characters appear to be main characters. Todd is a main character. Maureen is kind of a main character. Yeah, she is.
00:13:31
Speaker
like um Quite often, like it does feel like what Jones is doing here is the multiple point of view epic fantasy book in her own way. This is certainly the first time that she's gone this big on points of view. We've had dual points of view before.
00:13:46
Speaker
We've had occasional slides into bystanders' heads. But we've never had this kind of thing where this is a big book with six different plot threads going on and we need six different or no, it's even more POVs than that, because all of the women who eventually go to the monastery get their own little POVs. Most of the time it's chapter per person as well. Yes. So it's not doing what she when she not normally does a Nassian point of view. She sort of slides in, slides out. She has a main head that she's in and and she...
00:14:14
Speaker
borrows occasionally from the from the rest of the room but what this is doing the epic fantasy thing of this chapter is about Zilla and it's in her point of view Is Drowned Amethy the only duo POV that she's done to this point?
00:14:26
Speaker
I can't think of another one Yeah, I think that's it. I think that's the only one No, no, no, no, no Power of Three but but Both of those were quite a long time ago. Wait, no, Power of Three isn't duo. Power of Three is just is is It's Gare It has the Aina prologue.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yes Yeah, but that's it. Otherwise, it's been close. This is not close. This is... Well, but I would say it is. It is exactly the kind of very close, very deep point of view that she always does, except she's doing like 10 at once. True. And the effect is overwhelming because yes I will say I've read quite a lot of the multi-point of view epic fantasy. yeah Not so much recently, but like I was kid and a teen in the 90s and 2000s. There was a lot of it about. And I loved it and it meant lot to me.
00:15:18
Speaker
But in that, usually the different points of view are very seldom deeply characterized. Even someone like George R.R. Martin, who I think is a master of the art and who does very good character writing. There are a handful of deep character points of view. And there are some who are there to give you somewhere to stand while you're looking at this bit of plot or setting. Right. Not everyone is a Tyrion. In this everyone is a Tyrion. Everybody is getting that level of inner life and complications and ah emotional problems. And you're going to find out about all of it. and and um it's It's a lot. This book is a lot.
00:16:00
Speaker
Yeah. But Mark, to go back to Mark for a second, Mark doesn't seem to have very much inner life. for the first half of the book. You know, he shows up, again, his role is to show up at Gladys's and be like, oh, she's so much. She's a lot, which she is. She's a scary old woman. And I do feel like Dan is really excited to write a scary old woman who is, unlike Sophie, a real old woman.
00:16:22
Speaker
And unlike Aunt Mariah, is someone you can imagine being. Someone who is, you know, unpleasant and selfish and takes up space and works for the good of the world. I think that Gladys parallels Zilla, who is the main heroine of this book in a lot of ways, is intended to be someone Zilla could grow up to be. And the ways in which Gladys makes herself kind of unpleasant are, I think, an important
Motherhood and Creative Struggles
00:16:48
Speaker
pattern. I think that is makes herself kind of unpleasant laudatory.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, Gladys is, tell you what Gladys is, she's the the the poem. When I am an odd woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me. yes It's splendid. She is having a great time being odd woman. There's bit later on where she gets dressed up. She is good. um And also she goes everywhere accompanied by her pet Jimbo. Plus the other 52 cats.
00:17:15
Speaker
yeah They don't go everywhere with her though. Anyway, So very rapidly, having discovered that this parallel universe is kind of parasiting ideas off of ours and causing all our problems, the Wizards of Britain decide on a plan, which is that they are going to send the Strike Force to this... They they discover there's like a little there's a big parallel universe. And then that has a littler parallel universe that just kind of hangs off to the side of it. A pocket universe, which is kind of an observation platform. Yes. they're like, that's where all their wizards are. We have identified the bad guys responsible for everything wrong with the world. And we're just going to go kill them.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yes, they prepare a biological weapon, and they prepare a magical plague. They prepare various kinds of biological weapons. So Gladys observes the observer platform, the parallel universe, and deduces that everyone there is male, but occasionally they get visitors who are all women, and she makes an assumption.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yes, which I think is an important assumption. for the structure of the book and the way the book thinks about sex. Gladys assumes that if a group of women is visiting a group of men, then they are clearly prostitutes or otherwise people who have come to satisfy the sexual needs of those people.
00:18:32
Speaker
ah This is not true. What we then learn in the next section is that these women are in fact important evil aristocrats from an evil matriarchy. Right. So...
00:18:43
Speaker
The strike team, the Gladys, Mark, and the other two, the the mother and the maiden ah witches who lead British wizardry bre is witchcraft. sorry Amanda, in her aspect of the mother, who is a feminist and a professor of theology with teenage children, and Mark finds her very alarming.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yes. And Maureen, who is a very sexy young dancer who Mark once had an affair with. Yes. Mark is very deeply embedded in in this community of witchcraft. Yes.
00:19:18
Speaker
And, you know, the backstory that we soon learn about Mark is that A, he once had an affair with Maureen. B, his wife is having a long-term affair with some other hot young man. C, he also once recently had an affair with a woman called Zilla, who he's sort of carefully not allowing himself to know is Amanda's sister.
00:19:36
Speaker
And what he actually doesn't know is that Zilla has a two-year-old child. Side note, we got through this book and I was like, Becca, how many other SFF novels in the last, it has been more than 30 years, how many single mother SFF heroines can we name?
00:19:53
Speaker
i think you named one. ah I saw the one and then I took it back. Yeah. ah We'd be happy to hear about more, but I did think it was striking and an important choice that Zilla is the mother of a toddler.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah. And that is absolutely central to the book. And the toddler is always there because when you are the mother of a toddler, the toddler is always bloody well there. This, you know, we talked in Black Mariah about how it felt like Diana was kind of yearning to write about the mother rather than the child. And,
00:20:24
Speaker
This book, I think, really is about mothers. ah It has several of the trademark, an evil mother is the worst thing in the world. Zilla and Amanda have a mother who's so evil that she can never make it on the page. We only see her in the sort of trembling, scared thoughts that Zilla and Amanda have about her.
00:20:42
Speaker
But also Zilla is a mother and a mother who makes mistakes. Gladys is a mother. I'm going to later on read out the one glimpse we get of Gladys's daughter because it's one of my favorite passages in the book. And the book, I think, is really interested in the way that they get to be human and make human mistakes and make choices for themselves that are good for themselves rather than being defined by their role as mother.
00:21:06
Speaker
Unless they're hyper feminine, in which case they're just evil. In which case they're just evil. A lot of evil women in this book about how it's wrong to be a misogynist.
00:21:17
Speaker
Right, it's wrong to be a misogynist. They're not evil because they're women. They're evil because they fucking suck. They're evil because they're bad moms. Yeah. Anyway, ah as I predicted, we are not getting through this fast enough. Right, right, right. All right. in the book So they're going to send a strike force. The strike force is going to have a virus. The strike force is also going to be full of beautiful young men and women because they...
00:21:44
Speaker
reasonably deduced that on an all-male community ah there probably will be some people who are more interested in men than women. This comes up at the beginning and is not really addressed again, but Diana would like you to know that she knows. Diana, in her first adult book, by the way, I do know that gay people exist.
00:22:02
Speaker
Right. They put together the strike force. They get ready to launch it to the parallel universe, and at the last minute, Zilla, who is, as we said, extremely deb depressed,
00:22:14
Speaker
decides to join it. She takes her two-year-old son and just kind of she doesn't really know what the Strike Force is going to be there to do. She happened to be along with Amanda at one point when she was inspecting the big spaceship. And she's like, what better way to get rid of my my depression and my problems and leave my ex behind forever than go to a spaceship going to another world? That'll probably be fine.
00:22:35
Speaker
She has not read the cold equations. She teleports herself and her baby into the spaceship right as it's leaving. And off they And that is the end the first four sections of the book. Well done, Becca. And it is, I think, important that Zilla doesn't know quite how she did this. Zilla is very, very powerful, ah has great potential for witchcraft and refuses to be trained. And to me, one of the like the most compelling relationships in the book is actually Zilla and Amanda, because Amanda is clearly someone who is very, very with it and put together. And maybe that's part of being the mother.
00:23:09
Speaker
She knows what she's doing. ah She has her career. She has her teenage children. She has her lovely partner who ah almost uniquely in the book, she doesn't cheat on the partner ever. Almost everyone else in this book is constantly cheating on everyone. yeah um Amanda is frustrated by Zilla because she tries to support Zilla and help her. She gets her away from their terrible mother. She encourages her to go to university. Zilla drops out. She tries to get her a good job. Zilla loses the job and goes to a work in a record shop instead, saying it suits her more. than She tries to get Zilla involved in magic.
00:23:43
Speaker
And she's proud of Zilla. like, oh, she's so talented. She's going to really achieve things. And then Zilla disappears and then reappears later with a small child. Now she's a single mother. And Amanda is so clearly terribly frustrated with her younger sister and doesn't understand why she keeps making these self-destructive choices, including leaving the universe by teleporting herself out of it, which is a self-destructive choice. And Zilla knows it is. And she thinks of it. I really think it was very striking. She calls it a sort of death. yes When she's thinking about the death, she'll never focus on it quite clearly, but she does say to herself, it's not fair on Marcus. yes and So i thought I think it's clear that Zilla is thinking about suicide and also thinking about how to commit suicide in a way that isn't unfair to her small child.
00:24:30
Speaker
There's actually a really striking bit, I think, I took that as a quote, where she's thinking about a sort of death, not fair to Marcus, And then instead, because she has to stop thinking about that, she focuses on Maureen and how annoyed she is about Maureen. And that's when that's when Zilla is meanest. You know, she starts thinking really mean things about Maureen. I think she's a bitch.
00:24:49
Speaker
It was better than thinking of death. Maureen strutting, sauntering, hitching her long, limber legs about taking all the best men for her own use. It's like, there's this... There's this really interesting element in which in order to distract from the depression, when you have to think about how hot this girl
Monastery Setting: Power and Rebellion
00:25:05
Speaker
is and how much I hate Exactly.
00:25:10
Speaker
But she's so hot. No, there is. i Diana Wynne-Jones is really enjoying writing explicitly about people being hot. Yes. Yeah. Zilla is so hot. the first We don't know this, I think. We don't know that Zilla is devastatingly hot until they all get off the spaceship at the monastery. And we get the point of view of one of the young trainee monks, Todd, as he watches all the women get out.
00:25:34
Speaker
And when Zilla comes out, he says, the best looking one of all, an absolute wow wow. And we're like, oh, okay. Zilla's an absolute wow wow. Oh, no.
00:25:46
Speaker
And Diana also doesn't usually write hot heroines. I think the last beautiful girl that we saw was Polly. Yeah, certainly as a point of view character.
00:25:59
Speaker
Flower in the Night was beautiful, but she was a love interest rather than a protagonist. Right. Usually she's interested in writing women who look ordinary. I think part of the fun of this book for her is that she can just be maximalist about it. Yeah, Zilla is the most powerful girl in the entire world and the most beautiful girl in any given room. And what about it?
00:26:18
Speaker
It's great. I love Zilla. And i'm I'm interested in ah the way... Of the many, many, many characters, I do find Zilla the most compelling, I think. I'm interested in her selfishness. It's the selfish younger sister character we've seen before. Yes. But this time not treated with your selfish younger sibling as a weapon you unleash on the world. Rather, your selfish younger sibling is a person who is struggling. Yes.
00:26:47
Speaker
who is finding it very, very difficult, who is selfish for complicated reasons, and some of them are self-defense. Zilla's trying to save her own life when she attaches herself to the sex murder strike force that's going off to a parallel universe. With her two-year-old child.
00:27:02
Speaker
With her two-year-old child. This is an insane place to take a toddler. Yes, and it's extra insane because, and she doesn't know this, but when they arrive, it kills two-thirds of the people on the strike force.
00:27:14
Speaker
Again, this is a book with a lot of sex and a lot of death. So they arrive, there were like 14 people, I think, planned to be on the Strike Force, plus Zilla. And only six of them have made it there alive. And everybody else is dead for unknown reasons, or so it seems at the time.
00:27:32
Speaker
Eventually, it turns out that the reason that they died is that if you enter a parallel universe, in in this version of parallel universes, we've seen many throughout Diana Jones' work. In this version, if you enter a universe where there is the exact analog of you already present,
00:27:47
Speaker
That's it. You're done. Can't, can't, the two of you cannot be in the same place at once. And so everybody who had, and it it turns out that Gladys did know this and did not warn them, but also didn't think it would be as much of a problem as it turns out to have been. What it it implies, of course, is that these two universes are actually very close together and very similar, which I think is important in that we have not talked yet about the main point of view of the other half of the book.
00:28:12
Speaker
the second, the two dragonists, the secondary protagonist. Yes. um The high head.
00:28:20
Speaker
The monastery, I think, is intended to feel a bit like a bad boarding school. oh No kidding. A bad boarding school in Diana Wynne-Jones' book. Right. rock But the high head is happy in his role overseeing. He loves the boring food. He loves the oath he that prevents them from having sex with women. He hates women.
00:28:43
Speaker
As usual, when someone is deeply happy at boarding school, it's because home was even worse. So we had this with David, we had it with Christopher, and it does eventually turn out to be true about the high head. ah But so the world, the the pocket universe of Arth is amazingly beautiful and all blue. And you can see actually Joan's being forced to write some bloody descriptions for one. And I don't think she necessarily enjoys it but she is good at it. So there's some glorious like ah descending through parallel universes and arriving at this strange blue city, which above ah sort of flowers out into strange crowns and horns. And below is just a blink of darkness.
00:29:28
Speaker
But it is essentially run like a boarding school crossed with a monastery. ah Everybody has duties to do. It's a very strict hierarchy. In charge of everything is the high head, a kind of headmaster. And the lowest ranking people are the cadets and the servicemen. cadets who might stay on to become full brothers, servicemen who are only meant to be there for a year to serve.
00:29:54
Speaker
um ah It's part of their duty to the Pentarchy, which is the universe they come from. And the two main point of view characters that we have for the monastery are High Head, who is an impressive, imposing figure. We see him externally through the point of view of the other character, and everyone's very impressed by him. He looks important and confident and powerful.
00:30:14
Speaker
And Todd, who is a minor, or no, a major prince, who's being sent here for his mandatory service year and hates it. He is the boarding school child. Yeah. He's also Constam Khan.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yes. Eventually he gets to Earth and we learn that he's quite short. but has enormous hereditary power.
00:30:37
Speaker
Yeah, he's got an incredible incredibly big birthright. Yes.
00:30:44
Speaker
But the you know um he's rebellious. He hates being here. um There's, I think, echoes of Christopher Chant, actually not Christopher Chant at boarding school, but Christopher Chant in Castle and the way he exercises his rebellion. There's a bit where he's ah you know he's gotten in trouble for defending one of his friends, who's a centaur, for being bullied by the other servicemen who are all universally awful.
00:31:07
Speaker
And he says, if I speak normally in this damn joyless place, some po-faced prat ups and tells me I'm being insolent. So if I'm insolent, it ought to work the other way around, sir. And then todd Todd gets a description of like, he's got a funny little mustache and a little cone of carefully styled hair. Yes. but And the high head listens to and thinks about scathing punishments that he can put him through, which is like, it's so boarding school, right? It's,
00:31:34
Speaker
Also, important to note, though, the monastery thing is they're all under an oath of celibacy. The brothers and cadets have an oath of celibacy, which is meant to preserve the magical vibrations of the fortress.
00:31:47
Speaker
yes um And the servicemen, while they are there, are expected to live as if they have taken the oath. And the High Head very sincerely believes that any breaking of the oath could be devastating to the stability and the power of this community, which he loves, clearly, which he has been part of for many, many years, and which he deeply believes in as well. that His duty is to study the other world, which he considers to be a debased, degenerate copy of his own. One of the things... like
00:32:21
Speaker
the touch points of the high head is that he genuinely believes he's doing the right thing or he's doing a good thing. Everyone looks at him and can see this. Yeah. And he believes this is used to help his country, his world, through by using all his powers to make Arthur as successful as possible in currently trying to solve the Pentarchist climate crisis, which they have and they can't figure out why.
00:32:45
Speaker
And one of the ways that he's doing this actually is by he sent spies to the other world. So if someone's having an affair in our world, probably the person they're having an affair with is actually a spy for the high head who's been sending all his disgraced brothers over there and compelling them to have affairs with these women that they don't like. In a kind of sort of sex murder strike force way, actually. In a kind of sex murder strike force way.
00:33:09
Speaker
yes And also he's been using telepathy to spy on Amanda's children. Or at least he had until Zilla caught him at it and interfered. Now, I don't actually think that Zilla and the High Head ever figure out that... They don't, that they have this connection. But they do, in fact, have this long relationship ah in which once Zilla protected Amanda's children from being snooped around by the spirit of a powerful wizard from another world... He started snooping around her instead. And because her magic is wild and uncontrolled, she isn't aware and she can't really defend herself. But occasionally she notices him and goes, oh, it's that bloody demon again. Get out.
00:33:50
Speaker
yeah He is a demon who has been haunting her soul for years. And I think Zilla and the high head is one of the most complicated, nasty, interesting relationships in the book.
00:34:04
Speaker
and The high head is also, we will discover, more or less the same as Mark. Right. That's Mark's backstory. I think we're doing a father-husband thing again. And this time we're leaning on father. Yeah.
00:34:16
Speaker
Actually, I've just thought of this now. So on paper, the main most important relationship of this book is Zilla and Mark, right? They're the romance. They're, you know, Zilla's feelings about Mark are what propels much of the action of the plot. But they don't actually spend hardly any time together in the book. They're never on page together. He turns up at the beginning. He turns up at the end.
00:34:38
Speaker
But Zilla spends a lot of time with the high head and Mark spends a lot of time with Gladys. Oh my God, you're right. They're both looking at the future versions of each other. And being like, oh, God. And in both cases, it's horrifying. Yeah, which I think is really funny.
00:34:58
Speaker
Anyway, the women have landed. unfortunately, of the survivors, none of them are the men that they sent to seduce the gay monks, which I think is a real shame for the book.
00:35:09
Speaker
I think before we, like, we we should talk about that thread, because the other thing that becomes clear in Todd's point of view yes in the monastery is that although the high head believes greatly in the celibacy of his monks, in fact, it's very clear that the monks are not celibate.
Strike Force and Feminine Power
00:35:24
Speaker
There is, there are gay monks. yeah But the way that that is working out is nasty we have todd getting approached and pressured by people further up the hierarchy and he is able to resist it because basically he's a tough young aristocrat and he is not bothered by the hierarchy of us right have todd's very dear friend philo much less able to find a way to say no to more powerful men todd is the one who is having to constantly protect him and fend off men who are coming on to him yes this is This is not like ah happy gay monks in space. ah This is, I think, a boarding school fagging system. Yes, it's clearly So what sex is happening is yeah ugly, hierarchical, secret, um and shameful.
00:36:16
Speaker
Yes, it's about shame and it's about power. um And when, i do think it's really interesting that we get these threads in the first hundred pages of the book. enough to make it clear that this is what's going on, to make it clear that sex is not due to the Citadel, whatever the high head might think.
00:36:34
Speaker
But then our strike force arrives, and this is not mentioned again. the you know the The remaining nine people from the ship are dead, and the women who arrive, determined to get on with their mission, are so you seem to be...
00:36:54
Speaker
they They do overturn the hierarchy of, that they put the hierarchy on its head. And I think that Diana Wynne-Jones thinks that having mentioned it, that this does happen and that this sex already exists, is enough to lay the groundwork to explain that what the women are bringing with them is not necessarily heterosexual sex or not just sex to the fortress, but joy and chaos and whimsy and all the things that the fortress has been missing.
00:37:22
Speaker
it does sort of lead an unfortunate implication that what you need in order to liberate this fortress of monks is heterosexual sex and heterosexual sex only. Yeah. I think if she'd let just one of the nice gay boys who died live and join in the fun, yeah that would have been more fun.
00:37:39
Speaker
I would have enjoyed that. i would have enjoyed it too. Although the book is, to be clear, already very fun. Let's talk about our six survivors. We know Zilla, but these other women are also important. And here's here's another thing about this, but this is a lot of adult woman characters who are yeah individual and interesting. And that's another way in which it feels like a mirror of Black Mariah in that it is interested in adult adult women's individuality camera all the mrs errs have this great individuality and personality but they're all evil right as are not all evil although we might make an honorable exception for ros oh i don't know that ros evil i do think that ros wrong which is not the same ros is wrong ros is the funny elaine ros is
00:38:33
Speaker
the bossy. She wears big boots. She stomps in and immediately is like, right, well, I've seduced 15 people today. How many have you seduced? Let's get cracking, girls!
00:38:46
Speaker
I do think, again, with the the school situation, there is a really interesting description of Roz when the high head is first interrogating to her as ah Oh, did I get the description down? Maybe I didn't. He calls her a schoolgirl. Yes.
00:39:05
Speaker
In the way that she lies to him, he's instantly like, that is somebody lying to me. right Because he's used to being lied to by people at the bottom of the hierarchy in a very honest looking way. Brave schoolgirl openness is what he calls her lie. where she tells them that they're sports team from Middle Earth who had been on their way to complete the Highland game by Stratocruiser.
00:39:31
Speaker
Diana has like a bee in her bonnet about what if Middle Earth was a sports team? Which is really funny. ah Meg is making like league tables of Arthurian knights in her notebook. it's It's clearly something like it's just a good joke and she tells it as many as often as she's going to.
00:39:51
Speaker
um This is actually not the only time that one of the women is compared to a schoolgirl. And what noticed is when I was taking notes, is that later on, Judy, who's the one who like falls earnestly in love, describes the way that this relationship makes her feel as making her behave and feel like an insecure schoolgirl.
00:40:09
Speaker
So there's something about arriving in this place that makes the sex and murder strike force suddenly start feeling and acting like teenagers. Which I think is quite interesting.
00:40:20
Speaker
Which is also quite funny. Yes. I think also the thing about Roz is that Roz believes in hierarchies. Yes. And that is the reason why Roz is wrong about her approach to ah defeating Arth, defeating Citadel. It's because even all the things she does aren't destroying the hierarchy. They're just trying to turn it around.
00:40:41
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, and I do think that that is, like, I think these are deliberately, or at least coming out of the same thought patterns as the Mrs. Errs. This is a group of very distinct women. Each of them has their own kind of special thing, and when they arrive on the Citadel, they all kind of scatter off into different areas of the Citadel to start trying to corrupt a different group of monks based on their particular interest. You know, Flan is a dancer, and Helen goes straight to the kitchen.
00:41:07
Speaker
And they all have their own particular modes of trying to exert their power over these men. In the same way that the Mrs. Errs all have their own little little shtick and they use it to maintain their control over Cranberry, maintain their control over the men. Yeah.
00:41:23
Speaker
So we have Roz, who is bossy, and Roz attaches herself to Observerhorn and then steadily fucks her way through every match she can get her hands on. In two days. I didn't catch that until I was taking notes. She comes back and it's two days later and she's like, well, I've had 15. No, she says she's had 12. Right, right, she's had 12. Because some of the others say they've managed 15, meaning it more metaphorically than Roz does. And she's like, they've had me. It's a competition to Ros. Ros also at one point thinks I should go straight for the great Panjandrum, the high horns himself. High horns is what quite a lot of them call the high head, which I do find very funny.
00:42:03
Speaker
I think it's really funny. I think it's a cuckolding joke. Yes, he's being cuckolded out of an entire monastery. But that's great because then you see her have a conversation with him when he's interrogating these women about where they came from and who they are. And like, have we got it? It's it's one of my favorite jokes in the book is Roz trying to explain. It is the same conversation where she does the the honest schoolgirl lie.
00:42:28
Speaker
yeah It's also like where she stamps about in boots, stretching her legs out, talking very earnestly about how much she believes in women's sports, and then tells him, I considered being a homosexual at one point.
00:42:40
Speaker
Do you know what that means?
00:42:44
Speaker
Roz feels like a portrait of a very funny person who did not know she was being very funny. Yes.
00:42:54
Speaker
So in addition to Roz, we've got Helen, who's the sort of thin intellectual one who goes to the kitchens. She's always described as angular. Yes.
00:43:05
Speaker
Judy is the one who fell apart emotionally when, you know, two thirds of her friends died. She's the only one who falls apart emotionally when two thirds of her friends died. Everyone's weirdly fine. Yeah. I mean, that is a thing about this sequence is that it's very, very funny. And it is a bit glib.
00:43:21
Speaker
because the emotional realities of the situation are not going to interfere with the joke of these women coming and taking over the fortress.
Emotional Climax and Personal Growth
00:43:30
Speaker
all right. So Judy spends a lot of time in healing, not so much as ah strike force, but because she genuinely needs healing. Right. And she becomes very close to the high heads only friend in the fortress, who is Edward, wood the chief healer.
00:43:45
Speaker
Right. And then who've we had? rose We've had Judy. Ros, Helen, Judy. Sandra. Sandra. Sandra's important because she is a black woman. This is the first time that Diana Jones has actually written from inside the head of a character of color, actually.
00:44:01
Speaker
And Sandra's interesting because... Woman color. We've had Abdullah. That's true. Woman of color. Because when she arrives, everyone starts treating her very respectfully. Because on the Pentarchy, there's apparently a whole...
00:44:16
Speaker
you know the the the people who are The people of color on the Pentarchy are very powerful mages and everyone respects them very much and treats them as high aristocrats. And Sandra at first takes this as mockery because of her experiences. And later, when this is actually explained to her, what we get is Sandra began and then bit back just barely an angry description of the status of black women on earth.
00:44:42
Speaker
This is actually the first, I think, overt acknowledgement of racism. that we've seen Diana Wyn Jones put into a book. And it works. Yeah. Yeah. So Sandra goes to the divination horn and begins telling them all kinds of lies about tarot. And Sandra loves have to pull a trick and deceive people. So she starts screwing up their divinations by doing tarot readings backwards.
00:45:07
Speaker
And has a wonderful time there. and because And because, you know, they all think of her as this very high and important mage, they take her word for it unconditionally. She's using her power without qualm.
00:45:19
Speaker
Well, actually, she does end up having qualm. She starts to feel bad about what she's doing because they've all been so nice to her. and was Also, eventually, one of them gets in trouble for what a mess they're making of the divinations they're meant to be doing. And Sandra does feel guilty. She's like, well, I kind of like him. Right.
00:45:36
Speaker
and then there was his job yeah And then there's Flan, I think is the last one. Flan is a dancer. And so she goes to Ritualhorn and is like, You guys are doing rituals like that?
00:45:48
Speaker
All right, everybody. Time for some exercise. Right. Have we thought about yoga? Blahn is, I think, other than Roz, the one of them who actually does do a bit of fucking her way through the horn that she's been assigned to. The rest all kind of attach themselves to a particular monk and then literally settle into a relationship with that monk.
00:46:10
Speaker
Flan has a nice time working her way through horn. Some young dancers. Has, you know, ah some young dancers. She also, a passage that actually really struck me, um one of the older men in ritual horn ah tries to blackmail her for sex.
00:46:27
Speaker
And she's like, well, all right, I guess that's what I'm here for. Actually, that was fine. Actually, he's kind of sweet. There's this sort of sense that the women are in control here in this situation.
00:46:39
Speaker
The men of High Horn, who we've seen can use power and coercion in sexual situations among themselves in ways that are scary and damaging.
00:46:51
Speaker
They are never scary to the women in that way. The women are always in control of these situations. They never feel powerless when confronted with these monks, despite the fact that there's only five of them. And again, they do use blackmail sometimes to get sex.
00:47:04
Speaker
That's not serious. That's not a problem. Because the power dynamics are, I think, in the context of the book, or at least intended to be established as such, that it's not scary.
00:47:15
Speaker
I think the power dynamics depend very much on the women all know something the monks don't know. yes And it's having that extra knowledge. They know that they are a strike force from the other world sent here to destroy the Citadel any way they can. They're a team, they're an alliance, and they're succeeding. They're doing they're doing what they want to do.
00:47:37
Speaker
yes gives them power in these relationships, even when it is not apparent to the monks. I'm not sure how well it actually works, um but that seems to be how they how the characters feel about it.
00:47:49
Speaker
Again, it feels more like a joke and kind of ah a you know long exuberant riff on... Yes, it's extended sex comedy.
00:48:00
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Than anything that actually lands emotionally. um i think that with more practice at writing this kind of stuff, she'll be able to do both at once. And she hasn't quite managed it yet.
00:48:12
Speaker
But it doesn't really... Anyway, they're all really having a good time. It doesn't really get scary until Zilla's friend, Todd, is caught kissing Zilla. This is not... Like, they're not entering into a relationship. Zilla is still hung up on Mark. In fact, Zilla was crying about Mark.
00:48:30
Speaker
Yes. And Tom was like, oh, you're so sad. Let me give you a cuddle and a little kiss. And it was just... You're so sad and so pretty. Yeah. And this is presented in the text as natural and not bad and Zilla doesn't mind it. But actually, I would be pretty pissed off with if my friend was giving me a hug and then he snogged me. Right. And there is... one of the things that I think is interesting about Zilla, the fantasy of Zilla, who is depressed and miserable, but also beautiful and enormously powerful, is that she lands on the monastery, and while the other women are sort of fucking their way through the the whole situation, she immediately bonds with these three recruits and is like, oh
00:49:09
Speaker
We're just friends now. I've fallen in with this group of male friends. It's normal. It's easy. I literally have friends. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, she gets the Christopher at boarding school experience of, oh, people, my friends. Right. But I do think there's something about this fantasy of like, you know, Zilla doesn't make friends with the other women on the strike force. Her new friends are this male school friend group.
00:49:33
Speaker
I think there's something a little bit, a little bit of a a fantasy about that. Yeah. Anyway, Todd gets caught, Mackinonzilla. And they're both brought to the high head, one after the other. Yes. And then we get what, for my money, is some of the most disturbing stuff in the book. And the one time the sort of sex and power dynamics on the fortress become really, like, believable.
00:49:56
Speaker
Yes. So the high head is furious. He is unreasonably furious. In fact, it's really clear that he is reacting more strongly than he has a right to because he already doesn't like Todd, because Todd is insolent in his opinion, although not in Todd's opinion.
00:50:15
Speaker
um and he comes up with a punishment he's going to punish Todd by doing the worst thing he can think of to him which is sending him to the other world which is populated by some sort of reptile people so he'll be transformed into a reptile person and never be able to go home again and have to mate with other reptiles his job is to be a honeypot trap for Mark's wife actually yeah so the high head decides this with enormous glee and very visibly goes running over several little legal details in the process.
00:50:51
Speaker
such as the fact that Todd actually isn't a brother of the Citadel, isn't fully under the High Head's authority, hasn't taken an oath and therefore hasn't broken an oath, hasn't actually done anything wrong. He kissed a girl. That's it. And everyone around him has been, again, participating gleefully in sex comedy.
00:51:10
Speaker
Right. Lots and lots of the monks are having a lot of sex with these women. Todd kissed Zilla. My head feels something special about Zilla.
00:51:21
Speaker
He doesn't ever acknowledge it to himself in so many words, but he feels she's important. He knows her really well somehow. And of course, it's he's been haunting her soul for years. He's the demon who she sees sniffing around from time to time.
00:51:36
Speaker
He's furious. So Todd is given this over-heavy, outrageous, awful punishment, which not coincidentally separates him from Zilla, means he'll never be able to go near her again.
Parallel Narratives and Personal Agency
00:51:49
Speaker
like And then the high head speaks to Zilla and basically says... Well, it comes in two stages. First, he's furious with her. He shouts at her. He calls her a whore and a bitch. Again, she got kissed.
00:52:02
Speaker
She didn't even initiate the kiss. It wasn't her idea. Yep. And I'll tell you the last time we saw a ah an older man screaming at a young woman, calling them bitches. It was time of the ghost and it was himself screaming at his daughters. Yep. And then Zilla thinking about her,
00:52:20
Speaker
relationship with Mark and some of the choices she made and the selfish ways she behaved. She says, yes, I think you're right. There are times when I seem to behave like that as if I can't help it.
00:52:33
Speaker
If I could hate myself for it, I would, but I can't. You're quite right to call me names. Right. And the high head is so upset by this that he suddenly wants to defend her to herself right um and sort of flips and then sort of sends her away with a very sort of very pathetic. Well, think about what you've done and don't do it again or you will be in trouble.
00:52:54
Speaker
And even in this sequence, Zilla is hurt because she thought that the High Horns was a fair man when she interacted with him. But when she learns what's happened to Todd and the sort of double standard with which they've been treated, that's when she starts thinking the injustice of it fills her with rage, a clean blast of that rage that seemed to make a whole lot of things clear to her.
00:53:14
Speaker
She had wondered that this place did not seem evil. Now she knew that evil was here. How stupid, how innocent of her not to have remembered that evil seldom appeared to be evil. Right.
00:53:25
Speaker
There is a core evil in Arth in this citadel and its nature is in is disguised even from itself. The High Head has no idea he's a bad man. That's really clear. And also he has no idea that his behavior over this whole thing is like,
00:53:42
Speaker
a really gross sexual jealousy about a girl he considers his own possession and simultaneously doesn't seem to realize is even human. Yeah.
00:53:53
Speaker
Like, This book is mostly about mummy issues, but I think this bit is daddy issues. Yep. So Zilla decides to escape. That's what Zilla does when she's in trouble. She runs.
00:54:08
Speaker
Yep. And she takes Josh and Philo, the her two other friends with her. She can't take Todd because Todd's already gone to Earth. Todd is about to have some very funny reverse portal fantasy adventures on Earth.
00:54:19
Speaker
it's It's some of the best stuff in the book. This is a book of with many jokes in it. And i like I like the portal fantasy jokes even more than the sex comedy jokes. I laughed out loud when he's given a pullover and he's given a sweater and he looks at it. but Yep.
00:54:34
Speaker
And it's, ah hang on, I am going to find the quote because it's really funny. So he's replacing... the former lover of Polly, who is Mark's, uh, Mark's wife. Uh, and he's in, you know, kind of getting him set up in the world. He tosses Todd, a heavy woolen floppy thing made of gray, brown knitting. The maker of it had industriously twisted the stitches into an ornate plated pattern. It looked epic. Yeah.
00:54:56
Speaker
I'm like, that's a fair old jumper, that is. um So Todd's off in Earth having reverse portal fantasy adventures. He does, I think, again, i think this is striking compared to the sex and death strike force and the women who are all having a wonderful time seducing these weird old men in the monastery. He's presented with Polly and it's clearly, it's, you know, and Polly immediately is like, great, we're going to go into bed together. And I think that's there's a drop line or it sort of implied that this is ah a spell that the high head has put on her to make her ready to jump into bed eager to jump into bed with whoever he sends along we're never asked to consider the unfairness of this the the the way that this is nothing the book is very consistent about is no sympathy whatsoever for Paulie yeah Paulie is awful um so when when Todd arrives where it's clear that this this is ah disgusting to him to have sex with Paulie and that is terrible
00:55:56
Speaker
And it's clear that, all you know, whenever the high head calls up these men that he sent, they're always complaining about the women they're with, how selfish they are, how cruel they are. um yeah The fact that they don't want to sleep with them.
00:56:07
Speaker
We haven't talked about Jo and Maureen. Yeah. You're just plot thread in the book, to my mind. ah The two key agents of the high head on Earth are Paulie's lover, which was this guy, Anthony, and is now going to be Todd, apparently.
00:56:25
Speaker
and Maureen's boyfriend, Joe. nobody likes. Nobody likes Joe. Joe sucks. um And Maureen got home from sending the spaceship to the other universe and found Joe waiting for her and a magical trap laid for her where he said, you're going to stay here until you tell me everything. And she thought, I cannot do that because I need to give the Strikeforce time to work and otherwise...
00:56:51
Speaker
they'll be undermined. So Joe and Maureen have like a standoff in Maureen's flat that lasts for the entire book. Yeah, and I think, personally, as a reader, I think Maureen is really quite heroic in these scenes. think so too. yeah She's fighting for her life. I think the book is very lukewarm on Maureen. The thing about Maureen is that Maureen is hot and cool and ruthless and selfish, all of which are traits that we could apply to, say, Zilla.
00:57:22
Speaker
yes Some of the problem here is that, and at one point Amanda says, ah or thinks about the comparison between Zilla and Maureen. and and right Maureen is threatened, I think, is the suggestion. Maureen sent Flann on the um strike force because she felt threatened by Flann, didn't want her back in England taking over Maureen's dance troupe. And there's a sense that Maureen and Zilla are in competition for Mark as two hot girls who have both had sex with him.
00:57:50
Speaker
Right. And so therefore, Maureen is sort of in this position of rival we don't quite like. But we get her interiority. We get her like pushing herself to her utmost limit to defeat her terrible boyfriend, who again, it's implied she didn't have a choice about picking this terrible boyfriend. She was compelled to have sex with this terrible man.
00:58:07
Speaker
and And keeping him at bay so as not to spill secrets with everything she's got. Yeah. So that's what she's up to while Todd is doing his reverse portal fantasy adventure. yeah these's also meet This is like the meanwhile back on Earth section. Right.
00:58:21
Speaker
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Todd gets there. Polly makes a pass at him. He's like, absolutely not. Mark gets home. It's deeply awkward. Todd is just standing there. It's actually like a really great, you know, husband walks in on the wife and her lover scene, except that the lover really never wanted to be there in the first place. And it's so awkward and so funny. And also it's so clear that Mark and Polly's marriage is terrible and doesn't make sense. But also, Todd, with his powerful magic, notices there's a strong something of the Ladies of Leith here.
00:58:56
Speaker
The Ladies of Leith are the evil matriarchy. Did you forget the evil matriarchy? There is so much in this. much going on. Very important. evil matriarchy represents everything that's wrong about women.
00:59:09
Speaker
Anyway, Todd, in this terrible awkward situation, much like Zilla, is like, well, I gotta get out of here. I'm out. Just walk out. You can leave. I haven't even talked to you through. I love so much of the Todd in Surrey sequence. It's yeah like Howl in Wales. There's a bit where he's like walking down the main street wearing jeans and it's raining. And he's like, this is hell.
00:59:33
Speaker
Hell. and Why is their hair doing that? oh And then they give him a car. And Todd loves cars. But this is the worst car in the world. a do cheau It's It's cute. Which is, um I remember my dad in the 90s making jokes about Citroën. That's no longer the case, I think. But there was a reputation for poor quality at one point. Yep. um Anyway, so Todd walks out and he sees outside Mark's house, Mark's BMW.
01:00:01
Speaker
yep He's left the left running with the keys in. And Todd sort looks at his car, looks at Mark's car, and is like, sod this. yeah Steals Mark's car to drive home. Yep.
01:00:14
Speaker
Bye, Todd. Todd's going home. Meanwhile... So there's three things that are happening at the same time during this sequence. One, Todd having his sex comedy, stealing the car, going home.
01:00:28
Speaker
Two... Gladys has realized that something's gone wrong with the Strikeforce. and She's decided she has to go to Pentarchy and sort it out herself. She gets dressed up in her finery and her her special little outfit. Because we're short on time, I'm not going to read out everything about the special little outfit. but it's It's the 19th cocktail gown, which belongs to her great aunt because she's not actually that old. It's the cocktail gown. It's beach. It's a flood feather boa. It's a flame pink scarf. It's a headdress. And then it's big fluffy boots that everyone in Pentarchy looks at and is like, do you have animal feet?
01:01:07
Speaker
And the reason that she dresses all this, she says to Jimbo, her little familiar, is, I know, but I don't want anyone to take me too seriously, do i So she knows it's silly and ridiculous.
01:01:19
Speaker
And she's having a great time. She's carefully chosen this finery to look silly in. Right, silliness, I think, is so key to what the book is arguing for, demanding. like The main reason that the initial attempts of the Strikeforce to destabilise R through sex don't work is they're not being silly enough.
01:01:43
Speaker
Right. There's a whole conversation that Zilla has with Roz, where Roz is like, we are doing this Strikeforce thing and it's very serious. And Zilla says, but the Citadel likes fun. People keep repressing it. It's sort of itching for something to enjoy. Raz says, do try not to talk nonsense, Zilla. You just don't have the training the rest of us have had. Everyone knows this is a serious evil place.
01:02:04
Speaker
And Flan... No, when Ros says this, we know how much training she had. They were told nothing until the night they left.
Monastery's Transformative Climax
01:02:11
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And then Flan turns to Zilla and says, I like fun too, but don't tell teacher, meaning Ros. Which is important because Flan is actually the one who is going to break the Citadel in what I think is the best sequence in the book. But before I get there, let me tell you, let me let me let's say what Zilla's up to. Yes.
01:02:30
Speaker
So Zilla decides she needs to, like Todd, she needs to get the hell out of Dodge. But also, she has just learned something about Mark, which is that Mark has an identical twin?
01:02:41
Speaker
Living in evil matriarchy land? Right. ah There's a parallel universe version of Mark living in the Pentarchy, who is the son of the evilest, evilest, evil witch of them all, Lady Marceny.
01:02:54
Speaker
And he's a horrible little jester man. That's how he's constantly described, is a horrible little jester man. like I'm really struck by how often jester in Diana Wynne-Jones is code for sexy as hell. yeah Yep. Yep.
01:03:15
Speaker
And everyone, like, again, she never describes this man as attractive, but it's so clear. that Zilla looks at him and is oh, what an awful little man. i I must go to him. I can't not.
01:03:25
Speaker
So that's where she's off to. and With her two-year-old, she has still got the toddler. Yes. I feel like we haven't talked enough about Marcus. Marcus is so much the so much of the comedy of the book. Yes. He's Marcus. Yes. Everybody understands.
01:03:40
Speaker
He's two. And so he keeps making confident pronouncements that nobody understands, as two-year-olds are wont to do. And in fact, ah a good sign of whether or not someone is a good person is whether they can understand Marcus. Todd understood him instantly.
01:03:54
Speaker
And Mark's parallel universe, other self, Herald, understands him instantly. Yes. But it's not until... i mean, Zilla is bringing Marcus everywhere. And it's not until...
01:04:06
Speaker
quite late in the book, that Zilla decides that her number one priority has to be making sure that Marcus is safe. Hang on, I want to actually find the quote because she says, I'm thinking this much too late, that Marcus needs to be my priority more than whatever's going on with Harrow, more than whatever is going on with me, not now, with 50 pages left in the text and imminent peril for the first time, like real peril.
01:04:33
Speaker
Now I've got to be concerned about this. Yeah, Zilla has been irresponsible. And other characters point that out. ah ah Amanda is a pull that wherever she's gone, she's taken her two-year-old. Gladys calls her a stupid, irresponsible girl.
01:04:47
Speaker
Zilla is, I think, quite rarely in Diana Wynne-Jones, a mother who is flawed, very flawed, and still sympathetic. She has been yes a thoughtless mother here, but she loves Marcus and she's doing her best. Her best is not always good, but by God, she is going to do it.
01:05:05
Speaker
And again, i think we get a mirror here in Gladys. We get one glimpse of Gladys's daughter. so Gladys packs herself up to go to the Otherworld and sends all her cats to her daughter. Who lives in Scotland. Gladys lives in Jerefordshire. This is not quite as far away as you can get from each other and still beyond the British Isles. But it's pretty close. daughter's in Dundee.
01:05:28
Speaker
And then Mark and his horrible wife end up at Gladys's house, having pursued Todd there in the stolen car. And they immediately get a call from Gladys' daughter. And Gladys' daughter says,
01:05:39
Speaker
she said you would be in her house before midnight and i see she was right as usual she sent the message up with her cats you know have them all here making fifty two along with my own i may say Dearly as I love my mother, we do not get on. And this is why.
01:05:53
Speaker
Long ago, I told her that only in a real genuine crisis will I do any other thing for her. And this is what I get. 52 cats. So you may take it that the message is urgent. Yeah, there's the sense that, you know, a difficult, complicated, interesting woman may not always be an ideal mother.
01:06:10
Speaker
Uh-huh. Which is, you know, one one might imagine some self-reflection. So so that's what they're all doing. And they're all running around, you know, all of these people are sort of going to converge on the magical climax of the book, which is going to happen in the Pentarchy. And it's going to be a big confrontation with the evil matriarchy, etc, etc, etc. I don't think any of that, though, is the real climax of the book.
01:06:37
Speaker
I think the real climax of the book is what's happening on the Citadel with the Strikeforce. Right. A lot of the the evil matriarchy, it turns out, cut Herald in half and sent half of him to the other world in order to have their own agent on the other world. And that's what Mark is. And that's why Mark is so weird and boring. It's because all the funny bits of him are trapped at home under his mother's thumb.
01:07:02
Speaker
It's so funny that the answer to what's going on with normal McNormal Man is... His mother is eating his soul. Literally. Lady Marceny, like Gladys, and I do think this is important, I think Lady Marceny is a kind of dark mirror for Gladys. yeah The crone. She calls herself Granny at one point because she's Marcus's grandmother.
01:07:24
Speaker
yep Lady Marceny also has ether monkey. a Jimbo. An inner demon. And the fact of how differently she uses it and it uses her. She is a monster. ah She consumes the souls of men or at least of her son and intends to do the same to Marcus.
01:07:45
Speaker
Yeah, this is actually why Zilla left Mark to begin with is because in the middle of their affair, When Zilla was like, well, this is the only man for me, even though he's the most boring man in existence. I don't know why, but he just is. Which is, you know, again, that's something that, like, Diana Wynne-Jones writes about knowing that she was going to marry her own husband in this way. Like, I just saw him and I was like, right, that's it. Don't know why that one, but that one. And that's exactly what's happened with Zilla and Mark. Don't know why that one, but that one.
01:08:13
Speaker
Despite the fact that Zilla is the most beautiful woman in the world. But Zilla has this vision of Mark as a shadowy reflection of himself at the bottom of a deep well. And there's a woman down there with him drinking him that he's letting have all of the eager, interesting, vital parts of him, the parts that laughed or cried. And so Zilla is only ever going to be allowed the pale, decorous, priggish parts of Mark. I gotta we did say in the Black Mariah episode, you don't have to let your mother-in-law live rent-free in your head. guys his mother in law may still be living rent Oh God, you're right.
01:08:50
Speaker
you are right She thinks at first when she has this vision that it's his wife who is the one who's down the bottom of the well feeding on him. But in fact, she learns that Polly is also just a reflection of... Polly's just kind of an annoying woman.
01:09:06
Speaker
Polly is not actually the ultimate evil. The ultimate evil is Mark's evil mother. And when she meets Harold, the funny part of Mark, He's, you know, the hot jester. He is basically insane.
01:09:18
Speaker
And i mean, I think there's something... And totally untrustworthy. Harold does instantly understand Marcus. He also instantly recognizes that Marcus is his son. And he's sort of simultaneously delighted and terrified because Zilla has brought...
01:09:33
Speaker
Harrell's son into Lady Marceny's sphere of power, ah which is ah the most irresponsible thing she could possibly have done. Marcus is now in very great danger. right But he doesn't do anything about it and he still betrays Zilla and Marcus to Lady Marceny because Harrell is missing all the parts of him that have like a spine right and morals.
01:09:56
Speaker
like The boring parts of him are also, like if if you like, the framework, the necessary. Yes. Like, I think that Harold, the the sketch of Harold is really compelling in the couple lines we get. You know, Zilla describes him, again, clearly drawn to this man that she's never been drawn to anyone more in her life, as ah deeply diseased, the fag end left of Mark, a pair of screaming eyes and a face that doesn't match. And I think that the concept of there's this person that you love and there these two halves of them and the other half that you've never met who everyone around, you know, who's just like this contemptuous human being, nonetheless feels this great connection to you. And like, there's, there's something very itty about it, um yeah about the setup.
01:10:39
Speaker
It doesn't quite land just because we haven't we don't have enough time with it. We haven't had enough time with either Mark or Harold. The thing is that both of them are stood in for by the high head. The backstory is that he also comes from the evil matriarchy and escaped desperately to boarding school where he became the world's most justified misogynist. Right.
01:11:03
Speaker
It's so funny because like his mother was really bad, probably. Yeah. And we also learn that the way, again, these reflections of sort of coercive sex that are through the whole book, sometimes fun sex comedy ways, sometimes really scary ways, the evil matriarchy reproduces by capturing. So there's this thing called Galdians. I would say we don't have time to get into it, but really there's not much about what's going on with them in the book, except that they're very magically powerful. I'm pretty sure they're meant to be ah sexy elves. Yes. And we learn that the evil matriarchy kidnaps sexy elves and forces them to reproduce, and then the sexy elves are almost always so ashamed about it that they commit suicide. And this is what happened to both the Highhead's father and Mark and Harrell's father. Yeah. And what is going to happen to Philo... Because Zilla has brought him here. Right. Zilla's friend, because now he's trapped in this situation.
01:11:52
Speaker
That's all going on in the high fantasy plot. But back at the fortress. Meanwhile in the science fiction plot. Meanwhile in the science fiction plot. the So again, the thing that breaks this sort of like sex comedy there's no power problems here is that Flann sees what happens to Todd. much As much as Zilla is distressed and sort of sees the real rod at the heart of the fortress by this punishment that the high head inflicts on Todd, Flann sees him sent to the other world and is horrified by it.
01:12:22
Speaker
And the only outlet for her fear and horror at what's just happened is to start a conga! Okay, it's dance, it's dance, it's dance that's big and silly and this I think is a direct echo again of Black Mariah where the triumph at the end depends on Mig's willingness to dance and on Anthony Green's heroic mad dance. Flam starts a heroic mad dance. She gets four or five of the brothers who admire her so much from Ritual Horn. It's like, we're going to do the conga.
01:12:55
Speaker
And then they do the conga. And in a sequence that takes up, you know, it's it's a fri pretty long sequence. yeah By bit, every brother in the citadel, every monk is drawn into this conga.
01:13:09
Speaker
why sudden wild magic of a silly dance. Yes. Roz gets drawn into it. Roz actually, going to just read the Roz passage. Roz was a aware she had a choice.
01:13:22
Speaker
It seemed to be handed her by the citadel itself. For the first time she became conscious that the place did indeed have vibrations, potent and awesome like a voice. It spoke to her. Either she could join in this unusual and crazy piece of magic and become part of it, or she must stay aside and remain aside for other forever.
01:13:38
Speaker
She was suddenly aware there were others refusing to join in. She sensed the worst of the brothers hiding in a cupboard full of spare uniforms, and the obdurate horn head of defense who was still single-handedly guarding arth from non-existent invaders. Roz could be like these, the Citadel told her, or... But Roz was always one who could not abide to be out of things. She sprinted after the capering line and flung herself onto to the end of it.
01:13:58
Speaker
Step and step and step and step and boot in and yelled out her own individual words. If you can't beat them, join them. Right. And part part of the fun of the conga is nobody can work out what the words are. ah So we get several different versions of the silly conga song.
01:14:16
Speaker
But by the time the conga line has reached its climax, it is becoming a murderous mob Right. Before we talk about the murderous war op though, can we real quick talk about Helen and Brother Milo? Yes! Which I think is the other most notable bit of the conga. So, Helen's version of the Strike Force has been to take over the kitchens and provide sensual pleasures of food. Because they've all been eating horrible boarding school food.
01:14:41
Speaker
Until Helen comes in and is like, you could eat real food. It's fine. just Just put garlic in it. Just put garlic in it. This is pretty much the first thing she said. Thank goodness there's garlic. And the high head, who we later learn has a weak stomach, is horrified by this as he is by everything. And Helen has been involved in this sort of long flirtation with the head of the kitchens.
01:15:00
Speaker
And that there's something really compelling, I think, about like, she's been trying to seduce him. He says, I'm naturally celibate. I keep my oath. And then they both join in the conga.
01:15:12
Speaker
And his words are decline and fall and conquer is what he sings to the the conga. And she realizes that after the conga, he is going to break his oath with her. And she feels as much sadness as triumph.
01:15:27
Speaker
Like there's something, this is something that was in fact important to him, that she is coming in and disturbing and destroying. Yeah, it's it's it's weirdly touching. Weirdly sad in a way. that like they will but The book does want you to feel sympathy for the brothers and their society, their honesty, this thing they take so seriously, ah which is why I think the book is really very unduly kind to the
Citadel Chaos and Environmental Issues
01:15:54
Speaker
high head. It's so kind to the high head.
01:15:57
Speaker
It seems like it's not going to be because as you said, the end of the Congo line comes up and they're all yelling, let's pull the high head's legs off, let's finish the old bastard. Which is great. And you get Edward, his one friend, the Citadel, ah runs ahead of the line and tells him, you have got to leave. yeah There is no way you will survive this.
01:16:17
Speaker
The entire Citadel has turned its magic against you. Flee. So he runs for it. He runs for it. He ends up back in the Pentarchy, by pure coincidence, or is it because there is this sense of gods at work behind the scenes, um stumbling into an old lady in fluffy boots who's on her way to see the king.
01:16:42
Speaker
And Gladys takes one look at the high head and says, oh, you look just like my poor dear old husband isn't who died so long ago and had a weak stomach just like you.
01:16:56
Speaker
Right, it's clear that he is the analogue of Gladys' dead husband. But also, we should talk about what Gladys did before that. Before she meets the high head, she arrives in the Pentarchy with Todd. They've ended up travelling together across the border.
01:17:10
Speaker
ah She sends Todd off to deal with the Zilla situation because she has something else to do. First, she summons the gods of the environment in Pentarchy. She's going to solve the climate crisis. There is this real... like So the Pentarchy, the book is divided into nine parts. We spent some time talking about the structure before we did this recording and we're like, could we use the nine parts to...
01:17:34
Speaker
No, not really. the structure is strange. It definitely works. It does what Jones wants it to do.
01:17:45
Speaker
But it's like the first four sections are really small. Section nine is half the book. What is this? I just thought eventually this felt like episodes of a TV series. Yeah. ah Section 9 all takes place in the Pentarchy, and suddenly there's all kinds of new... It's the last 100 pages of the book, which is about a 400-page book, at least in my edition. And suddenly there's all this new high fantasy stuff that starts coming in because we're finally on the Pentarchy.
01:18:11
Speaker
Gladys summons a whole bunch of gods. We didn't even know there was more than one god before Gladys lands on the ground. They have all been mentioned before. I did notice that people swear by them or bring them up brilliantly but they've never been explained in any detail or taken seriously. It's just like, oh, the fantasy monks in the sci-fi fortress ah swear by the pearl or whoever. Right.
01:18:34
Speaker
ah So she lands and summons a whole bunch of gods. Todd goes off and starts contacting all his friends and relations, and suddenly there's this whole complex, like, political-social hierarchy going on with Todd and new characters coming in that he has all these complicated relationships with that feel honestly like sequel bait.
01:18:53
Speaker
But it's like there's she's trying to cram this whole rich, detailed second-world fantasy space, which she hasn't really done very much before. You know, she's only done a couple of real second-world fantasies. into the last hundred pages of this book that already has so much happening
Maximalist Style and Creativity Metaphor
01:19:09
Speaker
in it. The word we kept coming back to was maximalist. Yes. This book is everything. No more everything than that.
01:19:17
Speaker
Right. Why should I use 30 characters I've already got? No, I think Todd needs some more characters to hang out with at this juncture in time. Plus a hundred centaurs. Although, you know what? Actually, that last bit reminds me of a little bit, which I don't think I said to you beforehand, but I was thinking about is there is a certain Prince Caspian quality to the end of this book.
01:19:38
Speaker
Everything, the magic all freed and rushing towards this point to overcome the evil. There's a bunch of centaurs suddenly. There's the gods have come down. Right. The book is about cutting loose and going with what's wild and what's natural and what can't be controlled and shouldn't be controlled. And as as usual with Diana Wynne-Jones, I do think it's a creativity metaphor.
01:20:03
Speaker
But is it not a creativity metaphor? yeah And therefore the book does need to go go a bit nuts at the end. And boy, does it. There is so much going on.
01:20:14
Speaker
There's even, i mean, it's it's explicitly a creativity metaphor because Zilla has a conversation with the high head in the middle of the book where is' like, this fortress is so bare. Why is there no art in it?
01:20:25
Speaker
And the high head says, well, art would disturb our vibrations. But they need the art. They need the creativity. They need the wild magic. They need to need to dance. and then So we've got Zillow trapped in an evil ritual to control Marcus.
01:20:41
Speaker
We've got Todd driving his own car with a hundred centaurs to the rescue. We've got Gladys stomping across the countryside with the high
Hell Dimensions and Soul Bonding
01:20:50
Speaker
head. Up and off, there appears to be an orgy going on. right Back on Earth, Maureen and Joe are ah imprisoned deep in ah the hell dimensions together as Maureen fights him off. And then they all end up in the evil matriarchy.
01:21:05
Speaker
Except Maureen and Jo. Maureen and Jo never interacted with anybody else in the book. it' Like after that first set up with Maureen, Maureen and Jo spend the entire book locked in Mortal Kombat and then the end of their plot line is they come out of the Mortal Kombat and are like, well, we're both tired. And I guess we're eternally inextricably bound Yeah, they've got a soul bond now. Yeah.
01:21:25
Speaker
Okay. um And the king is there. The king has come to leave. Not to Maureen and Jo. Sorry, I realized that was unclear. Right. So actually, no, before we all get to Leith, we do get Gladys encounters the king and explains to him what was going on with the climate problems in the Pentarchy. Which is, the Pentarchy has been stealing so much stuff from our world that it has become bloated and damaged by ideas theft, basically, and needs to be giving something back. And until it does so, it's going to keep having environmental problems.
01:22:02
Speaker
Which is unfortunate because it turns out then that all of the women who went to the monastery are really happy there in their new as queens of the new orgy and don't want to go home. And Gladys is like, they have so many ideas. That's not helping the imbalance problem at all.
01:22:17
Speaker
Right. So back in Leeds, we finally wrap up the Zilla plot with the but The ritual plays out. I don't find this part very interesting, honestly. No, I don't think it is that interesting. It just doesn't really gel, except that Gladys marches in and Gladys' familiar Jimbo spots Lady Marceny and is like, there there is my eternal enemy and it's the demon inside her that's been drinking Mark. It's been Jimbo's prey the whole time and he seizes her and there's a great sequence. I think this is actually the whole reason that Maureen and Jo are in hell.
01:22:53
Speaker
they hell They look up and they see plunging down from above, which humanityity down to the very, very depths of hell, hell, extra hell, ah two fighting demons and a spray of blood around them, which is all that's left of Lady Marceny. You're right. That is why they're there. And then immediately they're like, well, fuck this. We're going home to our terrible soul bond.
01:23:15
Speaker
that um But yeah, there's this stuff at the end. Like, Mark arrives, he and Harrell are reunited, mar and Mark Harrell and Zilla and Marcus are going to be a family that, like, should be the emotional resolution of this book and just isn't.
01:23:31
Speaker
It's barely there. I'll tell you what the actual emotional resolution seems to be. It's Gladys deciding that to balance all the ideas that have been stolen from Earth, she needs to take someone with a lot of ideas back with her to Earth, like, say, a very experienced and powerful wizard. Who happens to look exactly like her ex-husband.
01:23:53
Speaker
I want to just stop at this moment and spare a thought for Gladys' daughter.
Relationships and Ending Analysis
01:23:58
Speaker
Oh my God. When she returns her mother's cats, we'll discover her mother is now shacked up with her dead father's parallel universe analog.
01:24:08
Speaker
This poor woman suffers more than anyone else. in the book And in fact, the high head is like, I have forsworn women. And Gladys is like, it's all right. I've been a widow for years. They are definitely going to fuck. Absolutely going to fuck. um And it's so like it is really striking to me again how easy the high head gets off. how There are two great evils in the book, right? There's Lady Marceny, who is a demon from hell and who gets exploded through the hell dimensions. yup
01:24:40
Speaker
And then there's the high head who has to live with Gladys. yes All right. when you put it like that. But it is, I mean, I do think that's part of the lack of control of this book, right? Like one of the things that we've noted throughout the course of this project has been in almost every book, there's a sense that Diana Wynne-Jones knows that the problem in the family, in a family, in any given family is often the husband, but the anger that she feels is for the wife.
01:25:12
Speaker
I remember all the way back in Cart and Quidder, it's it's, I can see that Clennon is more to blame. Right. I'm angrier with Lenina.
01:25:23
Speaker
Right. And in the books of hers that she writes with care and control, when she's thinking about it, that comes through. You can see how much the vitriol is, ah the the unwarranted vitriol is unfair, that there is equal blame on both sides, even, or more blame.
01:25:41
Speaker
Even in Black Mariah, which again, you know, and we talked about last time, that's a book that can, I think, feel quite misogynistic. But she's careful to put in signs and clues that she knows what an evil patriarchy can do and that it's often worse.
01:25:56
Speaker
She's not bothering really to do that here. There's a kind of, you know, the the vitriol about terrible old women is at its height.
01:26:08
Speaker
In the same book that, again, is about the problems of misogyny, about how you need to let women into all-male spaces, about Zilla coming into her own as a happy adult, a happy adult woman.
01:26:23
Speaker
And it feels like those two things are somehow connected. Yeah. I do think it's...
01:26:32
Speaker
You're right. It's a lack of control, which is, I think, necessary for the book as well. i I think this book done with more care and control would lack something else. It would lack some of its... It's so bonkers, Becca. It's all about... It's weird. Big, weird set pieces, big, weird emotions. I'm actually... So i know we're coming towards the end. I am going to read what I think is Zilla's climax in the book, which is when she finally gets in touch with her wild magic.
01:27:00
Speaker
And it says, wild it was. It lifted her in an exultant cheating gust so long and so far that she lost all sense of time or of her own body. She was all mind for a nanosecond that seemed to last a thousand years. Understanding filter.
01:27:13
Speaker
This was why she had always ducked out, refused training in witchcraft, run from Amanda's kind of education. The restraints of knowledge harmed this wild power. In order to use it, Zilla could not know what it was.
01:27:24
Speaker
It would only answer a being as untrammeled as itself. It was wildness. Zilla hung on in its exultant Aurora Borealis, exalting herself because she had always known this about wild magic, really.
01:27:37
Speaker
that's how she wrote the book. Yeah. Which is interesting. it actually makes me think of what what what's the Le Guin line? what why do women Why can't women think? Why do they have to feel? It's um Zilla gets vindicated in how frustrating she is.
01:27:56
Speaker
Yes. Zilla is right to reject everything that, say, her feminist professor sister has done to encourage her to have a career, to have magical training. Zilla is fine the way she is, which is also the climax of a Crestabancy book, incidentally. Yes, so true. but And it does feel like a turning point. you know we We've talked a little bit about how it feels like in the short stories in Black Mariah, how Dinah Wendones has been kind of yearning towards writing about adult women.
01:28:25
Speaker
And it does feel like a turning point that she can sort of apply this kind of, okay, you're fine the way you it you are. Some of it's kind of terrible, but that's okay. That's the way you need to be to an adult woman heroine.
01:28:38
Speaker
Yes. But it does also feel like that comes, at least in this book, this first reaching towards it, this first sort of big explosion of energy for writing this kind of adult fantasy.
01:28:50
Speaker
That in order to say, it's, I, you know, I feel okay being a woman, writing about being a woman, inhabiting this creative space as a woman. There also has to be this counterbalance of, but not like that.
01:29:01
Speaker
Not like that woman. Yeah. we do also have to have the evil matriarchy. yeah And that bitch does have to get exploded. But it is it is it is the unfairness, though, of that bitch has to get exploded.
01:29:15
Speaker
But that bastard, that demon, and, you know, the high head is the demon who's haunted Zilla for years, who stalked teenage children, who genuinely believed that all the other world's inhabitants were not human and never bothered to question it once. Yes.
01:29:33
Speaker
Who... sent her or rather drove her into this very dangerous situation like zilla only ends up in leith because she's running away from the high head and what he's done in the citadel and and frankly out of his possessive cruel jealousy yes like this guy is a monster he doesn't know he's a monster he thinks he's just a nice old man who likes to eat potatoes and and who frankly like even if the inhabitants of other worlds aren't human it's still not okay to climate change their planet no no it's not so all of this this evil which we get really clearly in the middle of the book this is the evil at the heart it doesn't look like evil it looks like a nice old man but it is evil but then it covered that but then we we turn on the dime say actually no the real evil was this but was this nasty old woman over here yes who's barely been on page
01:30:27
Speaker
Yeah. And I think actually we spent the high head is the deuteragonist. ah He is the male lead of the book. yes And we spend so much time with him. It's almost like Jones can't quite bring herself then to give him the unhappy ending he thoroughly deserves. It's getting displaced onto an evil woman.
01:30:46
Speaker
I think he deserved to be exploded through hell as well, honestly. Yeah, maybe. I think they at least, did whatever happened to them should have happened to both of them, is what I think. Maybe she should have been torn apart by a murderous conga mob, you know?
01:30:58
Speaker
Maybe she should have had to go live with Gladys. I feel like Gladys Lady Marceny would be a matter-anti-matter explosion because I think it's very, very clear that they are the same woman, kind of. Yes. Both of them with this demon companion and this terrible power and the aspect of the crone.
01:31:23
Speaker
But one of them is larger selfish, larger than life, thoroughly herself, laudatory. And one of them is selfish, larger than life, thoroughly herself, derogatory. And incidentally, wears makeup and heels.
01:31:36
Speaker
And incidentally, wears makeup and heels. Except it's never incidental. The fact of the evil matriarchies' polished femininity is your biggest sign that they are evil.
01:31:48
Speaker
Yes. There's the finalized misogyny. Their soft, high, charming voices is ah something that's returned to over and over again with intent to manipulate. Like, I think that's really... that So I was... I happened to be reading The Dispossessed at the same time that I was reading this book. And there's a term that Ursula Le Guin uses frequently in The Dispossessed called body profiteering.
01:32:12
Speaker
And it feels like that's the thing that Diana Wynne-Jones is angry about here. It's the use of your femininity for manipulative purposes... That is the unforgivable thing.
01:32:23
Speaker
Yeah. And that's why a character like, say, Roz, who is wrong, is still treated with with love and and and affection by the narrative, I think, and eventually gets to, if you can't beat him, join him.
01:32:37
Speaker
Yes. Whereas ah Lady Marsden and the Ladies of Leith get no such generous treatment. Yep.
Excitement for 'Hexwood' Discussion
01:32:45
Speaker
But that's okay, because next time we're going to be talking about a very evil old man who does get exactly what he deserves.
01:32:50
Speaker
Yes! It has been three seasons. Well, two and a half seasons to get us to Hexwood. I cannot wait to talk about Hexwood. What a book. The book. But I also don't think Hexwood would have been possible if she hadn't written The Sudden Wild Magic first.
01:33:08
Speaker
I absolutely agree. I think it's vital and necessary and I'm really excited to reread Hexwood having just read A Sudden Wild Magic and look at what she's taught herself from A Sudden Wild Magic because I think she's learned a lot from it.
01:33:23
Speaker
Alright, let's call it there. Let's call it there. See you next time. See you next time.