Kevin's Watch

What better to fill in my days than to follow up Daughter of Regals and Other Tales with Reave the Just and Other Tales? And in keeping with my last topic, what was your favourite story this time around?

I found it harder to choose a favourite as no one story lept out at me as being better than the others. I think it's because SRD improved as a writer in the years between the two books.

I even liked The Djinn Who Watches Over the Accursed and What Makes Us Human, despite the fact that he wrote them out of necessity or ego and not love.

In the end though, The Killing Stroke was my favourite. What was yours?

The Killing Stroke, undoubtedly. I just enjoyed it more than the others (Though 'The Kings Of Tarshish Shall Bear Gifts' and 'By Any Other Name' were both great).

I really loved The Woman Who Loved Pigs. It's a very old-fashioned kind of fairy story that takes a good hard look at what it really means to become a changed person--especially if one thinks of it in terms of Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. You take a young woman, trap her in a set of rotten circumstances, and then save her from them by waking her up, by transforming her from an ash-girl into a well-dressed, well-educated lady.

What's so wonderful is that in The Woman Who Loved Pigs, SRD turns the fairy-tale convention on its ear, and gives us a story where that awakening, that transformation, isn't necessarily the salvation it might seem to be--a story where awakening and transformation may not be salvation at all.

Killing Stroke. Read stuff 'like' this before, but never in such a deeply moving and suspensful way.

The Killing Stroke and By Any Other Name are joint favourites for me so I gave it to killing stroke because it was first on the list in your poll.

I voted for Penance-alas poor Scriven!-The Killing Stroke, really, is the best short story I've ever read and The Woman Who Loved Pigs is extremely good!

Has to be The Killing Stroke. For my reasons, see the thread of the same name.

I think that Penance comes a close second though.

--Avatar

I have always been a great fan of Reave the Just itself and have not changed my mind lately.

The Woman Who Loved Pigs, I agree with Myste it had a fairy story feel to it, which was nice, and I thought it was very well written.

The Killing Stroke is clearly winning out on this poll, and I could have easily chosen it as my favorite as well. But, there's just something about The Woman Who Loved Pigs that makes it my favorite.

I just love SRD's play with the theme of possession. It's something that's important in the Chronicles, and here he devotes an entire story to the idea.

And I just love the slow transformation of this poor woman. For me as a reader, there was so much visualization going on while reading this, I was simply amazed. It was like I was this poor woman "seeing" all the things the pig was filling her mind with. But what I truly love about this fact for me is that SRD has said many times that he is not a visual writer. He focuses on words that convey emotions and motivations. Rather, he doesn't "see" first, but only as a secondary aspect of his having written words. This story really stands out to me for that reason.

Hail, SRD.

For me, the tie was between Penance and The Killing Stroke. I really liked the paradoxes, story development, and emotional tension in Penance. And as a judoka, I couldn't help but like The Killing Stroke, with its variety of martial arts.
I voted for Penance because I read it first, and so have liked it longer.

To be unlike all of you, I would have to say that I absolutely loved The Lady in White. Absolutely fantastic story, I believed.

I felt sorry for the poor blacksmith's brother.

I agree that Lady in White is a great story-and while the title of this thread doesn't really say it---by the nature of the poll, it's assumed we're talking about stories in Reave the Just, not Daughter of Regals...

Has anyone else noticed the similarities between The Woman Who Loved Pigs and Fatal Revenant??? I'm finishing the story now. When I do, I'll post in the FR forum. It's really amazing, all the parallels.

Zarathustra wrote:Has anyone else noticed the similarities between The Woman Who Loved Pigs and Fatal Revenant??? I'm finishing the story now. When I do, I'll post in the FR forum. It's really amazing, all the parallels.

Just looked for your post and couldn't find anything in FR - did you post on this topic?