I’m two chapters into Sing the Four Quarters, the first book on Tanya Huff’s Quarters quartet… well, no wonder they just say ‘Quarters Novels’ on the cover.
Our heroine is pregnant. (It’s not a spoiler if it’s on the back of the book!) She’s also bisexual. Gay ‘joinings’ are permitted in the Quarters world, so this is utterly no big deal. Also there’s no stigma against abortion.
Tanya Huff, you are awesome. Why have I not read these books before? (Okay, it’s because the library hardly ever had them in, and I think when I tried to read Fifth Quarter I just didn’t get into it. Anyway…)
There’s a line in Princess Maker 2, where your daughter is writing you a letter in the game sum-up: “It’s thanks to your care that I’ve grown up so healthy.” That’s the phrase I think of when I think of reading Tanya Huff and Tamora Pierce as a teenager, in terms of attitudes towards gender and sexuality. I have an untyped essay on the varied portrayals of sex in Pierce’s books. I think of these books that I love, and I’m grateful for their example that allowed me to ‘grow up so healthy’.
For example, possibly the only time I was uncomfortable in Mass Effect – there’s a species called the Krogan who were subjected to what is called the ‘genophage’, which basically rendered most of them sterile. In one scene, you have to talk the Krogan member of your team into agreeing to let you destroy a cure for the genophage (it makes tactical sense in the game). I found this really difficult because I have a fundamental belief that one should not interfere in the reproductive capabilities of another people.
But – what? How did I even develop such a belief? I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of eugenics, say, but in terms of other sentient species. As in aliens, as in fantasy races. That, before it ever occurred to me as a girl that you could apply the same idea to a human race; to so much as a single person. I developed the disgust in a fantasy context, before I ever realised that the issue was relevant to our world.
For which I can thank Tanya Huff. In Wizard of the Grove, one of the things Crystal (the titular hero) sets to right is what the first wizards did – created a race of werewolves, but ensured that they would never be able to easily reproduce. And that’s the book that ingrained in me how very important reproductive rights are.
Who says that fantasy never teaches you anything? I’m just glad I read the books I did, that I had such healthy models to replace the distorting ones.
I read an interview with a male fantasy novelist once, talking about his few female characters – because that’s how the world was, you know, to have women had babies, and so didn’t have the power that he was interested in telling their stories, in that fantasy world.
Well, gee, isn’t that what fantasy’s for? If you’ve thought enough about it to defend your choice, couldn’t you have thought a little harder and come up with a way to have a more equal world?
No wonder I didn’t bother to remember his name; he’s obviously not writing the types of books I want to read.
Tanya Huff is.
