Things and Stuff 12.19.24: The Inda Series by Sherwood Smith
Part 1 - An Introduction and Thoughts on Worldbuilding
This wasn’t my original plan for this week’s Thursday post, but then several friends asked how far I was in Sanderson’s Wind and Truth. I found myself defending my choice to continue through my re-read of a series I read back in college instead of jumping immediately into the book that I and the rest of the epic-fantasy-loving community has been waiting all year for.
Usually, in this sort of scenario, I’d reach for the new book. After all, the older I’ve gotten (aka the less time I have to sit down with a book before parenting responsibilities pull me away), the less often I reach for a book I’ve read before. After all, there are way too many on that TBR list, and no time to waste!
But thinking of why I wanted to finish re-reading this series first reminded me of all the things I love about these books, and all the things I just didn’t think to appreciate back in ~2010.
Who’s Sherwood Smith Anyway?
The first Sherwood Smith book I read was her YA fantasy duology (usually published together), Crown Duel and Court Duel. I was out at my family’s cabin in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania one summer during middle school, and had run out of reading material (a true tragedy). Fortunately, my cousin loaned me her copy of the book, and I was hooked.
To this day, I’d likely call it my favorite book, and even if it gets shuffled around in the top five now and then, it will always hold the title of most formative. I’d written a few fan-fictions previously that we can all be glad disappeared when the family desktop self-destructed in the early 2000s, but Crown Duel took over a part of my brain in ways that other books hadn’t. And the more of Smith’s books I read, the more it drove me to build my own worlds and write my own stories.
I’ve enjoyed some of her books more than others, but in every single one, I’ve been caught up in the world-building and characters in a way that few series or authors have managed.
The Worldbuilding of Sartorias-Deles:
My Hollow Knight Tunesday post mentioned a friend who likes to talk about the ruins that creators put in their worlds, because he wants to see marks of what came before. I think that idea gets at one of the things that really pulls me into well-established worlds. The same thing in my engineer-brain that likes to take apart a device to see what mechanism makes it work is fascinated by the ways economy, geography, culture, and religion (among countless other things) all tie into and build on one another. And Smith is a master of this.
Right now, Brandon Sanderson is the big name people point to when the question of fantasy worldbuilding comes up. And while I’m as much a fan of his stories and magic systems as the next epic fantasy reader, something about them has never been quite as cohesive as I would like it to be. The lore and tradition and culture are all there, and done well, but so many of the characters and settings feel larger than life in ways that keep the worlds from feeling as lived-in as I’ve come to prefer.
Being fully honest, as much as I love it, I don’t have a full handle on the timeline of the Sartorias-Deles world. Because it’s massive. Smith has built the world up over fifty years of storytelling (More info on her site here). Those stories are grouped into several arcs taking place in different time periods and regions of the world, but they are all tied together, and interact with one another. Some arcs will make references to others. Some characters in one arc will be mentioned as great historical heroes or villains in a story arc that takes place half the world away a thousand years later.
The scale of the whole is hard to keep track of, and I’ve yet to find a convenient timeline chart to map it out.
But even on the smaller scale, within individual arcs (the Inda books, for this example), the ways values spread between cultures through treaty-marriages, or the way conquering people adopt traditions of those they have absorbed feel real in ways that many fantasy worlds fail to accomplish.
I could pick a dozen broad examples of this and ramble about each. Instead, I’ll just pick the one that has always been my go-to when explaining the thoroughness, subtlety, and realism of Smith’s worldbuilding.
In-world Profanity. Because few things really show what a culture values quite like the things they find offensive.
[Comments below are descriptions of the way Smith’s world is built, separate from any moral statements on my part.]
Some of our categories of profanity would be irrelevant in S-D
They don’t have gods or goddesses to swear by. They have a concept of damnation, so that one still works, but the usual fantasy-stand-in profanity of swearing by the gods of the world doesn’t work here.
Some of our curse words would barely earn a raised eyebrow
In general, the S-D world is far more casual about sex than our own world, and none of the cultures carry the related taboos that you might find in the real world. As a result, the subgenre of profanity we have in most real-world cultures related to sex and/or genitalia just isn’t relevant in the world. Anatomical joking is present, but it’s not culturally considered offensive (though it is generally avoided around children).
Some real-world profanities are more offensive there
Most of the magic the average person deals with in the parts of S-D we see in the Inda series is practical, everyday stuff. They have firesticks and glowglobes to provide light and heat. They have spelled water buckets for cleaning and waterproofing spells on clothing. They have the waste spell (If I could steal a magic spell from any fantasy world, it would be this one), which deals with…waste. No toilets or bathrooms here. As soon as you are old enough to speak the waste spell, you just use the spell when you gotta go.
Our own world is disgusted enough by poop. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a whole subcategory of profanity dedicated to excrement. Now imagine a world where no one (except those punished with animal-waste-wanding-duty) ever really has to interact with it. No sewage system. No toilet paper. No plumbers. No clogged drain lines. And imagine how much more profane the very concept would be, and therefore, how much more insulting the associated words.
I could sit here and talk about Smith’s worldbuilding all day, but at some point, going to the source itself does more than any summary or recommendation can.
If you like in-depth world-building and softer magic systems, grab a Sherwood Smith book next time you get the chance.
If you like books that can double as weapons, go ahead and pick up Inda.
If that sounds a little intimidating, I’d suggest starting where I did, and grabbing a copy of Crown Duel.
In Part 2, I’ll talk a little about her excellent character work and what it’s like to read Smith’s very visual writing style as someone who struggles to visualize things.
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to stay up to date on future recommendations, or want to make sure you see Part 2 of this when it’s posted, don’t forget to subscribe!