We’re thrilled to share the cover for the anniversary edition of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, which features a new introduction from V.E. Schwab, coming October 22 2024 from Bloomsbury Publishing. Additionally, Bloomsbury will be releasing a new, fully illustrated short story set in the Jonathan Strange universe called The Wood at Midwinter on the same day!
Susanna Clarke is the author of Piranesi, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Hugo Award–winning Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories. She lives in England.
About the Author
Reactor
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Reactor (formerly Tor.com) is a magazine that publishes original short speculative fiction along with daily essays, book reviews, media news, and more.
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I wonder if there’s a connection to the way many of these mentors are very isolated figures – either living by themselves somewhere desolate until an appropriate student comes along (like Kenobi or Yoda) or wandering across the earth without putting down roots (like Gandalf.) Are your female mentors more likely to be tied into a community?
Moirane is a fairly young Aes Sedai, too. She might seem old and wise compared to the mostly kids from the Two Rivers but she’s pretty feral by Tower standards.
I have no good examples of mentors to add since I’ve not been reading books with mentors in them. I mean, techincally Torin Kerr being a gunnery sergeant/strike team leader is a mentor but not a Gandalf.
Some years back, I wrote a story for a fantasy anthology about a late-middle-aged magic user who feels that her role as a wife, mother, and adventurer is over, and this last adventures proves her wrong. My weeping editor called me to thank me because older women in most fiction aren’t allowed adventures or a family or a happy ending.
One of my World of Warcraft characters is an elder female paladin. My head canon for her is that she had a family (children and grandchildren), watched them all die at the hands of the Horde/Scourge, and took up arms to protect others who were vulnerable. She is a mentor and guide to others as they seek to find their place as heroes in Azeroth and desires to leave the world a better place for those who come after her.
Jane Lindskold’s Over Where series, beginning with Library of the Sapphire Wind, has three older female mentors. They are at their library book club meeting when they are pulled through a portal into another world. It gradually becomes clear that they are not a misfunction of the magic of the three questing youngsters who called them. To everyone’s surprise, they are indeed the mentors who are needed.
Mercedes Lackey has a couple of candidates: Aunt (and Herald-Mage) Savil in her early trilogy about Vanyel is one. In By the Sword, Tarma and Kethry are mentors to Kerowyn, and Kerowyn eventually turns into a mentor character herself in the late-continuity Valdemar novels.
L. J. Smith, best known for her teen horror novels including the Vampire Diaries series, gives us Morgana Shee in her fantasies Night of the Solstice and Heart of Valor – particularly the latter, in which she formally takes on one of the young protagonists as a sorceress’ apprentice (and yes, though it’s not initially obvious, it turns out that she is in fact who you may think she is given the name).
And then of course there’s the Luidaeg in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye novels, who is very much the cranky Gandalf to Toby herself.
I wonder if there’s a connection to the way many of these mentors are very isolated figures – either living by themselves somewhere desolate until an appropriate student comes along (like Kenobi or Yoda) or wandering across the earth without putting down roots (like Gandalf.) Are your female mentors more likely to be tied into a community?
Moirane is a fairly young Aes Sedai, too. She might seem old and wise compared to the mostly kids from the Two Rivers but she’s pretty feral by Tower standards.
I have no good examples of mentors to add since I’ve not been reading books with mentors in them. I mean, techincally Torin Kerr being a gunnery sergeant/strike team leader is a mentor but not a Gandalf.
Some years back, I wrote a story for a fantasy anthology about a late-middle-aged magic user who feels that her role as a wife, mother, and adventurer is over, and this last adventures proves her wrong. My weeping editor called me to thank me because older women in most fiction aren’t allowed adventures or a family or a happy ending.
@3 Which reminds me of Lady Ista. She’s make an excellent Gandalf except she’s too busy being a main character.
The only Lady Gandalf that came to mind immediately was Polgara the Sorceress from the Belgariad series.
@5
And she’s often overshadowed by her (visibly aged) father, Belgarath.
One of my World of Warcraft characters is an elder female paladin. My head canon for her is that she had a family (children and grandchildren), watched them all die at the hands of the Horde/Scourge, and took up arms to protect others who were vulnerable. She is a mentor and guide to others as they seek to find their place as heroes in Azeroth and desires to leave the world a better place for those who come after her.
Maybe Perspicacia Tick or Eumenides Treason from the Tiffany Aching novels? A bit of reach maybe
Jane Lindskold’s Over Where series, beginning with Library of the Sapphire Wind, has three older female mentors. They are at their library book club meeting when they are pulled through a portal into another world. It gradually becomes clear that they are not a misfunction of the magic of the three questing youngsters who called them. To everyone’s surprise, they are indeed the mentors who are needed.
Mercedes Lackey has a couple of candidates: Aunt (and Herald-Mage) Savil in her early trilogy about Vanyel is one. In By the Sword, Tarma and Kethry are mentors to Kerowyn, and Kerowyn eventually turns into a mentor character herself in the late-continuity Valdemar novels.
L. J. Smith, best known for her teen horror novels including the Vampire Diaries series, gives us Morgana Shee in her fantasies Night of the Solstice and Heart of Valor – particularly the latter, in which she formally takes on one of the young protagonists as a sorceress’ apprentice (and yes, though it’s not initially obvious, it turns out that she is in fact who you may think she is given the name).
And then of course there’s the Luidaeg in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye novels, who is very much the cranky Gandalf to Toby herself.