Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Anonymous asked: I wanna know more about the Hero and the Crown! i picked up McKinley's the blue sword one day but got distracted and for one reason or another never finished and now i'm trying to track her stuff down again

Oh, BABE, I’m actually jealous, I totally want to read Hero and the Crown again for the first time.  Buckle up, this is going to be quite a book rec.

Okay, so so so so SO, first things first, I don’t blame you for getting distracted during The Blue Sword, it’s a little more political machinations and army tactics and training than Hero and the Crown.  They take place in the same country, Damar, and they’re a set, but Blue Sword takes place hundreds of years later–to put it in perspective, Hero and the Crown happens in a time that’s still horses and knights and swordplay, whereas Blue Sword is a colonization, guns n’ steel, not quite up to telephones era.  Aerin, the main character from Hero and the Crown, is a legend and revered folk hero to the Damarians of Blue Sword, because Aerin is AMAZING.

All right, so, Hero and the Crown is the story of Aerin Dragon-killer, first sol of Damar (first sol being the highest female rank except for being actually married to the king).  Aerin is daughter of King Arlbeth and his witch-woman wife, who was the object of much suspicion from the country before her death, and even more suspicion afterward.  So that suspicion all spills over onto Aerin, who is tall and gawky and not good at being a first sol–in fact, she’s so spectacularly bad at being a first sol that some of her cousins are fairly convinced she’s illegitimate.  She breaks dishes just by being in the same room, she perpetually brings her sword (which she’s not supposed to have) and her saddle (which is for a warhorse rather than a lady’s pony) back to her chambers, she prefers to punch someone in the face rather than scheme, and, just to boot, she exhibits absolutely none of the royal line’s hereditary magic.  Basically, Aerin sucks at being a first sol, which would be fine with her if everyone didn’t expect her to be a first sol all the time.

And then one day Aerin takes her sword and her second-hand warhorse and something called kenet that makes you fireproof and goes to kill a dragon, and she finds out that, while she sucks at being a first sol, she does NOT suck at dragon slaying.  Events unfold from there.  Aerin is stubborn and hot-tempered and snarky and willful, she is everything I ever wanted to be as a kid.  Her perspective on life of “well THAT happened” is an absolute delight to read, and the world of Damar is glorious.

Other things I can guarantee you within the book include:

• a Big Ass Dragon (as opposed to the smaller annoying dragons Aerin largely handles)
  
• not one but two excellently constructed romantic plots (this might be the only book I’ve ever read where the protagonist is in love with two people and it’s…just not an issue, at all, ever, she’s just like ‘that happened’ and carries on fighting a war, this book is probably why I hate love triangles so much)
• magic EVERYWHERE (they call it the Gift and it kind of does shenanigans on its own once it’s strong enough)
• the Blue Sword, Gonturan, which Aerin carried long before she appeared in the eponymous novel
• wizards and mages and small trick-magicians
• a demon army
• AERIN

Other important characters include:

• Talat, Aerin’s second-hand warhorse, who was her father’s favorite horse until a sword cut rendered Talat lame in one leg, and YES, Talat is a character, fight me
  
• Tor, the first sola (heir to the throne), who is called ‘cousin’ in the general sense despite no apparent blood relation to Aerin, and who is at fault for the sword training, the dragon slaying, and probably the army raising, he is also one of the romances and he is HEART EYES over Aerin, I ship it
• Luthe, who I’m not gonna tell you much about because SPOILERS, but yeah, Luthe, FUCK YEAH, you’re going to need to trust me on that
  
• Galanna, another (very vain) cousin, she of the illegitimacy rumor-spreading, who Aerin once drugged so that she could sneak into Galanna’s rooms and shave off her eyebrows, and yes I included her so that I could add that tidbit
• Arlbeth, king of Damar, who gets a mention because he’s king and Aerin’s father, he’s very good at both
• Aerin’s army of wild dogs and hunting cats, who get a mention because??? Why wouldn’t they, that’s awesome
• Gonturan, who gets a mention on account of being awesome
• Maur, the Big Ass Dragon, who gets a mention on account of being a Big Ass Dragon
• AERIN

Basically: Hero and the Crown is amazing, buy it on Amazon here, and I love Robin McKinley like I love lungs, I don’t always think of it because it’s just there, and if you’re in the mood for any other vehemently delighted recs for McKinley’s books, I got you, hit me up.

Anonymous asked: for the fanfic ask game, how about H, R, and S?

Woo, people are doing the thing!  From this post.

H: How would you describe your style?

Too many fucking commas.  

Seriously, though, I’m not sure how I’d describe my style, since I tend to vary it depending on how I want the story to feel.  Something like things we lost in the fire, my Les Mis Avatar AU, is supposed to feel very different from, like, this, my First Order Rey AU.  I guess my style is very character-driven–I perceive my characters (and other people’s characters, in fic) as very real people, so I try to model the feeling of the story after the way the POV character thinks.  Which is how I end up with things like the Hamilton Star Wars AU, which has A LOT of commas and run-on sentences because…Alexander Hamilton.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) who you consider an influence?

Oh buddy.  Oh buddy buckle up.  First and biggest nod goes to Robin McKinley (GO READ HER STUFF IMMEDIATELY), who I aspire to be when I grow up.  Robin McKinley taught a very scared and very lonely kid who had just been told that she was too old for playing pretend that there was still magic in the world, and I’m always going to owe a massive debt to her for that.  If this was a ‘pick one’ sort of question, it would be her.  JK Rowling, obligatory honorable mention, Lions for the Cup.  PC Hodgell, who is better at sweeping world-building and not-cliche battles between Good and Evil than anyone I can think of off the top of my head (see my rant about her tragically unknown series here).  Neil Gaiman, who balances the creepy with the daily with the mystical in a way I desperately envy.  The innumerable mediocre authors I trucked through in my school libraries, who taught me what NOT to do, which is just as important as what to do.  For fic authors… @notbecauseofvictories, because her Tumblr fics showed me that it was okay to be messy and wild and just…happy about what I was writing at a time where I kind of needed it.  @determamfidd because Sansukh was, like, fucking life-changing, buddy, I am living a post-Sansukh life right now.  The author of the first fic I ever read (no idea who it was, but it was a Buffy fic with a rewrite of Season 3, and I was PRETTY CONCUSSED at the time, so the fact that I even remember the plot should earn me brownie points, it was a great fic and I should find it again).  Um…I can think of maybe twenty more people, published and otherwise, off the top of my head, but I think this massive block of text is long enough, yes?

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

Um…many.  I’m a sucker for soulmate AU’s, I really am.  I am also pathetically weak for mutual pining, particularly the whole “X person will never love me back and it’s okay I’ll just sit here and quietly pine away because I WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY” thing.  It’s probably a good part of the reason I like Enjolras/Grantaire so much, the Enjolras/Grantaire tag on AO3 is here for you and all your pining needs.  Those are probably the two biggest ones, although I’m also weak for size difference because I’m FIVE GODDAMN FEET TALL and everyone I could hypothetically date is a fucking giant.