I’m a sucker for…
First of all, credit where credit is due: I got the idea for this post from the magnificent Alex @Blogspells, prolific blogger and reviewer of books. You can find his list at spellsandspaceships.
I’m going to talk about 5 things I find irresistible in any SFF. ‘Geez, Burnell, things? A foot-high stack of dictionaries, you went with the vaguest noun imaginable?’ Yes, you, and I did it for a reason. I’m not positive yet where all this list might take me, and I’m not making promises that limit what I choose to gush about.
But I do know where I mean to start.
A killer unlikely friendship
I’m going to focus on just a couple examples. Gives me more time to talk about my favorites, which I judge archetypal. Honestly, though, this gets me every time.
Damian Kilcannon Vryce and Gerrald Tarrant
These two characters are to me the Platonic ideal of Wtf relationships. Vryce belongs to a church whose purpose is entirely pragmatic; humans have colonized a world where natural forces cause the imagination to manifest. You walk past a boulder perched on the side of a hill and think, ‘Gosh, that looks unstable,’ it’s going to fall on you. The colony was living on borrowed time in a world increasingly flush with vampires, harpies, gorgons, etc.. All birthed by the fears of the colonists.
Early on, a visionary found an answer: if humans could believe hard enough in an omnipotent god, they could create a fixed point of reality to anchor themselves against. That man is known in the modern scriptures only as the Prophet because, whoops. They had to erase his name from history. He lost faith and sacrificed his entire family to the fae to make himself immortal.
Flash forward to modern times, and Vryce, a warrior-monk on a mission. He falls in with the Hunter, a shadowy monster famed for hunting people. Imagine his surprise when he finds out who the Hunter really is! Jesus and Judas, all in one person.
Tarrant is interested in Vryce’s mission, though, and the two of them join forces. Vryce wrestles every step along the way with the conflict he feels, the awe he can’t shake for the man Tarrant used to be, the urge to trust as well as revile. As for Tarrant, every moment in Vryce’s company is a danger to him. The bargain he struck with the forces of darkness (which idk did he imagine the devil into being in the first place so someone could cut this deal with him?) hinges on bad behavior. Being good could kill him, so every time he saves Vryce’s life, the cost might be his own.
Tense and fascinating? You betcha!
Aleksander and Seyonne
Seyonne was a warrior-priest sworn to battle demons in the souls of troubled people until the rapacious Derzhi Empire decided it needed a few extra hectares of territory. Seyonne was captured and buried alive for three days in a casket, in order to exhaust his magic. Powers safely amputated, he was unearthed and enslaved, and that’s been his reality for a decade when he winds up serving in the Derzhi winter palace.
It’s there that he encounters Aleksander, heir to the throne and as spoiled an arrogant piece of shit as you expect him to be. The rub: Seyonne sees an omen of destiny in him. Aleksander can change the world, which desperately needs changing. He realizes he has no choice but to protect the prince and do everything in his power to shepherd him to his destiny, not for Aleksander’s sake, but because of the person he used to be. What he still has to believe about himself.
This story in particular gets at why I love the trope of the unlikely friendship. Wallace Stegner made a point in Angle of Repose that’s always stuck with me, that we need other people to help us hold our shape. We don’t exist in a void: we define ourselves by how we fit up against the people around us. Improbable friendships are fascinating because of the way they force characters to rethink or reinvent themselves in order to remain in proximity to someone they don’t feel like they should, but absolutely do, love.
I realize belatedly that I didn’t actually cite the books. Vryce and Tarrant hail from C.S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy. Seyonne and Aleksander are from Carol Berg’s Transformation. In case it isn’t obvious, I recommend both!
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