On Rereading the Morgaine Stories

After reading Maya Deane’s Wrath Goddess Sing and realizing that reading novels feels different to me now, I pulled my very yellowed copy of C.J. Cherryh’s Gate of Ivrel off the shelf just to see what I thought of it now.

I feel emotions now, on estrogen, in a way I never did before in my life, so that’s one thing that makes reading stories feel very different from before. Also, it’s been probably near 35 years since I’d read Gate of Ivrel and it’s interesting how while I remember the general concept of the series I remember very very little of the specifics after all these years! And now I’m part way into Well of Shiuan.

I remember liking the Morgaine stories, but I think now I’m realizing why in a way I did not understand as a teen.

Vanye did not exactly have a happy childhood, did not get along well with people generally, and ends up forced out entirely alone, where he meets Morgaine, who is completely alone. They end up setting off together and barely talk to each other, and Morgaine pretty well never explains anything to him, he can only obey whatever scattered instructions she gives him. Along the way here and there they’ll meet someone whose life is going downhill so fast they feel that joining this pair is their best option, going on some painful, frightening mission that they don’t understand.

That is to say, it felt very realistic! Just like real life! The usual stories always had all these people constantly talking to the protagonist, telling them stuff. Totally unlike how real life worked for me. I assumed it was a story-telling thing, you have this very unrealistic thing of everyone talking to the main character constantly, and maybe all the characters always talking to each other, so that the reader has something to read.

Now, as a woman, people actually do talk to me, tell me what’s going on. It’s very strange to suddenly realize that maybe the part of the story where people are telling each other what’s going on was not meant to be basically like the part of the story with the dragons, as far as how similar to the reader’s real life it is.