Recent reading

[luzula]

Black Water Sister, by Zen Cho (2021)
Well, I'm grateful someone chose this for book club, because it was excellent! Very engaging and readable style, immersive setting in a culture I know nothing about, and I was hooked by the plot and characters. It's about a young woman who moves back to Malaysia and becomes haunted by the ghost of her grandmother. Or that's how it starts, anyway. I remember Sorcerer to the Crown had that same readable quality, but the ending just didn't work for me. In this one, I thought the ending was great: it leaves a number of things open, but that was fine by me. Also, it feel simultaneously like the personal stakes are higher in this book than in Sorcerer to the Crown, while at the same time it has a smaller-scale, more domestic setting? Which I liked.

The Jacobites by Daniel Szechi (2019)
Am I not done with this subject yet? Apparently not. Anyway, this was a very good complement to what I've read before, in that it spent very little time on the course of the '45, and more on other stuff. I might write up some of it for cahn's salon of 18th century geeks, but the most interesting bit was how far the actual politics (as shown by their formal declarations) of the exiled Stuarts had departed from that of the autocratic James II when he was kicked out, and turned into something that was...kind of its opposite.

Which makes sense! There was always a struggle over power between the monarch and the parliament (and other power bases), and if the king is actually in exile and not on the throne, he's in a uniquely bad bargaining position. He's dependent on his supporters to get the throne back, and pretty much has to agree to what they want. By 1708, James III (and BPC after him) was promising such things as three-year terms for parliament, all ministers and judges appointed by parliament, religious toleration (but no Catholics in office--and wouldn't that have been bitter for James II to swallow), the king could not set foreign policy on his own, etc. And they agreed that if the king broke these agreements, then parliament could kick him out. No doubt if any of these kings had actually ended up on the throne, they would've tried to get power back, like William III did after the Glorious Revolution, disappointing the radical Whigs, but they'd be starting from a bad bargaining position.

ETA: Here is the detailed write-up.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

That's so interesting about the about-face in politics on the part of the exiled Stuarts! As you say, it makes perfect sense, although it is not what a person with a cursory knowledge of the history would probably expect from Jacobite politics.

It's funny how often the actual politics of a situation are exactly the opposite of what an outsider might expect. I remember professors in college having to patiently explain to us that, in fact, although you might EXPECT the Communists to care about poor people, in actual fact the Bolsheviks in Russia consistently took the attitude "Fuck the peasants."

[luzula]

It is very interesting! But of course it still wasn't radical in the sense of emancipating/empowering poor people. The elite Jacobites were mostly social conservatives who wanted poor people to know their feudal place, I guess they just wanted influence for Parliament which was elected by people like them. Although there definitely were poor people in riots shouting Jacobite slogans as well, probably on the principle of "fuck the current government making us pay high taxes".

in actual fact the Bolsheviks in Russia consistently took the attitude "Fuck the peasants."

Well, peasants =/= workers, right? The peasants had to be broken out of their individual farms and made to farm the way the Bolsheviks wanted. Although of course the Bolsheviks often fucked workers over as well.

[chestnut_pod]

Oh, I'm so pleased you enjoyed Black Water Sister! I thought it was a delight, not least because it balanced Zen Cho's effervescent wit with her obvious talent for darker, creepier storytelling better than her previous full-lengths had. Have you read her (recently re-released) collection Spirits Abroad? It's older and so just slightly less masterful, and of course any collection/anthology has duds, but if BWS worked better for you than Sorcerer to the Crown, some of the shorts in Spirits Abroad might work just as well!

[luzula]

Thanks, I'll put Spirits Abroad on my list! I also really liked the language in BWS, it was just enjoyable to read and also added to the setting so much.

[regshoe]

I remember liking Sorcerer to the Crown but feeling like it didn't back up its good ideas with enough substance—but higher stakes combined with a smaller setting sounds like it might work a lot better, and I do like ghosts.

Interesting political stuff about the Stuarts! I wonder how people who'd supported them all along felt about their policies changing so much—in Flight of the Heron support for the Jacobites seems like very much a matter of personal loyalty rather than political views, but of course the real-life picture must have been somewhat different. Was there a balance between trying to win over people who wouldn't otherwise have supported the Stuarts vs. retaining the loyalty of ultra-conservatives who might have preferred a more James II/VII-like king? (Presumably the Catholic Jacobites didn't love the 'no Catholics in office' promise!).

[luzula]

The thing I didn't like about Sorcerer to the Crown was how the main character was so overpowered by the end, that when she took control, it was like the narrative saying "it's okay to have a dictator, just as long as it's a woman!" There's even a line saying triumphantly "magic isn't a democracy". It's not as if I liked the people who were in power before, but I don't actually trust her with that kind of power either. And the book felt like it just wanted me to be happy about it.

Yes, the Catholic Jacobites kind of lost out, especially the Irish ones. The thing is, it's not like they had anywhere else to turn, and the Stuarts were still Catholic themselves and were promising them full religious toleration. So they stuck with them. Re: loyalty, there seems to have been almost a religious sort of loyalty that was transmitted in the core Jacobite families. But also, the people alive during James II's days were not the same people alive during James III and BPC's days, so presumably the followers also changed. I'm going to write up more of this in Salon and link! : )

[regshoe]

Oh yes, that was another thing I disliked about it!

Thank you for doing the write-up—I look forward to reading it, this all sounds fascinating :D

[nnozomi]

Black Water Sister is high up on my list of books to order! It's promising to hear you liked it. My theory is that Zen Cho's work becomes irresistible to me when she uses Malaysian-English (ie her short stories and the Pure Moon novella, but not Sorcerer to the Crown and its sequel), so I'm glad to hear this one sounds likely to follow the same rule.

[luzula]

Yes, I really enjoyed the Malaysian-English! It added so much to the setting. I'll put the short stories and the novella on my list of books to check out, then, if they have a similar style.

[nnozomi]

Quick reply so it doesn't slip my mind: you can read some of the short stories online here: https://zencho.org/zen-cho-short-stories/
;)

[killclaudio]

That Jacobite book sounds really interesting! I expected the Jacobites to be mostly Catholics (like Keith did, lol), and I was so surprised when I started reading about it. But I suppose the political tides had changed a lot by then, and the best way to get supporters is to win over people who already have a grievance with the current monarch.

Sorcerer to the Crown is on my TBR, but I might go for Black Water Sister first, it sounds more the kind of thing I like. :)

[luzula]

Yeah, when you dig into it, it just gets more and more interestering. Or else I'm just obsessed, lol. I think if this was a larger fandom, I'd be reading fic instead, but now I'm just reading a lot of non-fiction about the period, instead...

Sorcerer to the Crown is on my TBR, but I might go for Black Water Sister first, it sounds more the kind of thing I like. :)

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