Leadership: An Essay

Our World, Our Home

There are some books worth reading more than once. At least they're worth it to me. One is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I know, I know. I've mentioned it before. It's a fourteen volume fantasy series, the volumes ranging from 681 pages to 912 pages with so many named characters and so many invented terms that each is followed by an extensive appendix of names and terms. It's not everyone's cup of tea.

Here is basically what it is. It is an epic telling a Good vs. Evil story. It has heroes, both male and female. It has villains, both male and female. It is a world of discrete nations and many distinct and identifiable cultures with their various concepts of honor and appropriate behavior. This world and the Wheel of Time were established by the Creator. The world and the Wheel of Time were endangered by The Dark One once before. He was defeated and imprisoned by a previous Dragon. Now in this new age, The Dark one is breaking out of his prison and again threatening the world and the Wheel of Time. The Wheel of Time has spun out a new hero, The Dragon Reborn. He must bring the disparate factions of the world together to meet The Dark One and his forces of evil at Tarmon Gai'don, the final battle. If the good guys lose it will mean the end of the world and the end of the Wheel of Time. The ultimate end of all.

There are small slices and great swaths of wisdom throughout the books. Wisdom that easily applies to our world and the age we live in.

The White Tower is an institution of powerful women led by their Amyrlin Seat. During the course of the story, it is taken over by a tyrannical Amyrlin and is divided. The rebel faction chooses their own Amyrlin, Egwene al'Vere. Her story arc rises to its climax in Book 12,  The Gathering Storm.

Egwene unites the White Tower and is raised Amyrlin Seat of the unified Tower. As Amyrlin she chastises the loyalist members of the Hall of the Tower.

     "You are a disgrace. The White Tower--the pride of the Light, the power for stability and
       truth since the Age of Legends--has nearly been shattered because of you," she says.

Egwene continues,
     "Elaida [the former Amyrlin] was a madwoman, and you all know it! You knew it
       these last few months as she worked unwittingly to destroy us. Light many of you
       probably knew it when you raised her in the first place!

    "There have been foolish Amyrlins before, but none have come as close to tearing down
      the entire Tower! You are a check upon the Amyrlin. You are to keep her from doing
      things like this!

     "You dare call yourself the Hall of the Tower? [the Aes Sedai's legislative body]  You
       who were cowed? You who were too frightened to do what was needed? You who
       were too caught up in your own squabbles and politicking to see what was needed?"

In the United States, we too, have a government that depends on its constitutional checks and balances to assure good leadership. Our leaders do not rule, they must "Lead by presence instead of force, uniting instead of dividing." -- Siuan Sanche Sedai, supporter of Egwene Sedai, Amyrlin Seat.

Our Congress has the same responsibilities as the Hall of the Tower. And we, as citizens, are responsible to hold our representatives to account.

The Importance of Books in My Life in Real Time

Marie Yovanovitch being sworn November 15, 2019

I finished reading Educated by Tara Westover very early Wednesday, November 13 after having stayed up way too late the night before reading it. Reading threw me behind in my preparations for a party I was having Wednesday afternoon. What kind of person reads instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing? To quote from the play Camelot, C'est moi!

Educated (which, by-the-bye, is an excellent book) was one of the books I read taking a break from rereading the eleventh book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'd also reread Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 for the Introduction to Literature class that my daughter is teaching.

The party was over and I was tired. The problem being, I needed to find another book to read. I took How Language Began to bed with me that night. It is a good book, too. Nonfiction. An academic study of the evolution of human language. I read it off and on Thursday, then took it to bed with me again last night.

But today, it would not do. I have the Impeachment Hearings running on TV. An academic study of linguistics just does not give me the escape I need to make it through this testimony.

I've lived through some pretty frightening times -- President Kennedy's murder, the horrible things that happened during the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, Nixon's Impeachment Hearings, the Oklahoma City Bombing, 9-11, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, Trump's campaign rhetoric (which continues to this day), and his presidency. These are but the highlights of low times as I see them. Too much of these on TV in real time. Again it is scary, because of the possibility of someone or several someones to decide to take matters in their own hands. And it would all be live on TV.

Books can take me away from all this.

The Wheel of Time series is my blankie. It is fourteen volumes of escapism. WOT takes me to a world described with a fullness and consistency that I do not find in our real world. It's many characters are heroic, though flawed or they're mighty and villainous. Good guys and bad guys. And we know from the getgo which is which.

Anyway, the obvious goto would be to read the next WOT book -- Book Twelve, The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I couldn't find my copy of it. It's bound to be somewhere in this house. The bookshelves in the basement, the stacks of books in my office, in the bedroom, in the living room. Somewhere. But ....

So I bought Book Twelve and downloaded it to my tablet.

In Brandon Sanderson's Foreword to the book, he writes "In November 2007, I received a phone call that would change my life forever. Harriet McDougal ... called and asked me if I would complete the last book of The Wheel of Time." He goes on to recall his experience on September 16, 2007.

I remember my own experience of September 16, 2007.

I was driving home with my not-quite 18-year-old daughter. We were running at 65 miles per hour north on I-35 from Oklahoma City. The radio was tuned to National Public Radio's evening news program All Things Considered. The route, the speed, the radio program were all perfectly normal and unremarkable. 

Suddenly my daughter started screaming and beating the dashboard. Understandably alarmed, I pulled to the side of the road to find out what happened. She was crying and repeating "He died." Not tears of sorrow, but more of fury.

"Who?"

"Robert Jordan! He died! He hasn't finished! He hasn't finished!"

Yep, Robert Jordan died September 16, 2007, after publication of the first eleven books of his Wheel of Time books. But the epic story was not finished. Characters were left in terrible straits. The nations of the world were divided and at war with each other. The ultimate bad guy was about to break free from his prison. And the final battle would require that all peoples fight together or the Wheel of Time could be irrevocably broken. It would be the ultimate end of times.

I didn't recall ever having heard of Robert Jordan or his epic fantasy.

My son, being ever the pragmatist, had not started reading J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series until the final installment was safely published. Jordan's dying seemed reason enough for me not to ever start WOT.

Jordan was diagnosed with a terminal heart disease in December 2005. He had made preparations in case he died -- extensive notes "... so if the worst actually happens, someone could finish A Memory of Light and have it end the way I want it to end."

With Brandon Sanderson on board to finish the twelfth book, I decided to give the series a try. That final book turned out to be three books and I must say Sanderson did a superb job. So, yes, I am working my way through the fourteen book series for the fourth time.

And I am surviving the chaos of our real times for the umpteenth time. So far.

Wheel of Time

My memory from 6 years ago today on Facebook: "A Memory of Light. This title will be released on January 8, 2013. So says Amazon. Hooray. Guess I won't have to let the air out of Brandon Sanderson's tires after all."

Before Wheel of Time, I proclaimed to all and sundry that I didn't read fantasies. Or series. As far as I was concerned, no one would ever be able to meet the standard set by J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. 

And then, and then.... My daughter Grace and I were driving north on I-35 at 70 mph, listening to NPR as was my want. It was September 2007. Grace graduated high school a few months before and would turn 18 that October. Suddenly she started screaming and pounding the dashboard. Got my attention, I'll tell you.

When I got us stopped and tried to find out what was going on, it turns out she was listening to NPR's news more closely than I. They had just announced that Robert Jordan died. 

Grace was furious! He died leaving his Wheel of Time series unfinished. She had read them all up through the eleventh one released two years before. We're not talking graphic novels here. We're talking page counts from the shortest at 334 pages for the first book up to 987 pages for the longest. The prologues exceed 50 pages. And writers are constantly dissuaded from including ANY prologue at all.

She'd been trying to persuade me to read them for ages. I'd read the Harry Potter series (also fantasy, also a series) mostly to humor the child Grace. (At least in the beginning. I must confess I'm a Harry Potter fan now.) But that day I was really glad I hadn't started reading WoT yet. And then I didn't have to because the writer died and it would never be finished.

Hah! and double Hah!

Jordan had planned one more book. He knew he was terminally ill and he made preparations -- He said, "I'm getting out notes, so if the worst actually happens, someone could finish A Memory of Light and have it end the way I want it to end."

What did Robert Jordan's widow do? She chose a writer to "finish" the series. Brandon Sanderson. The announcement was made in December, 2007, less than three months after his death.

So I started reading, assured that the series would be completed. And I read. And I read. And I read. I  immersed myself in Jordan's world. Its three young heroes. Its strong women. Its righteously good characters and its scary, powerful bad characters.

More than a year later Tor Books, the publisher, announced that the last book would be split into three volumes. Sanderson cited timing and continuity reasons for the change in plans. Three more books! That would be a total of 14 for a person who does not read series. Intolerable. Plus, I read a couple of Sanderson's books. They were acceptable, yes, but could he carry Wheel of Time?

Nine months later the first volume completed by Sanderson, The Gathering Storm, was released. YES! It was good. It was faithful to Jordan's life's work. WoT was in good hands. Then a year later, the next in the series Towers of Midnight was released. And I was pleased. If anything, I liked Sanderson's WoT volumes even better than Jordan's. 

A year came and went and the only word from Tor was that the final book A Memory of Light, wasn't ready. There were rumors. The internet was filled with speculation and hope and despair and frustration. 

The next year I went to a writing conference and pitched my book to a Tor editor. Then I asked when A Memory of Light would be released. She said she wasn't the editor on it and that nobody knew when it would be released. It was still being edited. Only half joking, I threatened to find out where Sanderson lived and let the air out of his car's tires. She sympathized with me.

Then six years ago today, Amazon announced that A Memory of Light would be released the following January -- six more months to wait!

Was it worth the wait? Yes, it was. I've since reread the series through twice more and periodically pick up this volume or that to read again.

These days, I sometimes need to be reassured that Good will triumph over Evil. It may just take a little longer than we had hoped.

December 29, Surgery Day

Alarm at 4:30 a.m. MST. Surgery scheduled for 8 a.m. Have to check in at 6. Kinda like catching a flight. While the airport is an hour away with traffic, the hospital is only 15 minutes. So much closer. But not more reassuring. Only a shorter trip to think of my mortality.

It's my cousin Gerald's birthday. Then it's a good day to have surgery because good things happen on this date. A good omen.

Not that I'm superstitious. Like Tuon the Seanchan Princess/Empress "may she live forever" in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time fantasy series. She is a strong, brave, independent woman who believes in omens. I'm reading the fourteenth and final book in the series. It's my third time through. WoT is my security blanket. No matter what turns my life is taking or what else I might be reading, I can always go back to WoT. There I am spirited away to a world where the wheel turns as the wheel wills and good conquers evil.

4:35 I took my shower with the special antiseptic wash. Dry with a clean towel. Don clean clothes. Because knee replacement involves the implanting of a foreign material into my body, I must be especially careful of the possibility of infection. For the rest of my life.

I didn't turn the 4:30 news on.The news folk will only talk about Debbie Reynolds. She died yesterday. The day after her daughter died. Carrie Fisher, another Princess. Whose character in another fantasy series is strong and independent and brave. And she is younger than I. There's that mortality thing again.

My computer bag was packed -- my laptop, two changes of clothes.

Loose fitting clothes like the nurse who taught the pre-op class said. My exercise class clothes. We didn't have exercise class Monday because it was the day after Christmas and even exercise class teachers deserve a day off now and again. But I walked with my walking group Tuesday and we went to Panera's after.

The exercise class is for my physical well-being. The walking and good food amidst good friends is for my mental well-being. One of the walkers -- technically, she doesn't usually walk with us, but she often meets us for coffee after -- was worried. She'd had a lipoma on her back for many years and now it had started hurting. She was worried that it may have become cancerous. She was having to wait until Wednesday to see her doctor. Dammit.

A reminder of our mortality.

And I had to wait until Thursday, the 29th.

The paperwork was safely stowed in the computer bag. A copy of my Advance Directive and one of my Durable Medical Power of Attorney. Just in case. My chances of surviving a total knee replacement were excellent. But one of my husband's good friends had a fairly routine back surgery last month. He threw a blood clot and died.

Another reminder.

My husband drove me to the hospital and our daughter met us there. We did not mention mortality.

Three chargers were in my bag. One for my cell phone, one for my e-reader, and one for my laptop. I would need to call my son and my brother and my uncle to let them know how the surgery went. And I would need my reader so I could read myself to sleep -- I was on page 343 of 894 in that last Wheel of Time book. I had emails of good wishes to answer. And blog posts and short fiction and books to write.

Bye-the-by, my walking group friend has shingles. Not fun, but not cancer either.

And I now have a new knee.

Profanity and Curses -- an essay

image from economist.com

   Not exactly topics for this holiday season, so if you want you can note it in the back of your mind and come back to it after the New Year when you’re hung over and thinking along these lines anyway.

   So what got me going on these subjects? I went to the movies. The youngest person in the audience was my daughter Grace. She’s 25. There weren’t that many people there, probably fewer than 20. None-the-less, I expected a certain level of decorum. We were after all in a public place not in someone’s living room. Or den. Or garage.

   As usual the theater starts with advertising their treats – popcorn, soda, Starbucks. Then they go to the next standard fare and we hear from the white-haired man behind us “Now we gotta sit through the damn trailers.”

   “I didn’t know Dad came with us,” My witty daughter said. He had not. Though in defense of my husband, he may have thought it, but he’d never have said it out loud in a movie theater.

   And ‘damn’ is certainly not the worst thing I’ve heard in public. The *f* word bandied about in McDonald’s will get me to say something pretty quickly. Usually it’s young people that need to be spoken to. But more and more often it seems profanity is used by all age groups and genders, not so much to shock but as common conversation.

   Okay, I admit it. I’m old. I have white hair and I grew up believing that people who resort to profanity have limited vocabularies and no imagination.

   I’m not a complete prude. A flat tire in the middle of I-whatever during rush hour. Stepping barefooted into the dog’s accident in the hall in the dark. A heavy vase dropping within inches of you from the upstairs balcony. Unpleasant surprises especially if they carry a sense of danger are all well worth an expletive or two. And the simpler, the easier to bring to mind and quicker to say.

   One can be trained to say acceptable things in lieu of what they really mean. Like Winnie the Pooh and his “Oh bother!” or my Grandmother’s “Fiddlesticks!”

   I started this as a rant against, but I seem to be warming to the subject.

   I think of Shakespeare’s insults and curses. While gentle and obtuse by today’s standards, they were apparently rude and obvious to his audiences.

From Henry IV, Part 2

“You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!”

   I don’t know exactly what it means either, but it sounds really bad. Maybe I could use it the next time Sonic messes up my hamburger and puts mayonnaise on it.

   Though I don’t appreciate profanity in public, I do think it has its place in literature, movies, music, etc. When I told Grace the original title of this blog post (Perversion, Profanity, Blasphemy, and Sacrilege) she asked if I was writing a review of one of John Irving's books. I love John Irving's writing. He is brilliant and I enjoy his juxtaposition of tragedy and humor shot through with the absurd. Considering my stand on socially unacceptable language and behavior in public, I cannot listen to his audio books in Oklahoma's summer time at the drive-in hamburger joint. Can't roll down the windows without turning off the book, dontcha know. Hmmm. Can you get earphones for the speakers in your car?

   One of the more fun parts of writing my books is making up profanity. If you've read Murder on Ceres, you know I write Science Fiction/Murder Mysteries. Just as time and tide wait for no man, language changes whether we want it to or not. Which gives me a wonderful opportunity to make up my own profanity for my future world.
   Certain bases for profanity will continue into humanity's out-migration from Earth. Excrement and bodily functions come to mind. *sh* will still be quite useful, but generations of knowing chicken only as brewed protein rather than a two-legged, feathery creature will do away with any connection between the words 'chicken' and *sh.*
   The concept of a religion-defined 'hell' will probably be dropped from human consciousness as various religion-defined forms of marriage are being dropped now. So there's another opportunity for a new word for where you can damn someone to.
   The concepts of blessings and gods will change, too. The greatest of gods will probably continue to be the creator of human life. We humans have always recognized light as the symbol of that god no matter his name, though not always because we understood the Sun provides energy for life -- human or otherwise. At least as we know it.
   Another religious symbol will be water. Already among desert peoples (including the Judeo-Christian culture that grew up in the deserts of the Middle East) water symbolizes life and is used as an important part in religious sacraments. In our move into Space where water is rarer and more difficult to obtain in life-sustaining quantities, humans will probably continue to use water as a symbol of a life-giving creator.
   No doubt, the new blasphemies will malign the Sun and Water. Humans hurling curses at their fellow humans will threaten to cut them off from Sun and Water.
   These will also be the bases for blessings.
   In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, the Aiel, a desert people used to too much sun and too little water, say "May you always find water and shade." In the darkness of Space the blessing may come to be "May you always find water and sunshine."
   A blessing I offer to you.

Sun and Water

     image from adsoftheworld.com

E is for Expository Writing

 

E is for Expository Writing

            At which I am very good. Expository is the adjectival form of the word exposition, which is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as a statement or rhetorical discourse intended to give information about or an explanation of  . . . . The very definition of the word can send you to the cereal box in search of something interesting to read.

As a fiction writer expository writing is the bane of my existence. Well, that and clichés. I am not alone in this. Robert Jordan, author of the fantasy series Wheel of Time, writes an exciting story filled with heroes and heroines who must battle against terrifying beasts and stupefyingly evil villains to save the world from the Dark Lord. So exciting that I stay up too late to see what happens next. And this is my second time through these fourteen books. So actually I know what happens next. And I love it.

BUT, it makes me crazy when he describes in detail the manner of dress peculiar to each country in the world every time one of those citizens appears in the story. Or describes in detail the varied forms trollocs come in, and that Ogeir have eyes “the size of tea cups.”

I understand the need to tell readers everything the author knows about his world or his characters or their back stories. But does the reader have the same need. Indeed, do they have the same interest and enthusiasm in all the things the author has researched, imagined, and invented? Even more importantly, is this information necessary for the reader to understand the story?

For example, my character must travel from Oklahoma City to Denver. Nothing in particular happens on the trip to affect the story. The only thing that is important is that three chapters into the story he be in Denver instead of Oklahoma City.

In my research I can discover that he could drive north on I-35 to Salina, Kansas, turn west onto I-70, pass through open prairie, pass by several wind farms, and see a herd of antelope. But I don’t have to share all that with my reader.

I can just say, Exhausted from his eleven hour drive from Oklahoma City, Brad fell asleep at the wheel and ran head-on into a semi.

Done and dusted.

Three Writing Styles

STYLES of Writing SOUNDS & Silence

I have always read a wide variety of material, generally with little discrimination. I was as happy with David McCullough’s histories as with Colleen McCullough’s historical fiction. I eagerly read Charles Dickens and J. K. Rowling. Margaret Atwood and John Lescroart both kept me on tenterhooks.

Now that I, too, write, I am no more choosy about my reading, but I am more analytical. This summer I went from Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander, a naval novel set in the early 1800’s. To a repeat reading of Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World, Volume One of his epic fantasy The Wheel of Time. To Cormack McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, the first in his Borderland Trilogy. Three very different ways to present sound and silence.

From O’Brian this excerpt:

‘Why does he not fire?’ thought Jack. The Desaix’s bow-chasers had been silent these twenty minutes. Indeed, by now she was in musket-shot, and the people in her bows could easily be told from one another: seamen, marines, officers—one man had a wooden leg. ‘By God, he’s going to riddle us with grape.’
…the Desaix began to yaw. She answered her helm as quickly as a cutter, and in three heartbeats there were her thirty-seven guns coming round to bear. The broadside’s roar and the fall of the Sophie’s main top gallant mast and fore topsail yard came almost together—in the thunder a hail of blocks, odd lengths of rope, splinters, the tremendous clang of a grape-shot striking the Sophie’s bell; and then a silence.

And from Jordan:

The back door creaked as someone outside, or something, tried to push it open. His mouth went dry. A crash shook the door in its frame and lent him speed; he slipped through the window like a hare going to ground, and cowered against the side of the house. Inside the room, wood splintered like thunder.

At first when the trees surrounded him, he took comfort from them. They helped hide him from Whatever the creatures were that had attacked the farm. As he crept through the woods, though, moon shadows shifted, and it began to seem as if the darkness of the forest changed and moved, too. Trees loomed malevolently; branches writhed toward him. He could almost hear the growling chuckles stifled in their throats while they waited for him. The howls of Tam’s pursuers no longer filled the night, but in the silence that replaced them he flinched every time the wind scraped one limb against another. He  hardly dared to breathe for fear he might be heard.

Then I read McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.

Rawlins stood in the door of the kitchen and studied him.
You look like you been rode hard and put up wet, he said.
They sat at the table and ate. Rawlins leaned back and fished his tobacco out of his shirtpocket.

I keep waitin for you to unload your wagon, he said. I got to go to work here in a few minutes.

I just come up to see you.

What about.

It don’t have to be about something does it?

No. Dont have to. He popped a match on the underside of the table and lit his cigarette and shook out the match and put it in his plate.

I hope you know what you’re doin, he said.

John Grady drained the last of his coffee and put the cup on his plate along with the silver. He got his hat from the bench beside him and put it on and stood up to take his dishes to the sink.

Rawlins watched him go to the sink and watched him go to the door. He thought he might turn and say something else but he didn’t.

It was not the absence of an apostrophe here and there that most affected me about McCarthy’s work. Having just read O’Brian’s decorous and abundant language describing sea battles in the Napoleonic Wars with their hundreds of men crowded on ships amid smoke and thunderous cannon fire, I then read Jordan’s graphic descriptions of combat with fantastical, ravening creatures in a world where silence and darkness battered me as harshly as the sounds of raging battles.

And finally I read McCarthy, with whom I was unfamiliar. My reaction to the change in styles was sensory. I felt as if I had been struck partially deaf. He wrote a world where sounds and people are as spare and sparse as the nearly barren dry lands of the West Texas-Mexico borderlands. McCarthy led me through hot, open country, with few people and them slow to speak their few words. A country of far distances and vast silences.

Three very different writers using words printed on paper to build worlds of sounds and silences in my head.

Fantasy Series

Cover Art from Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World

I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President Kennedy’s murder in 1963, Senator Kennedy’s murder in 1968, the Edmond Post Office murders in 1986, the Murrah Federal Building Bombing in 1995, and 9/11 in 2001. Having grown up and lived most of my life in the Oklahoma City area, the Edmond Post Office and Murrah Building were parts of my daily life. I passed the post office on my way to work each morning and our credit union was in the Murrah Building. Each of these events shook my world, shifted my world view.

And then one day in September 2007, I was driving north on I-35 with my daughter, then a Freshman at Oklahoma University. The car radio was tuned to KGOU our Public Radio Station. Suddenly my daughter started screaming and beating on the dashboard. When she told me why, it made no sense. Some writer named Robert Jordan died. I had no idea who Robert Jordan was. She explained about his epic fantasy series. His unfinished epic fantasy series, eleven volumes of which she had read and loved and reread in anticipation of the final installment.

Being naturally commitment-averse, I made it a rule never to read serialized novels. Nonfiction in multiple volumes I’ve always been comfortable with. Who can cover the Civil War in a single volume?

Fantasy? Also, not happening. I don’t easily suspend disbelief, so the minute something supernatural comes on the scene, my mind begins to wander and the book languishes beside my bed or under it.

And I never reread works of fiction. There are too many good books out there and I don’t have enough time to read them all as it is.

There were noteworthy exceptions to my policies of no fantasy series and single read-throughs. Tolkien’s Trilogy of the Rings, which I read to please a husband. I still have the books, but not that husband. And Rowling’s seven-book Harry Potter series which I read to please my daughter. Happily I still have both the books and the daughter.

Jordan, however, was not a blip on any radar as far as I was concerned. And as of the day of his death, never would be.

Today I am one-third of the way through Eye of the World, the first in what was to become Jordan’s fourteen-book series The Wheel of Time. The final three volumes were written by Brandon Sanderson. And this will be my third time through the series from beginning to end. Plus rereads of the later volumes in anticipation of each new release.

Why The Wheel of Time? To be honest, I thought I’d never enjoy another fantasy after The Lord of the Rings. I tried a couple and was not impressed.

I believed Tolkien’s world, complete with his Orcs and Ents. Then I came to believe Rowling’s world and Jordan’s, with their Hogwarts and Quiddich and Aes Sedai and Tarmon Gai'don. In each and every one of these books, characters from unremarkable backgrounds lead their people against the forces of darkness and win. Characters I got to know and care about, thrown into intolerable situations, attempting impossible goals, and succeeding.

Some days, my real world feels threatened by darkness on an epic scale and I need to believe there are real people from whatever backgrounds who can and will stand up when we need them.