Molluscs and Monsters

I just wrapped up the Fortress series by CJ Cherryh. I want to stress that I *enjoyed* all of it, but I think that's the first time I've ever seen a competently written, solid book series go downhill with every subsequent book. It started with solid characters and an interesting premise, and while it mostly kept those things, it gradually crept its way closer and closer to generic high fantasy.

Spoilers follow, nothing will make sense if you haven't read the books:

It also made a plot point of the main characters not getting to interact anymore, which added tension to the second book but I think sapped the strength of the others, especially as subsequently introduced characters were also isolated. If you're going to make "your relationships with others are your real strength, and isolation is the tool of your enemy no matter the justification" a core theme, you should at least have everyone together in your resolution, right?

Unsurprisingly, the two strongest characters in the series are the main characters, Tristen and Cefwyn, and the relationship between the two in spite of all the many forces trying to wedge them apart is the heart of the story from beginning to end. The people Tristen loves are his compass as he tries to navigate both being a magic-wrought weapon of uncertain purpose and a person with his own needs and fears, and while Uwen is arguably his most steadfast anchor to humanity, no one rivals Cefwyn for sheer affection and attachment. (We could talk about a homoromantic reading of this relationship, but that'd be a whole different essay.) In Fortress In The Eye Of Time, we actually see that relationship being built and explored; in later books, especially with their isolation from each other, we don't get to see that relationship build further, even as we're told repeatedly that it's still paramount. As Cefwyn and Tristen both come into their own, and Tristen especially changes dramatically, they also lose more and more avenues of contact, first to physical distance, then to both magical and mundane interference in the messages they send to each other. 

This also eats away at Tristen's interactions with Ninevrise, another important person in his brief existence. Emuin is physically near Tristen, but deliberately isolates himself from Tristen as Tristen comes into his own and Emuin fears influencing or accidentally being influenced by Tristen. This reasoning is better explained in Dragons, but that doesn't really make it feel less contrived. Uwen's time, meanwhile, is taken up more and more by management of the household. Crissand, a key ally and companion introduced in Fortress of Eagles, and the first friendly representative of the people of Amefel to join the main cast, exists in Owls and Dragons mostly to give Tristen someone to bounce strategy off of and remind the reader that a lot of people want Tristen to be High King whether Tristen wants that or not. Crissand is also pried away under frankly pretty weak pretenses for most of Fortress of Dragons, a turn just barely justified by the fact that the main antagonist is directly manipulating peoples' minds to get as much division and distance as possible between Tristen and his allies even as Crissand's own latent power directs him to important information. This is a real shame, as Crissand has his own interesting personal conflicts as the son of a would-be rebel leader, survivor of a massacre carried out by a Ylesuin authority, and ardent supporter of a hypothetical Sidhe high king against the Marhanen, who finds in Tristen both exactly the leader and loyal friend he's long dreamed of having and an implacable supporter of the current Marhanen king.

On Cefwyn and Ninevrise's end- because I cannot shake the impression that Ninevrise is supposed to be a main character on equal standing with Cefwyn and Tristen, whatever the actual result- they're separated from each other more and more by the separate spheres they occupy in the court. Emuin and Idrys, the remaining two people in Cefwyn's closest circle, are kept from him by physical distance and working very very hard to prevent an assassination/overthrow, respectively. Poor Ninevrise sees most of her core support die in the first book, and whoever is left is behind enemy lines until the climax: we, the reader, don't even get to meet the people she's been isolated from, nor does Ninevrise single out particular names very often even when discussing her distress at the separation. 

Again, I fully understand that this is the point. Isolation is the primary tactic of their enemy, but more importantly, it's the real conflict of the series. But isolation only works in contrast to unity and togetherness. Fortress in the Eye of Time, by itself, did a great job with this, with characters at their most distressed and vulnerable when separated or doubting each others' intentions, and at their strongest and most sure when reaffirming their bonds with each other. Fortress of Eagles upped the stakes on the same core conflict, in a different, more political context. But every subsequent book seemed to pay lip service to it, while focusing more and more on the typical high fantasy issues of military movement and action, courtly intrigue and maneuvering, and of course powerful forces of dark magic Doing Things and threatening to escape confinement. The end tries to bring all the disparate parts together, but it's rushed and awkward, without the emotional force it needs to stick the landing.

On a different tangent entirely, while I'm not going into a traditionally published high fantasy series from the 90s, by an author from the 70s-80s (even if she was a lesbian), with high hopes for gender or sexual diversity, another thing that suffered as the books went on was the depiction of female characters. Ninevrise gets less and less to do as the series goes on; she's a far stronger presence in the first book, where she's only introduced more than halfway through, than in, say, the third or fourth, where she's present the whole time and gets a lot more page space. She's at her best in later books when interacting with Cefwyn, and here I will give credit where it's due and say their miniature war councils do a good job of both establishing Ninevrise as Cefwyn's strategic equal and making me believe a heterosexual romance is actually built on mutual affection and respect, a tragic rarity in my personal experience as a reader. But we hardly see her outside these conferences, where she serves primarily as another of Cefwyn's allies as he tries to rein in the court, and in Dragons all the focus is on her pregnancy, her feelings about Tarien's pregnancy, and her ability to carry messages from Tristen. The other women of the northern court are mostly pawns to push around or foils and minor antagonists for Ninevrise. Orien starts as a formiddable (though stereotypically sexual/seductive) antagonist in her own right, with motives that are compelling if not complex. She is a pawn of a greater power, she doesn't understand what she's getting into, but she's interesting in that love-to-hate way good antagonists are. She disappears for two books, then comes back just to lurk menacingly in the background until she can try to steal her sister's baby. One could argue that this is a part of her character arc, that the gradual hollowing out of what was once a whole if horrible person reflects the similar hollowing out of Hasufin, who is no longer a person in any meaningful sense at all, but if that was the point it would have worked better if we'd been given the chance to watch it happen. Tarien, meanwhile, seems to exist for the sole purpose of being pregnant and jealous. For good or ill, it would have been nice to see her interact with Ninevrise more I think? And Auld Syes is more or less a recurring plot device.

Both these issues are just... kinda weird given these are Cherryh books. Usually my problem with Cherryh books is the high frequency of sexual predators (and no, she does not get points for making those sexual predators women instead of men), but it's a testament to the strength of her writing that I keep trying to read her stuff anyway. The places where this series failed are not places I would expect from her. It makes me wonder if there was some interference from an editor or publisher, or if she just couldn't conceive of a high fantasy setting with the same flexibility and potential as her science fiction settings. Really, most of my complaints here could be solved with few or no changes to the plot if we just spent more time on characterization, including that of secondary/minor characters, with an emphasis on the bonds they value or discard. (Then again, I'm a LeGuin fan, and I understand my idea of an appropriate amount of time spent on people existing and relating to each other without directly driving the plot is what many other people consider a book-killing slow pace.)

So that was a lot of poorly structured rambling, but the TL:DR is this: while I swear in spite of all my complaining that these books are worth reading, it wouldn't be the worst idea to read Fortress in the Eye of Time as a standalone and treat the rest of the series as optional supplementary worldbuilding.