Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: The
Inheritance & Other Stories
by Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware
that there may be spoilers in this review.
Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb
are both pen names for Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, an American author of
speculative fiction. As Lindholm, the stories tend to be shorter and less
detailed in a variety of genres. As Hobb, characterization, settings, and
conflicts are deeper and wider, producing much larger works. Hobb is best known
for her The Realm of the Elderlings fantasy stories, and that's how I became a fan
of hers. I'd read the novella "The Homecoming", which is connected to The Realm of the Elderlings in that it's set in the Rain Wilds positioned at the
far west edges of the Six Duchies. The Rain Wilds are all but uninhabitable
swampland near the mountain ranges. Within this umbrella series, she's written
five "miniseries" and numerous short stories.
"The Homecoming" by
Robin Hobb was my favorite story in the review I did February 28, 2025 on the
Alien Romances Blog for Legends II: Short
Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, edited by Robert Silverberg. I'd
never read anything like it, and I wanted to know more about this "Rain
Wilds" setting, as well as the lost civilizations and Elderlings mentioned
in it. While I'm writing this particular review, I'm reading her very first
trilogy in The Realm of the Elderlings, The Farseer. I read Book 1, and, while
I was waiting for Book 2 arrive, I'd already received the copy of The Inheritance & Other Stories I'd
ordered, so I thought I'd start on that. Having done some research on the
author and her offerings under these two pseudonyms, I knew that the author
herself said she found when writing as Hobb she "wrote with a depth of feeling
that I didn't usually indulge". I did find that to definitively be the
case here.
This collection of stories
written under both pen names includes:
Megan Lindholm
"A Touch of Lavender"
"Silver Lady and the
Fortyish Man:
"Cut"
"The Fifth Squashed Cat"
"The Strays"
"Finis"
"Drum Machine"
Robin Hobb
"Homecoming"
"The Inheritance"
"Cat's Meat"
There is definitely a marked
difference in tone and style evident between the pen names. For the most part,
I wasn't enamored with the Lindholm stories, though I expect a lot of readers
will find meaning in these pieces that felt more like slice of life vignettes
to me. For me, the stories in these comparably much shorter seven pieces seemed
to form suddenly out of thin air, never gaining a lot of flesh and blood, and,
just as unexpectedly, dissipated almost beyond recall. To be more specific, they
reminded me a lot like of paint splatter art. Colors are thrown across the room
at the page without rhyme, reason, let alone forethought. The writer almost
leaves it up to the reader to decide if what's created of this has any lasting
value.
To be fair, Lindholm is a good
writer and her work in this anthology was some of her earlier material. Beyond
that, she's received countless awards and accolades as a writer for her work,
and most of the pieces here have in fact won many honors in the industry. I
believe those are well-deserved. However, what I've learned from reading this
collection is that I will probably only focus on the Robin Hobb offerings from
this point on.
I think my biggest problem with
the Lindholm stories is that I felt like they could have been set anywhere and
in any time, in the point of view of any other character, and the outcome would
have been exactly the same. In each story, there was little or no development
with character, setting, or plot. They all just showed up for a single purpose,
and once that was accomplished, it was over. Nothing about them will last very
long in my memory as a result of what felt like intentional carelessness. I'm afraid
this is exactly what the author was going for with each of these stories, no
justifications and no apologies.
"A Touch of Lavender",
the first Lindholm story in the anthology, was, if nothing else, compelling in
an absolutely off-the-wall way. I'd gone into it not sure what to expect of the
Lindholm pen name. For that reason, I admit, I probably gave it more of a
chance to win me over than any another of the other six written under this
pseudonym. (Also, "Finis" gave a hell of a twist, again, if nothing
else, and that's really all I have to say about the rest of the Lindholm
contributions.)
Within this collection, the
author included a brief introduction to each story, telling us a bit about what
inspired her to write it. I love those sorts of insights. The preface to
"A Touch of Lavender" spoke of something intriguing that, to me,
summed up all her Lindholm stories very succinctly. She said that she will
receive at times odd sentences that intrude in her mind. She writes these down,
knowing they're intended to be the first line of a story she doesn't yet know.
She has a whole desk drawer full of them. She calls these "butterfly
lines"--ideas that have to be captured immediately or they'll flutter off
forever. Cool. But I'm not actually sure this is a good idea for any writer, as
I'll explain in a second.
Later, she plucked one of these
first sentences out of the drawer and used it as the basis of "A Touch of
Lavender". This butterfly line is: "We grew up like mice in a rotting
sofa, my sister and I." This is the longest of the Lindholm contributions,
and she then proceeded to tell a tale in which the point of view character
didn't have a sister at all, not until the very end of it. At that stage, it
almost felt as if the author felt compelled to tack something onto this story
she'd written to justify the first sentence. To me, the "tack on"
didn't really fit the rest of the story, nor did it really warrant being
included, since I believe it almost intruded on the theme.
What was the theme? I'm not
entirely sure, and the reason for that is because I don't want to resort to
allegory, which I distrust and even hate when it comes to fiction. There's a
huge tendency these days for readers and reviewers to serve a biased agenda by
forcing a story to fit some allegory about the real world. The authors may have
intended nothing like what's built up to be allegorical to a modern-day trend.
In my research of this author
and her body of work, it seems to me so much of her work (especially her Robin Hobb offerings) is forced into allegorical
renderings by those with an undeniable agenda. I stopped short of researching
whether the author has ever commented on all of this because, honestly, I don't
want to know any more. I'd prefer to accept the author's works as she's written
them and not read something in that she may or may not have ever intended.
Anyway, "A Touch of
Lavender" was basically a futuristic story about a dead-beat Mom, living
on aid, who's drawn to music (and, not surprisingly, dead-beat musicians who
mooch off her and her kid, who was conceived of with a former dead-beat musician
boyfriend whose long since gone the way of the dodo in both of their lives).
Meanwhile, the Earth at this time has been invaded by aliens who have weird
musical talents. The story is told from the POV of the kid. Boundaries between
humans and aliens are challenged and unexpected things happen as a result. As I
said, a strange, mildly compelling story that came, went, and disappeared like
so much dandelion fluff, leaving not much more to linger in its wake.
As with Legends II, my favorite story in this anthology is "The
Homecoming". But since I've already reviewed that, I'll focus here on the
other two in this collection: "The Inheritance" and "Cat's Meat".
Both are connected to Robin Hobb's The Realm of the Elderlings, "The
Inheritance" and "Cat's Meat" taking place, respectively, in
Bingham (in the far southwest of the Six Duchies) and Buck (close to Forge, a
pivotal setting in the first book in The Farseer Trilogy). Both feature
heroines who have suffered at the hands of bad men. "The Inheritance"
tells the extremely unexpected tale of a necklace cameo that the main character
inherited from her grandmother. "Cat's Meat" is the story of a woman
who was used by a man she'd loved, got pregnant by him, and was abandoned in
favor of someone richer and prettier, and then that jackass returns to her,
expecting to be forgiven and taken back as if he's done nothing wrong. The
unexpected twist in this story is a cat who feels very protective of the main
character and her son.
Both stories are well-written, intriguing
if not more than a little frustrating because the women displayed such
love-sick stupidity until the end, when they finally became strong enough to
change the course of their own lives I found that worth rooting for. All three
of the Hobb stories featured women who were downtrodden by society and the men
in their lives in these old-fashioned time periods, expected to be and do only
what females were allowed then. I appreciated how they turned the tables on
everyone--with a little help from magic. The catalyst for them doing what they
all eventually go on to do in each case is packed with a supernatural surprise and
consequences that are far from predictable. While neither "The
Inheritance" or "Cat's Meat" had quite the depth and atmosphere
that "The Homecoming" evoked for me so profoundly, both were still
good and worthy of a read to enlarge the world Hobb has created in The Realms
of the Elderlings.
I do intend to review all the subseries
within Robin Hobb's overall series in the future, so stay tuned for those in
coming months. I have the highest hopes for all or most of them to live
up to everything I'm looking for in this complex series.
Karen Wiesner is an award-winning,
multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books and see her art
here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
Posts
