On Reading Book Series in the Wrong Order

[james_davis_nicoll]

 On Reading Book Series in the Wrong Order 

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[(Anonymous)]

As a teenager, on a family trip I ran out of reading material. Fortunately we were visiting a college town so there was a used bookstore. I picked up a fantasy novel named *Ara's Field* by Laurie J. Marks, based on the back cover text and the excellent cover art.

I didn't realize it was the third in a trilogy. Each of the three books featured a different protagonist, so it just seemed like the protagonist had a well-developed backstory. (She'd been a supporting character in book two.)

It's a fantasy novel where the world is under attack from an alien race that had recently arrived via magic. The world had multiple intelligent species- the Aerie (two legs, two wings, two arms), the Mer (six swimming limbs, the front two capable of find manipulation), the Auroch (centauroids), and the Walkers, who were the only intelligent quadrupeds. (Maybe there there some quadrupedal farm animals, cow and/or horses? I don't recall.) The protagonist was a Walker, and as an experienced SFF reader, it was obvious that the author was hinting that Walkers were humans, who had arrived via magic in the distant past and their origin had been forgotten.

Anyway, the novel goes along, and half-way through the heroine has sex during a Carnival-esque festival and gets pregnant. Circumstances force her to go on a journey even as her belly swells, and it's clearly not ideal. Until, after three months of pregnancy... SHE LAYS AN EGG. She's happy that Egg Day finally arrived, as it will make it much easier to travel because she can carry the egg in a pouch under her clothing to keep it warm in winter. Also she's taking herbal medicine to prevent her from going into winter hibernation like all the other Walkers.

I had to reread those pages about three times.

After the trip I got the first two novels and in the first couple of chapters of book one, it's quite clear that the Walkers aren't humans at all. Book one starts with the protagonist's childhood, which involves hatching, being a fuzzy toddler, then a winter of metamorphosis when during hibernation everyone at that age loses their fur, Walkers lose their wing buds, and everyone develops external genitalia, which is when they find out who's a boy and who's a girl. Presumably Walkers have some vestigial wing bones inside their shoulders, just like whales have vestigial pelvises.

It's a great series, I highly recommend it. It was written in the late 80s or early 90s, well before issues of gender identity were commonly discussed in SFF.

--
Nathan H.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Well, gosh. There seems to be only one of those available locally used and it's the first one.