Book completed

Jaran by Kate Elliott. I hadn’t heard of this SFF author until I read about her in an interview(?) with Martha Wells, but our library had her first book (from 32 years ago), so I checked it out and eventually got it read. It’s the story of a young woman, Tess, who finds herself living with and adopted by a group of low-tech nomads living in a vast grassland. She fits in with them in some ways but also holds herself apart, because she’s really from this world’s university city. The cover shows her riding on a horse, and a man doing likewise, and a fancy building of vaguely Islamic-looking architecture. I assumed it was a fantasy story.

But no. It’s actually science fiction. Humanity has been conquered by an alien species, which controls many worlds, and so far the only revolt that’s come near to succeeding was led by a man named Charles – and when the revolt failed, the mysterious aliens didn’t imprison or execute him. Instead, they inexplicably made him a duke and gave him a bunch of planets to rule over, including this one. And his much younger sister and heir is our Tess. She can’t tell the grassland people any of this, though, because they have no idea about interplanetary things. They even think those aliens are just religious pilgrims from the other side of their ocean.

The story was interesting, but I was disappointed by the amount of death and violence, and the people’s acceptance of it as inevitable and normal. The author even kills off the only truly nice person, Tess’s adopted brother. I don’t think I’ll make it a high priority to read the other three books in the series, but I guess it’s possible. They do sound relatively interesting – some conflicts arising between Tess’s brother and one of the most important of the grassland people, who has become her husband.

Tempest

This year's play for Free Shakespeare in the Park is The Tempest, one of my favorites. We had some smoke in the morning, but it was gone by noon, and even though my energy level continues to be pretty low, I managed to get myself there for the 6 pm showtime. First I read an academic paper on the ways that Shakespeare anticipated some of Darwin's ideas in this play; the paper was written by the father of my new friend who lives nearby. My favorite phrase was this pun: "prescient, although pre-science."

The sound system was distressingly loud at first, although they turned it down after the storm scene, so it was mostly okay, although the banter between Trinculo and Stephano was sometimes too loud for me too, as were Prospero's angry scenes. If I go again, I could bring earplugs I guess. Overall, I enjoyed it well enough. The actor who played Prospero had been Macbeth (and several earlier roles) and also composed the music for Ariel's songs; he's a competent actor. The young woman who played Prince Ferdinand was pretty good, as were a few of the male aristocrats and the two clowns. Caliban was okay. Ariel was... great! Having a great Ariel makes all the difference.

So now I think I've seen The Tempest three times, if we don't count Forbidden Planet. The first was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival when I was a teenager, with my mom. They were fantastic, and I'm probably not qualified to judge whether anyone could do it better. The second time was at our neighborhood middle school. And this one, of course, falls somewhere in between.

J came by on his bike when I was arriving, and then came back past later and took a photo, which he sent to me before he went home. I'm on the right with the bare shoulder.