Some of the core draws that kept me coming back to Jordan as a teenager were the big mysterious world, the engaging, charismatic, and recognizable protagonists with fate-of-the-cosmos energy, and a setting that was parseable and relatable, without skimping on the big kinetic genre eye-kick. I have abiding affection for the works of Robert Jordan, say, but the Robert Jordan oeuvre is vast like unto the fabled malls of yore, there’s so much in there that, when two people go in, one comes out with a nice sweater and some pants and a bag of inspirational literature, and the other comes out with a spiked collar and a nose piercing and a bag of soap from the Body Shop, and no one finds this confusing or at all contradictory. So they wander the land, seeking and sharing.Ĭomparing books I like to other books I like is a fraught endeavor because people don’t like the same things for the same reasons. If you refuse a Steerswoman an answer, you’ll never get one from any Steerswoman again, ever. (“How can I cure this disease?” “What was the weather like last week in Withywood?”) In exchange, they have to answer any question any Steerswoman asks, honestly. Anyone in this vaguely medieval milieu can ask any Steerswoman any question they wish, and receive the Steerswoman’s most honest answer, gratis. The Steerswoman is the first in a four-volume and currently in-progress series set in a world occupied by (among many other folks) the titular Steerswomen, an order of (mostly) women of amazing memories and powers of deduction and analysis, who travel their fantastical world seeking answers to the mysteries of life, sharing knowledge, and trying to make the world a better place. I recently read the first of Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman books, and was thrown by just how thoroughly the thing it was.
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