Readercon: Lois, Megan, and Tammy; Miles, Gen, and Alanna
Friday, 10 July 2026, 11:24 pm -![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kate_nepveuPanel the first! As soon as the con is done I must dive back into work, so I'm trying to be very prompt and quick about panel notes.
Lois, Megan, and Tammy; Miles, Gen, and Alanna
Bethany Powell, Kate Nepveu (moderator), Marissa Lingen, Sophia Babai, Victoria Janssen
Fans of Lois McMaster Bujold often speak of both Megan Whalen Turner and Tamora Pierce in the same breath, saying their writing and characterization feel the same, that these women are writing in the same vein, scratching the same itch for their readers. Why are these writers being grouped together by fans? How are their works in conversation with each other? Are there additional authors and series that belong on the same list?
As usual, my notes are sketchy when I'm moderating and it's easiest for me to remember what I've said. Also I turned into a pumpkin some time ago this evening. Please correct me if I've misremembered something or ask if I've been too cryptic. Or, you know, just chime in!
I opened by saying that most of us were a little puzzled by the premise of the panel. Bethany had been recommended Vorkosigan via the Queen's Thief fandom as, if you like trickster stories... Marissa thought that, on reflection, all three had a Dorothy Dunnett influence: very chiaroscuro, high highs and low lows, especially in the YA context when Turner and Pierce started. Also all very concerned about the apparatus of the state. (Sophia, later: all very interested in the connections between the personal and the political.) Victoria noted that all three have a lot of characters getting through traumas and being really dramatically changed by it, which can be very compelling especially if you're reading in a fandom. Sophia thought there was more Dunnett-esque stuff in Pierce's Emelan books, in terms of the character Briar and the worldbuilding. Unfortunately two of the Circle Opens books (Magic Steps and Street Magic) are virulently racist, far beyond the kind of bog-standard racism of the Alanna quartet or Turner's treatment of the various thinly veiled historical inspirations in her series. I asked what else people might caveat their recommendations of these three authors for. Bethany: a friend really dislikes narrators withholding information and therefore could not with The Thief. Many people noted the extremely ... difficult to characterize without major spoilers but morally complex and troubling ... nature of Queen of Attolia, the second Turner book. Marissa: there's a lot of sexual violence in the Vorkosigan series. Also, to shift to Bujold's other major world, the Chalion-verse, takes place in a setting in which the clear Islamic analogue is demonstrably wrong. Me: yeah, it was a bad day when I learned that The Curse of Chalion—which I'd really enjoyed!—was "what if Isabella and Ferdinand were awesome?" Someone pointed out, possibly also Marissa, that one thing that those works shared with Pierce and Turner were pantheons with pretty personal relationships with the characters. Somewhere I noted that I hadn't remembered the last book of the Queen's Thief series at all, and I'd just reread it last night. It was interesting that the narrator of that is also a physically disabled young man in an aristocratic society, but in a very different way than Miles. An audience member asked about the famous Bujold writing advice of thinking of the worst thing you can do to your character and then doing it. Marissa: terrible advice. Often what writers think of as "the worst" are very common things, none of which is really the worst, either specific to that character or in general. (Me: I'm relistening to The Odyssey and every time Odysseus says he's suffered like no-one else ever, I'm like, what about the slaves you've taken from the cities you've sacked?) Should be something like, of the things that it would be interesting to have happen to your character, do the worst of them. Sophia, I think: Queen of Attolia is about what the character thinks the worst thing would be and then what it actually is. A number of other authors and works were suggested: Victoria, I think Marissa, and I all suggested Elizabeth Wein. Victoria suggested The Sunbird, particularly since it does move from Britain-or-equivalent to Africa-or-equivalent. I caveated that the first book of the series is even more incest than one would expect from Arthuriana. I also recommended Code Name Verity for the Lymond protagonist; caveat, it's World War II. Sophia: some actual Indian writers: Indra Das; Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta. Also if you've seen me on a panel before, you've already heard me say it, but The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. Marissa: Ellen Kushner. Caroline Stevermer. (I would not have thought of Stevermer, who I adore, in this context, but everyone should read When the King Comes Home anyway.) ? Bethany: The Poet Empress by Shen Tao, dark and messed up (my paraphrase even more than usual!) Sophia: She Who Became the Sun, Shelley Parker-Chan audience: T. Kingfisher? me: Pierce yes, very interested in craft and competence. not sure about the others. audience: withholding narrators? Sophia: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn. Me: a little bit The Incandescent by Emily Tesh but it's third person so it doesn't seem the same as The Thief. Some Desperate Glory is wonderfully unreliable in a totally different way. someone, possibly from the audience: The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie (also interesting gods). also the Imperial Radch trilogy (me: more than once, we only know the narrator's crying because someone asks her about it! why should she tell us such a thing?) someone recommends The Captive Prince trilogy by C.S. Pascat. (Caveats: slavery; racism.) Bethany: The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills. Marissa: Dunnett starter rec, standalone historical King Hereafter, which is Macbeth without Shakespeare. (Also an audience member, possibly the one who'd put the panel suggestion in? had a very kind compliment about the discussion.) And that was time.panel notes
edit: here is the Strange Horizons article I was thinking of: Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence. I gather that we couldn't staff a panel jumping off from it this year, but hopefully next.
+1 (thumbs-up, I see you, etc.)?
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