(SFF Bingo): Inda, by Sherwood Smith

I acquired this because the digital edition was heavily discounted and came with a strong recommendation from J. Unfortunately, this is going to be another case where our tastes didn't align.

The titular character, Inda, is the third child in an aristocratic family in a fantasy world. His elder brother is a bully, while his elder sister is a sweetheart. But while younger sons (who aren't expected to inherit) usually don't go to the military academy in the capital city, the rules change just as Inda is turning ten, so it's off to school to learn military skills, and demonstrate them in highly competitive wargames. Inda proves to be a natural leader, rallying people to him with humility and brilliance: even if he doesn't take credit for being in charge, he comes up with genius strategies like engaging the bullies in fights while the tiny kid who no one expects runs around capturing all the flags.

So, "Ender's Game," but fantasy. Except, "Ender's Game"'s SFy worldbuilding is compelling--when I read about the zero-gravity battle rooms or the "giant's drink" RPG or the arcade games, I wanted to experience them. In "Inda," there are hints of magic behind the medieval warfare, but it's so sparse that it's hard to be caught up in the wonder. Centuries ago, magic was more prevalent in the realm of Iasca, and it persists in other parts of the world. But in Iasca, magic is mostly limited to practical cleaning spells for bathing and personal care. Which makes sense, honestly--of all the things to use magic for in a low-tech world, replacing indoor plumbing is a big upgrade! But also, there are hints of more fantastical goings-on that get brought up every couple hundred pages or so and then dropped. Inda's home castle is haunted, literally, by the ghost of his father's first wife. There's a notorious pirate on the seas who is said to not just burn ships, but literally open portals to hell and send them through. (And the glossary at the end of the book has more details about how portals work, which seems to be really burying the lede in terms of magical scope.) These are the kinds of things I'd like to talk about more and not just mention sporadically. The book is seven hundred pages long! That's long enough to resolve some plotlines!

Moreover, Inda is incredibly unrelenting on the horrors of military-school "discipline." Big brothers beat up little brothers to toughen them up and "prepare" them for their classes. Older students beat up younger students, then lie about it and expect their victims to go along with it because snitches get stitches. Teachers beat up students. Students prank their classmates, then the entire class is collectively punished for it. Students prank third parties and frame their classmates for it, and the entire class is collectively punished for it. It's very much a case of "with friends like these, who needs enemies." Again, "Ender's Game" doesn't hold back on the bullying either, but the humor/worldbuilding/etc. was more compelling there.

Another book that "Inda" reminded me of was "Dune," specifically, the third-person omniscient style that jumps between characters' POV from paragraph to paragraph, not just chapter to chapter or scene to scene. In both cases, I found this jarring and anticlimactic: if we immediately hear "oh yeah, the king's brother is plotting a ruse and brainstorming how to frame the good guys for it," it lacks some of the suspense/curiosity that might motivate us to keep reading if we only saw from a couple POVs, or at least one at a time.

Not every character falls in either one of these extremes, but as a general rule of thumb: if someone cares about reading history and learning from the archives, they're a good person, if someone has only disdain for reading and history, they're a bad person. This includes one character who clearly has some kind of learning disability (dyslexia & stuttering). Of course, someone can be disabled and also be a terrible person, but the way it comes across here is kind of...unfortunate implications.

Among the aristocratic families, there's a lot of arranged marriages from early ages; girls will go to be raised with their future husbands' families, so there's a weird level of Westermarck effect. That being said, Inda's society is admirably matter-of-fact about "oh yeah, some people just prefer their own sex, the king himself has a boyfriend (as well as the wife he married for political reasons)." And some sailors "liked an east and west wind--males and females--down in the dark hold, when they should have been on night duty."

However, I found the blithe repeats of "oh, you don't know how sex works? Don't worry, pleasure houses are great, people will literally show you how it's done as a career!" to be disconcerting. Ditto this flashback:

 

“I’ve seen the dogs and horses at it, and I’m told that people are much the same.” She did not say that last summer she and Inda had talked about this very thing, knowing that they’d be expected to do it someday. So they’d retreated up to his room and taken off their clothes and stood looking at one another in their skin, and laughed at the idea of boys having nipples just like girls; they both knew it, but no one actually ever thought about it. Even funnier was how their butts looked exactly alike from the back. They snickered and looked at the parts that were different, but nothing happened. So then they’d lain on the bed together, and still nothing happened, except that Inda fell asleep, for he was tired from early rising.

 

Inda's ten or maybe eleven during this section, so during the flashback he's nine or ten at the most?? Do not want. (On the other hand, the frequency of the word "butt" is fairly accurate for ten-year-old POV characters, which isn't something I can say a lot.)

Halfway through the book, Inda gets framed for a crime he wasn't responsible for, and is exiled by going to sea, despite knowing nothing about being a sailor; Part II brings an entirely new group of hazing, bullying, and rapid POV jumps! Inda's complete ignorance is a good excuse for "as you know, Bob" infodumping; he's unresponsive and traumatized, so everyone assumes he's very slow, until his knowledge of fighting comes out.

Unfortunately, the second part has a lot more jerky timeskips. The ships' first round-the-world voyage takes almost two years, which is relegated to a couple chapters offscreen; Inda and his crew spend three months as prisoners during a civil war in an unfamiliar country, which is glossed over in a paragraph. There's only so many times you can repeat "and then Inda showed off his brilliance and everyone deferred to him even though he wasn't nominally in charge," and sailors at sea don't have as many opportunities for organized wargames. But Part I covers about a year and a half, while Part II covers about five years, and they're both about the same size; I think this could have been balanced better. Or maybe we could have met the seafaring characters earlier, before they intersected with Inda's plot?

I'm curious about the phonology of the Marlovan language. We have interesting double-vowel combinations like "Sierlaef" and "Sierandael," but also double consonants like "Tdor" and "Tlennen."

There are several more books in the series, but as it stands, I'm not really motivated to track them down. Inda's Games weren't playful enough for me.

Bingo: Published in the 2000s, was a readalong at one point, the second half certainly features Coastal/Island settings.