ussusimiel wrote:I have just finished Chpt.2 in Part II and we've had another one of those kitchen sink battles that SRD seems to feel the need to load into the Last Chrons. I genuinely hate these battles because of the number and variety of immense forces that they contain. This may be the worst so far and it definitely was the most depressing from my perspective. The skurj I don't mind because I never liked them anyway, but the casual treatment of the sandgorgons and the peremptory use of the Fire Lions was really annoying and almost upsetting. Again magnificance is reduced; to body parts in the case of the sandgorgons (I honestly never wanted to think about the inside of a sandgorgon. I always saw them of creatures of power rather than some sort of animal) and blatant convenience with the Fire Lions.
The resolution of the a battle that had raged for pages took a short paragraph and an opportunity to at least give us a look at the glory of the Fire Lions was passed over with a swiftness that diminshed them to almost an irrelevance. In LFB we got an extended passage where the Fire Lions raged, here we were given nothing. Again it feels like a deliberate toning down and reduction of something marvellous and fantastic.
u.
Yep, agreed. All that needed to happen to resolve the whole
skurj/Sandgorgon issue in one fell (and clunkingly forced) swoop was for the bad guys to suddenly decide to change ends, like football teams at half-time. So after twenty pages or so, the Sandgorgons for no good reason suddenly decide to charge up the slope after Linden and at the exact same moment, the
skurj likewise suddenly decide to charge down the slope after TC. Here's the oh so detailed description of why this Russian ballet-style
troika occurred:-
TLD - Part II - Chapter 3 wrote:Then he was given a momentary reprieve. A kind of convulsion seemed to grip the Sandgorgons as if an invisible hand had taken hold of their minds. They paused; scanned the valley as if they sought more satisfying opponents. An instant later, they wheeled away.
Some of them delivered a last flurry of blows, but soon all of them were pounding back up the valley. Massed and eager, they formed a bleached river pouring irresistibly uphill. At the same time, the skurj began to squirm downward, horrific numbers of the serpent-like monsters. As the Sandgorgons ascended, they parted only to let scores of skurj pass among them.
The attackers had traded targets.
Well, that's as clear as mud, then. No good reason at all, apart from a deliberate and blatantly contrived plot device to finish the battle off with lightning speed, since a mere page and a half later, the Lurker floods the valley, killing all the
skurj who obligingly have massed together on the low-lying ground and the Firelions dispose of all the Sandgorgons, who obligingly have massed together right in front of them.
A real forced clunker of a resolution there. Did anyone else get the feeling that at this particular point, SRD had pretty much lost interest and was just knocking previously set-up narrative skittles over as fast as possible, carelessly knotting issues off as quick as he could, whle hurrying towards his conclusion?
I can't help thinking that SRD should have issued a fair few preliminary drafts to get committed reader feedback, before sending the final manuscript off for publication. There's a great deal of commonality of feeling and agreement about those passages, issues and narrative treatments where people on KW - SRD and Covenant's most ardent fans, remember - feel they've been sold disappointingly short.
Was this a deliberate choice on SRD's part in the Last Chrons, to reduce things from glorious to the banal?).
Why yes, you do! 
