caitri | Jul. 22nd, 2020

Every day I'm posting an image of a book I like. This is a delightfully weird 90s novel in which a contemporary housewife somehow makes mental contact with the princess from a high fantasy world. They never cross into one another's realms but instead use one another's experiences and feelings in dialogue to solve problems, like fending off handsy computer salesman and how to defeat evil lords (YES). Both women are remarkably and refreshingly chill about the whole thing, at first passing the experiences off as peculiar reveries and dreams, then just accepting it as a thing that sometimes happens and moving on. (Confession: I have a hiccup when it comes to Strange Events and heroes and heroines who spend way too much time in denial about what's going on; this sort of thing was my one bitty complaint about The Old Guard, as when the newbie has to die like twice before she's willing to deal that Things Are Weird. Anyway.)

I also appreciate that the heroines are refreshingly everyday sorts of women, even our convenient princess, and that many of the conflicts they deal with are low stakes. Perhaps it is telling that a lot of what they both deal with is low-key people management, because gendered societies and trying to get-shit-done while female. In retrospect it's a pity that, barring a piece by Jo Walton some years back, there's been little discussion of it. You could get some great papers out of this thing.