Yes, thanks all for the thoughts.
I just have a severe aversion to (what I see as) any highly suspicious and unexplained coincidence. It's just that there had been hardly any previous contact with any animals (at least large ones other than humans) in the whole of the journey and just at this point we are confronted with an unending column of them!
Now if the Quest had been successfully outpacing the Grim only to come across the column which held them up for, say, a day, forcing them to confront the deformed cavewights or be overtaken by the Grim (or both), then that would have removed the element of over-the-top coincidence IMHO
(I understand the point about it helping to populate the Land, but I just thought it would have been better for the Quest to have come across them as a stand-alone incident, rather than rolled in with the grim. I like the idea of all these cavewights somehow deciding that a mass migration from the Sunbane is necessary (though it isn't explained, I don't think, how they might have become warped when they all lived underground?)
(Incidentally, one reason that I think it was a shame that Gilden Fire was pulled from TIW is that did indeed help populate an otherwise strangely empty Land.)
I'm not trying to persuade anyone of my viewpoint, just interested to see if it was shared - and I guess not.
As regards my missing the "visual" impact, it may just have been that I was impaired from reading it on the tube to/from work - but it is generally true that I often find it difficult to visualise some of the set pieces that SRD describes! I'm not convinced that the he achieves the same success with the visual as he does with atmosphere and emotion.
Plotting in The Wounded Land
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peter
- The Gap Into Spam
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Mmm.... No, Barnetto - for me the Chrons are intensely visual; perhaps even more so than emotive and atmospheric. (Incidentally that may be why I am struggling a bit with the 3rd Chrons, because for me at least some of the visual novelty that each of the previous books have had, is lacking).
Your politicians screwed you over and you are suprised by this?
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
We are the Bloodguard
More power to you - and my loss! Don't get me wrong, I think the Land as a whole exerts a very powerful visual experience, but it's in some of the set pieces that SRD often loses me! (Though not as badly as I get lost in the sea battles of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey books!) I have now acquired a copy of the Atlas of the Land which is also a help.peter wrote:Mmm.... No, Barnetto - for me the Chrons are intensely visual; perhaps even more so than emotive and atmospheric. (Incidentally that may be why I am struggling a bit with the 3rd Chrons, because for me at least some of the visual novelty that each of the previous books have had, is lacking).
I'm moving back onto ROTE and FR next after I've finished WGW again. I can't belive I tried to read them without having read the First and Second Chronicles for a good 25 years!
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Vraith
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The thing about visuals/images always fascinates me: I almost never visualize [though I CAN if I stop and really work at it]. I read the way SRD says he writes...it's all words. My wife, otoh, says when she reads there is a constant movie in her head, she sees everything.
Heh...on the gripping hand, my third or 4th time through the first chron's, I tried to see, and ended up GI commenting to SRD that all the reasons people said you couldn't make a film from it were precisely the reasons you could.
Heh...on the gripping hand, my third or 4th time through the first chron's, I tried to see, and ended up GI commenting to SRD that all the reasons people said you couldn't make a film from it were precisely the reasons you could.
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler]
the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
Indeed. I never see faces when I read novels. I don't even have a precise mental image of TC himself - just a vague impression!Vraith wrote:The thing about visuals/images always fascinates me: I almost never visualize [though I CAN if I stop and really work at it]. I read the way SRD says he writes...it's all words. My wife, otoh, says when she reads there is a constant movie in her head, she sees everything.
A shadow on the mind?!
Just wanted to say that I didn't fully get your point about "Donaldson's style" until I started reading the Gap novels. Four out of five novels into that series, and now I can entirely see where you are coming from with that point!!wayfriend wrote: As for the Cavewights, that's Donaldson's style. It's not just a Raver ... it's a giant Raver with a piece of the Illearth Stone ... it's not just the Grim ... it's a Grim under a Sun of Pestilence with rabid Cavewights on a Sea of Graveling ....
Donaldson creates higher and higher levels of danger. One way he does so is these combinations. And he needs more and more danger because Covenant needs to be challenged.
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ninjaboy
- <i>Haruchai</i>
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Vain is a very unique Character.. I believe I read a GI response where SD did indicate the only way he could get TC to trust Vain in any way was is FF gave 'it' to him.
But Vain is also a key symbol of how significant the Demondim-Spawn are in the Land.. It's entirely possible that Vain is actually unnecessary and SD could have found another way of having Linden and the Elohim form a Staff of Law. Throughout the Chronichles the Demondim (and their Spawn) are pretty significant characters, yet we seem to be told very little concrete things about them..
I like that.
But Vain is also a key symbol of how significant the Demondim-Spawn are in the Land.. It's entirely possible that Vain is actually unnecessary and SD could have found another way of having Linden and the Elohim form a Staff of Law. Throughout the Chronichles the Demondim (and their Spawn) are pretty significant characters, yet we seem to be told very little concrete things about them..
I like that.
Forgive my death.
It was my flesh that failed you, not my love.
It was my flesh that failed you, not my love.
Barnetto wrote:
I had that same thought when the cavewrights where suddently there: Where did they come from, what are they doing there, why and how so 'over the top'... I starterd backtracking so I could find the place where I missed the answer. When I couldn´t find it, it just made me confused.
Ehh... I thought we were running from the Grim - But guess not... My bad...
I find that on occation things like this happens in the story. I´ve come accostumed to just shrug it of and believe it happend for a reason. But it does frustrate me...
It is by me.I just have a severe aversion to (what I see as) any highly suspicious and unexplained coincidence. It's just that there had been hardly any previous contact with any animals (at least large ones other than humans) in the whole of the journey and just at this point we are confronted with an unending column of them!
Now if the Quest had been successfully outpacing the Grim only to come across the column which held them up for, say, a day, forcing them to confront the deformed cavewights or be overtaken by the Grim (or both), then that would have removed the element of over-the-top coincidence IMHO
I'm not trying to persuade anyone of my viewpoint, just interested to see if it was shared - and I guess not.
I had that same thought when the cavewrights where suddently there: Where did they come from, what are they doing there, why and how so 'over the top'... I starterd backtracking so I could find the place where I missed the answer. When I couldn´t find it, it just made me confused.
Ehh... I thought we were running from the Grim - But guess not... My bad...
I find that on occation things like this happens in the story. I´ve come accostumed to just shrug it of and believe it happend for a reason. But it does frustrate me...
We all struggle to find the right path in life. It´s not always easy to know what that is - or where it will lead us. In the end it´s the people in our lives that provide us the balance to help us make it through.
