GildenFire removed to Preserve the Poss. of real or Imagined

[sindatur]

I don’t understand this. Even if you explain away all the Hile Troy perspective In TIW by saying he’s from Covenant’s world, and therefore could merely be another aspect of Covenants personality (Even Covenant wonders wether his mind created hile Troy as someone to fight with him), how do you get past Verement’s Final Stand? That was just Verement and his Bloodguard (Torhm?) and Flesh Harrower’s Army.

[High Lord Tolkien]

Troy witnessed it. He and Mhoram were one of the last ones to flee the area.
The "perspective" aspect SRD wanted to keep was pretty weak, imo.
The 1st Chronicles is full of info that TC shouldn't be aware of even with Troy as a proxy.

[wayfriend]

Last time we discussed this, we talked about how the idea was that the non-Covenant perspectives had to be introduced gradually.

By TPTP, the chapters from Mhoram's perspective are acceptible because, by this time, the real/dream question has become more or less a non-issue. In LFB, the real/dream question is paramount, and nothing could be introduced that might disrupt the balance. TIW is somewhere in between. The Troy POV chapters were considered acceptible, but not the Bloodguard ones.

This has been explained away as "It's different: Troy is from the real world, while the Bloodguard are not".

I'm not so sure if that is an excuse for what we have, rather than a reason why it was done that way.

But I think it's a sure bet that Donaldson and Del Rey were juggling these very questions, trying to strike a very delicate balance. And Lester's decisions aren't always models of rationality - although in this case Donaldson does claim now to have seen it Lester's way.

It may be that Troy's POV was acceptible, and the Bloodguards' were not -- at that point -- because Troy was from the RL, and so doesn't confer as much reality to the Land. Or it could be because the GF chapter included a POV encompassing the past of the Land, and THAT conferred too much reality. Or it could be that Troy's POV included Troy himself pondering the real/dream question, and, by immediately dismissing the dream alternative and wholeheartedly embracing the Land as real, he builds on his foil value. It could be that it was the absolutism of the Bloodguard was the component that made their POV unacceptible. ...

I think we could add more possible reasons to this list.

[Menolly]

If I may suggest, read birdandbear's and Fist and Faith's individual dissections of Gilden-Fire, as well as the Gilden-Fire thread above.

birdy does an incredible job of dissecting the story, whereas Fist jumps right in to his reasons as to why it was left out. I agree more discussion is welcome, but if those threads have not been read, do check them out. There is some terrific topics to build upon in them here.

[Relayer]

Isn't there also a chapter from Mhoram's POV in TIW? IIRC, Covenant is with him the whole time, so I guess that's what made that chapter ok...

And in the scene with Verement, I think there's even a short paragraph from the Raver's POV

[Thorhammerhand]

In TIW TC and Mhoram part company pretty early on.

Anyway, IMHO I like the POV changes, makes the reading more enjoyable.

[dlbpharmd]

I'm one of the camp who believe that GF should have been left in the story, but ONLY because of the back history of the Haruchai contained in that chapter - how they first came to the Land, meeting Kevin, the Vow and Earthpower, etc. I wish that SRD had included this in the canon. It could have been a conversation between TC and Bannor (no real need for Korik to have been involved at all.)

[sindatur]

Thanks Guys,

HLT, you sure HT witnessed Verement's last stand? Seemed to me they left quite some time earlier, and Verement spent a good couple hours making final preparations before Flesh Harrower took him down?

Menolly, I'm reading the dissections as I lsiten to the audiobooks. I have Gilden Fire and started reading it not too long ago, but since it had been so long since I had read the Chronicles, it was hard to put it into context, so I was waiting to start again until I remembered more about the details of the story. I plan to read it when I finish TIW audiobook. So, for now, I've held off on reading those particular dissections

[Menolly]

Menolly, I'm reading the dissections as I lsiten to the audiobooks. I have Gilden Fire and started reading it not too long ago, but since it had been so long since I had read the Chronicles, it was hard to put it into context, so I was waiting to start again until I remembered more about the details of the story. I plan to read it when I finish TIW audiobook. So, for now, I've held off on reading those particular dissections

IMO, they both are just going to simply blow you away when you get to them.
Enjoy.

[Blackhawk]

Thanks Guys,

HLT, you sure HT witnessed Verement's last stand? Seemed to me they left quite some time earlier, and Verement spent a good couple hours making final preparations before Flesh Harrower took him down?

Menolly, I'm reading the dissections as I lsiten to the audiobooks. I have Gilden Fire and started reading it not too long ago, but since it had been so long since I had read the Chronicles, it was hard to put it into context, so I was waiting to start again until I remembered more about the details of the story. I plan to read it when I finish TIW audiobook. So, for now, I've held off on reading those particular dissections

I believe that Hile Troy and Mhoram along with some soldiers on horseback, haruchai etc stayed behind to offer Verehment support while he prepared for his last stand. what i recall is that after the raver killed Verement and the bloodgaurd Thomin watching over him he sent his army charging into dooms retreat, After the Raver cleared a path through Dooms retreat it says
he found the Warward gone. The last of his enemies -a small band of riders including two Lords-were galloping away out of reach.

It sounds like they stayed behind until the Ravers army set off the Word of warning. or at least i assume that because of the time it took Fleshharrower to clear the retreat, and he could still see Mhorams Small group escaping.

as i mentioned I think in the GF thread that I would love a revised version of IEW.. not gonna happen but still.. I liked Gilden fire so much i re added it to the books I made for myself over 6-7 years ago.... and when i get Scott Bricks version (Hopefully soon) im going to insert it back into that audio book version also.. theres a bit of overlap but not too bad. Korik and the Quest just leave revelstone 2x, I can live with that..

[Krazy Kat]

It's possible Gilden Fire was removed so as to retain an equilibrium with what would happen during the siege of Revelstone. That is if you consider that Foul's army destroyed the outer gates and took control of the Tower as a two-fold ploy. That it was imperative Lord Foul had the old Gilden tree in the courtyard destroyed.

With Gilden Fire in the background of the story Lord Foul's destruction of the old Gilden tree just doesn't have the same impact, to the extent that it would impair the design of the story as a whole.

Of course, I'm basing this theory on an idea that Soaring Woodhelven was attacked not only from the outside but from the inside as well. Lord Foul sent his ur-viles to burn down the tree to disguise the fact that he was using a darker theurgy to destroy the great tree from it's central core outwards.

Gilden Fire may have been a chapter that intended to highlight Grimmerdhore Forest, maybe because it sounds like 'cremator' as in 'crematorium' - a horrible and demonic attack on the people of Soaring Woodhelven.

[Zarathustra]

It's been a very long time since I read GF, but I agree with SRD's reasons for taking it out. HT was already stretching the reality/dream question in this book. To add more would shift things too far toward the certainty side of the scale. And it would take away from the impact of having LM be the first Land character to have his own POV. Dramatically, that's a lot better than including GF. LM deserves the spotlight, and the narrative punch of occupying this narrative position first.

[Fist and Faith]

I think it's a significant difference that it's from the Haruchai pov. The flat emotional expression, which the unfamiliar reader thinks means they have no emotions; and the mind-speech. These make GF almost jarring. We can think, "HT is not Covenant. If it's from his pov, it's already proof that it's not a dream." But it's still a pov that we can relate to. Not so with the Haruchai. It makes GF very much stand out from the rest of the book.