PRINCESS MONSTER WIFE

In addition to all the Perns, I have also been reading some non-Pern McCaffreys! At this point this includes:

The Ship Who Sang, in which a young woman gains beyond-human powers through being indentured to a corporation which provides her with wealth and status while simultaneously keeping her locked in endless responsibility and debt, loses the thing she cares about most in the world, and desperately seeks a life partner, eventually finding one in her manipulative boss

Crystal Singer, in which a young woman loses everything she cares about in the world, gains beyond-human powers through being indentured to a corporation which provides her with wealth and status while simultaneously keeping her locked in endless responsibility and debt, and, despite not seeking a life partner, nonetheless enters into a romance with her manipulative boss

The Rowan, in which a young woman with beyond-human powers loses everything she cares about in the world, gets indentured to a corporation which provides her with wealth and status while simultaneously keeping her locked in endless responsibility and debt, and desperately seeks a life partner, eventually finding one in the guy who at the end of the book succeeds to the position held by her manipulative boss

Obviously all of these books have their own unique points of distinction:

The Ship Who Sang kicked off generations of what-if-a-girl-was-a-ship stories and also generations of disability-in-SF conversations; it is also IMO one of the most interesting of McCaffrey's structural experiments, being composed of short stories that do generally work well as short stories, while creating a coherent and connected character arc for Helva across the whole set. Also: women! Helva gets to partner with women! Does she want to partner with women? Absolutely not. She wants a hot guy, or, failing that, a weird little manipulative boss who's obsessed with her. But nonetheless while waiting for her inevitable manipulative bossmance she has some interesting women thrust upon her, which I appreciate even if she does not.

The Rowan is the latest, structurally the weakest, and I think perhaps generally the worst of these books ... Killashandra has a bad personality and it's charming, but the Rowan's bad personality mostly comes out in the context of being a bad boss within her devil's-bargain corporation, which is less charming. Also there's sort of a halfhearted attempt at an evil aliens are attacking plot but the evil aliens take up approximately ten (10) whole pages of the book because McCaffrey finds them much less interesting than the Rowan's boyfriend, who is of course destined for her because he's the only hot guy telepath who's more powerful than she is. Anyway, the funniest part about this book is the fact that the Rowan gets a telepathic cat in the first section, and because everyone loves a telepathic cat the telepathic cat is on the front cover of the book, but then Anne McCaffrey is like 'yeah but she left the telepathic cat on the spaceship the first time she left home, they weren't actually that tight' and the telepathic cat is never mentioned again.

Crystal Singer is notable for the fact that Killashandra -- in addition to being a failed opera singer who has to pivot to harvesting addictive crystal with the power of her voice -- is the meanest and most self-interested McCaffrey heroine and also the one who has the most casual sex. A real delight to go from Avril Bitra in Dragonsdawn to Killashandra, who has all of Avril Bitra's traits except she's protagonist-shaped so instead of performing sexy torturemurder and getting fired into the sun, she reluctantly saves the life of a guy who hates her, complaining about it all the way. God bless! Has the most opportunities not to enter into a devil's bargain with a corporation to become a protagonist, and also has arguably the worst devil's bargain of the lot (crystal singing rots your brain! creepy!) and so I think is in many ways central to the Corporate Devil's Bargain thesis of it all: the subtext of The Ship Who Sang and The Rowan is that yes, the devil's bargain Is worth it, but Crystal Singer holds it up defiantly and makes it text. Yes, you were probably manipulated into it, and yes, it's going to end in tragedy, but look how cool you are now!

This all also sort of makes me look a certain way at Lessa, the OG bad personality heroine herself, and her arc in Dragonflight. It's more obviously a devil's bargain when it's a Big Corporation and not a cool dragon that loves you unconditionally -- but what are all these sexy manipulative bosses, except proof that Big Corporation actually loves you unconditionally? And yes, you were manipulated into it. No, you can't leave now that you've done it. Yes, the institution takes away your agency, by design, but broadly speaking, it's a benevolent institution -- or at least, society can't do without it. Anyway, now that you're part of this institution, you are now the coolest person in the world; everyone needs you, admires you, loves you, and you're happier than you've ever been. Of course it was worth it!

I am under a kind of curse, which is that if I see a King Arthur riff that looks exceptionally strange or funny I must bring it home to experience and add to my collection [mentally, metaphorically] [the physical book does not need to stay in my physical home once I have consumed its contents].

King Arthur in the children's novel The Camelot Code: The Once and Future Geek is also under a kind of curse, which is to say, he's King Arthur. I found this novel in a used bookstore and read the back copy explaining the plot, which is that Arthur time travels to the future, self-Googles, and immediately decides to abandon his destiny and try out for the football team instead. The mirror crack'd from side to side, "the curse has come upon me," I cried, eyes fixed on Camelot, etc.

So! The Camelot Code begins with best friends Sophie and Stu, playing their favorite video game Arthurian Flavor World Of Warcraft with their buddy Melvin from California. Alas! Stu can't raid next Friday because he has recently joined the soccer team and he has to go to pizza with them. Sophie worries that their friendship, which is built around being geeks who don't have normal high school hobbies, is perhaps doomed. :((

Meanwhile, in The Indeterminate Past, best friends Serving Boy Arthur and Princess Guinevere (a plucky warrior princess who can absolutely use a sword but is also at risk of being Sold Off Like A Mule to the Highest Bidder in Marriage) are hanging out secretly distributing largesse to oppressed peasants. Alas! They can't distribute any more largesse because evil Agravaine and Kay have shown up to bully them and oppress the peasants even more. Arthur worries that their friendship, which is built around being compassionate heroes who are not married off to evil knights, is perhaps doomed. :((

These two worlds connect when, during a visit to Merlin's Crystal Cave [it's very sparkly] [Merlin distributes Ray-Bans to all visitors], Gwen and Arthur accidentally drop Uther's magical scabbard down a time portal to Massachusetts, which Merlin keeps open for the wi-fi. Through a series of chaotic events, Arthur ends up at Sophie and Stu's school, while Stu under a shape-changing spell has to sub in for him at Camelot to pull the sword out of the stone and get the legend off on the right track.

Merlin is able to recruit Sophie and Stu specifically because! it turns out! he's their raid buddy Melvin! To be clear, this is not part of some Merlin master plan. Merlin just enjoys Arthurian-flavor WoW and it is NOT weird for him that everyone in Arthurian-flavor WoW greets each other by going "May the Merlin be with you."

( The rest is under a cut because I do feel compelled to describe the entire plot in detail )

Okay, that's all. It's in the mental collection. My curse has been lifted, and the book can now leave my house again.