The Liaden Universe: A New Sci-Fi Obsession

Image not mine, although I wish it was.

It has come to my attention that I haven't shared anything about one of my current bookish obsessions on the blog.

It has furthermore come to my attention that I haven't had a blog post that was exclusively focused on books in A Good Bit.

These are both clearly execrable oversights, and must be remedied immediately, if not sooner. 

So here we are, and today, I am going to talk to you about *drumroll please* the Liaden Universe. 

"Sam," you may be saying, "what the heck is the Liaden Universe? It sounds like sci-fi. You talk about sci-fi entirely too much."

Ah, but can one possibly talk about sci-fi too much? (That's a joke. Of course one can. But I don't think I've gotten to that threshold yet.) One of the joys of college has been rediscovering sci-fi. Not that I ever lost it, really, but it somehow fell out of my favor somewhere in the second two years of high school. 

And then my dad and aunt somehow conspired to get me to start reading the two sci-fi series' that both of them love most at the same time. (That wasn't confusing at all.) I did ultimately decided to forge ahead and try to finish the Vorkosigan Saga (which I've rambled about a bit in this post) before finishing Liad, both because the Vorkosigan Saga is shorter, and because my family owns all of them, so I might as well read them over the summer. 

But! That doesn't stop me from talking about Liad. Much the opposite. (As evidenced by this post.)

The Liaden Universe is a (long) series of books that's mostly focused around a planet called Liad, and specifically one clan on Liad: the Dragons, Clan Korval. It's a saga that spans generations and space. 

The thing that makes Liad most interesting to me (besides the characters, which I will most likely get to in a minute) is the social system of the planet. Bear with me, I know that sounds boring. But it's actually quite fascinating and turns a lot of the books into a Georgette Heyer-esque Comedy of Manners...but in space.

And thing around which all of this fascinating social system rotates is the concept of melant'i. 

Melant'i is the concept of the relationship between people or the role that a person is playing in a given situation or relationship. One of the most important things about melant'i is that there are generally many melant'is in any given interaction. It's actually a super useful concept in real life, as well. It's hard to explain, but easy to illustrate, so lemme give you some examples from my life. 

First example:
When I'm home with my siblings and our parents aren't there, I have several melant'is to my siblings:
-Older sibling to younger siblings
-Sister to brother/sister
-OAB to other siblings (OAB being family shorthand/slang for "oldest available B--------", and yes, we stole that from The Penderwicks)

And I might have different responsibilities within these different melant'is. And I'd have to figure out which melant'i I wanted or needed to act in. 

It's perhaps more obvious with another example:
Father DD, one of our priests, has several melant'is where I am concerned:
-Spiritual director to spiritual directee
-Spiritual father to spiritual daughter
-Employer to employee
-Priest to a baptized person
-Friend to friend
-Friend of the family to eldest daughter of the house

In any given situation, he's going to need to decide which of these to act on, and in what way. If I go to him for spiritual direction, he's going to give me different advice on a question that I ask than if I just ask the question when he's over at our house, in our melant'is as friend-of-the-family and eldest-daughter-of-the-house. (In fact, I've learned to stop asking even vaguely spiritual-direction-related questions when he's over at our house, because you can almost see the melant'i shift in his eyes, and it's not a happy expression.) If I go to him for confession, it's going to be a very different conversation than if I'm talking to him about a work problem. And so on. Sometimes the melant'i is obvious, and sometimes less so--when to act as spiritual director, and when as spiritual father, for instance? (I have seen him navigate this particular difficulty most impressively.) 

See how this would be useful in real life? I've actually found it quite illuminating for some things in my life.

I'm sure that you can also start to imagine the possibilities in a work of fiction--and it's even more than you can possibly imagine! For one thing, not only do the Liadens have melant'i, but they have different dialects or modes of speaking for different relationships, and different bows and greetings, as well. It's all handled very beautifully and gracefully in the narrative--you don't need to know how the different dialects work, the book informs you. (For example: "She greeted him in student-to-tutor.") 

And sometimes you get complex melant'i mixes...for example, the head of a clan speaks for the clan. The head of clan Korval speaks as Korval. But the person who's the head of Korval might also be a husband and a father and a brother and a friend, and perhaps even a pilot or a co-pilot. And some of those might coincide, or even conflict. There are some wonderful moments when Daav (one of my favorite characters, and Korval for a while) is interacting with his brother, and switches back and forth from speaking as his brother and speaking as Korval. 

Because sometimes, as well, one would give different advice in different melant'is. For instance, if one of my classmates asks for my advice on a landscape architecture project, I have some choices. I can give them advice as acquaintance-to-acquaintance, or as student-to-student, or as landscape-architect-to-landscape-architect. In each of these different melant'is, I would say something different. And so, Daav, as Korval, gives different advice than Daav, the brother, and it's a wonderful tension. 

All of this makes for an absolutely fascinating social system that completely permeates all of the books, and makes it a unique and interesting reading experience, and gives a lot more depth to the comedy of manners. When the manners are super complicated, as they were in the Regency era, and as they are on Liad, it's easier to have a true comedy of manners. And it's extremely impressive that the authors have managed to create a system of manners that allows them to write comedy-of-manners-in-space in a way that doesn't feel contrived. 

But...the melant'i system isn't the only thing that makes the Liaden novels fantastic. The characters (which, as you may know, are one of the most important things for me about a book) are well-written and super lovable. It's not at all afflicted by the syndrome of beginning sci-fi, which emphasized science to the extreme detriment of character development, although I do have a soft spot for that style. I already mentioned Daav--he and Aelliana have one of the cutest relationships I have ever read and are definitely OTP material. (Friends to lovers at its very best.) Even outside of their relationship, Daav is one of the best men I've come across in fiction--a man with a honed sense of duty, a chivalry to him, and a sense of honor.
Er Thom and Anne are adorable, too, and Shan is wonderful, and Padi's coming-of-age story is very compelling. Those are the main characters that I've spent time with so far, but I'm sure there are more. And I want to learn more about all of them. 

Also, while I've only seen parts of it so far, there's an overarching plot through the whole series that thickens and twists and turns and molds together, to bring some of the disparate stories into one. 

If, with all of this blathering about characters, and melant'i, I've somehow miraculously convinced you to want to read some of the Liaden novels, or at least give them a try--which was my goal, but I'm not sure I have achieved--then you'll probably need some advice on where to start. For all that many of the stories are follow-able, there are enough books with enough different arcs going in to the main arc that it's extremely confusing. I haven't read all of the books (not NEARLY), but with my experience of being confused and then un-confused myself, I may be able to give a bit of guidance. 

I would highly recommend starting with The Dragon Variation, which is an omnibus that includes three different novels/novellas, introducing Anne + Er Thom, Aelliana + Dav, and Shan + Priscilla. It's a strong starting point, introducing the universe with my personal favorites among the characters, and giving one an idea of what the heck is going on. 

If you don't want to commit to the whole omnibus, I would say:
-Local Custom, the one about Anne + Er Thom does the best job introducing the Liaden social system. 
-Scout's Progress, the one about Aelliana + Daav introduces the scouts really well.
-Conflict of Honors, the one about Shan + Priscilla introduces the trade system, and some of the background information about one of the religious systems, which I do believe becomes important later.

A good second step, after you've read all of those, is Mouse and Dragon, which continues Daav & Aelliana's story. 

After all of that, I would say start the Agent of Change sequence. I can't advise too much on how that'll go, because I haven't yet read through the sequence, but I hear that it's wise to read (after Agent of Change) Carpe Diem, Plan B, and I Dare. 

The one thing I will note is that some of the books have a fair bit of Content. The scenes with that sort o' thing are usually short and skippable, but they are in there, and sometimes you have to both skip them and know that they happened in order to understand where the plot goes, if that makes sense. I wouldn't recommend handing these books to a younger teen, or even a mid-teen--you do have to be mature enough to either know to skip those scenes, or not be bothered by them. (I fall in the former camp.) If you want to try the series out with one of the squeaky-clean books (of which there are several--they don't all have Content of that sort), Scout's Progress is (as far as I can remember) free of that kind of content, although does allude to one of the characters having been abused in a previous relationship. 

So there you have it. Have I somehow, in my ramblings, convinced you that these would be fun to read? What's your favorite sci-fi series? Have you ever had a situation where the concept of melant'i would have been useful?