Three decades ago, DAW Books had enough cash cows & editorial moxie to publish some weird and lovely stories alongside their SFF best sellers.
A recent house rearrangement unearthed some old mass-market paperbacks (as in: ‘Wow, I didn’t know I still had that!’)
Two of these were from Ursula K. LeGuin pupil and academia professional Stephanie A. Smith.
Published in 1987 and 1989, SNOW-EYES and THE BOY WHO WAS THROWN AWAY are set in a secondary-world with restrained nods to ancient Crete, Bronze-Age Europe, and ancient East Asia. They use this haunting, sketched-out setting to imply a far-deeper kind of worldbuilding…that isn’t medieval Europe.
SNOW-EYES follows the childhood and early life of a rural girl named Amarra Nie, who lives by a mystical lake in the Kieldings of Gueame. A doting father and two beloved half-siblings don’t make up for Amarra’s absent mother. Slowly, strange enchantments pervade Amarra’s days, until her mother returns with the news that Amarra must become like her: a half-immortal Servitor priestess of the mysterious Lake-Goddess.
Amarra finds her own path to power and magic, revealing more about the Goddess than the insular Servitor family wants to reveal.
THE BOY WHO WAS THROWN AWAY follows the next generation: Amarra’s young cousin Amant, a musical mage-gifted boy who is kidnapped and orphaned *twice* in his childhood. He builds a life by forging his skills into a world-changing Reconciliation of two conflicting cultures.
These books are considered YA now, simply because of the young-adult age of their protagonists. While the culture of the Kielding setting has a matter-of-fact attitude toward sex, sex is delicately & discreetly handled for the main characters. It’s there, but not obvious.
The books handle dark themes of abduction, neglect, crippling debt, indentured servitude, family death, war, cultural collapse, and tyranny.
Doctor Smith created a workable constructed language *and* a handritten script (carefully reproduced by DAW, with phonic equivalents.)
There is good poetry (see below).
The main society is matriarchal without being a utopian or dystopian caricature.
Settings, clothing, artifacts, etc. are skillfully described with enough detail to excite this props wonk.
That said, these will be frustrating books for modern YA readers. SNOW-EYES has a fairly straightforward chronology, though it takes a while to confirm the heartbreaking but obvious side-effects of Servitor longevity.
BOY is a chronological melange of Amant’s childhood, teen years, present, and far-future (told by a descendant).
It reads well in spots, then switches to a narrative mode that feels like the author wrote several other books and crammed their synopses into this one. We are told of Amant’s later legendary accomplishments, but we never really see them.
These books are long out of print, and Doctor Smith doesn’t appear in a hurry to republish them or her adult novels and scholarly books. None seem available as e-books or audiobooks.
They’re worth reading, for folks with patience and good reading comprehension.
Plus, Amant’s ‘Song of the Smoke Bamboo’ is a lovely poem. I’ll give you the first verse. For the rest, you need to track down the book.
‘Fire, my beloved, and I the earth’s child,
As a forest before the flame, new-made into coal.
As a field of grass, eaten by the igneous demon,
As a young willow in full dress, tongued into ash.’
Here is Doctor Smith’s web page.