Fully shuddering at the phrase “ripening sexuality,” but also noting that the seven years mentioned means that Damia is now 23, which makes Afra 48. THESE ARE RELEVANT DETAILS, BOOK!pic.twitter.com/9PBaqkuAXa
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Prior to this, given that the book is called Damia, I'd completely forgotten that it starts with Afra and is mostly told in his 3rd person POV - I'd just assumed those elements were all from the first book in the series. And to a degree, the book IS about Damia -
- but not as her own person. It's about how she comes to exist FOR AFRA: about how HE gets his happy ending, when we ended the first book watching him lovelorn while the Rowan goes off with Jeff. Damia isn't about Damia; it's about how Afra GETS Damia, and in that context -
- the decision to show their "special bond" through her childhood is just... I'm not *quite* gonna call it grooming, on account of how he ignores her advances until she's a legal adult and she has a healthy sex life beyond him prior to that, but it's... it feels really creepy.
Like. Narratively, when you know where they're headed, it comes across like "somehow as a child she Knew this adult man would one day be her husband and she was Into Him as soon as she hit puberty, but he nobly waited while she went through her rebellious phase to make it Cool."
Even so - and this is a LOW FUCKIN BAR to leap - the Afra/Damia relationship is still WAY less skeevy than the setup for Tirla/Sascha in Pegasus in Flight, wherein Tirla is TWELVE YEARS OLD BUT LOOKS SEVEN, and the justification is "oh but she'll be ripe enough for him at 16."
A glance at my bookshelves reveals that I still have copies of the next two books in the series, Damia's Children and Lyon's Pride. You guys... I am. I am tempted, because I am a masochist. But I do not think that I should.
I remember very little of the rest of the series beyond 1) Damia and Afra go on to have, like, eight children, 2) there are lil blue furry aliens and 3) one of Damia's daughters bones a gay man and turns him straight with the power of Compulsory Hetetosexual Romance.
I will... consider skimcritting the Gay Man Turns Straight book, if I can remember which one it is, and assuming it's one of the ones I already own. But goddamn. I am TIRED. I am gonna go read something now for pleasure, that doesn't make me want to bleach my eyes. good NIGHT
Anne McCaffrey's most obvious Mary Sue: Lessa from the Pern books? F'lar and F'nor are at *least* a decade older, if being generous. (The characters do hold their own, despite one specific preference from the author, but yes, it's obvious.)
I vaguely remember that she used to write porn (sorry, erotica) to keep the wolf from the door until she started to sell the sf and fantasy books. The first of the Pern books is skeevy as fuck too.
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