Well, and here we are, actually a week and a half into January, and as far as I can tell, I have seven Book Reports to do by last New Year’s. Not good.
Particularly since one of them is Lord of Emperors, the second Sarantine book by Guy Gavriel Kay, and I kinda skimped on the last one, so I should probably take a little time with this one. Chris was kind enough to fill me in on some authorial conceit that was not apparent in this book, and also kind enough to ask me what I liked about the books (given that I’ve already complained a bit about Sailing to Sarantium), so I should do that.
Mostly, I liked the characters and plot. Now, having said that, I didn’t like all the characters and plot. Rustem was fantastic, and I liked the plot-timing that got him into the action where and when he was needed. On the other hand, Kasia particularly and a few of the other characters simply faded into nothingness, which was frustrating for me. There was another magnificent set piece of a chariot race, but the fights were either passed over entirely or described with an odd limpness.
My favorite thing in LoE was the way Mr. Kay brought things to a head on a particular night, finding ways to bring many of the characters together at a wedding reception and then combine them and their plotlines in new ways, and have that day and its events keep building and keep building and recombining and recombining, surprising me but remaining consistent to the plot and character imperatives he had set up. It was remarkable. Now, because I am a complainer, I will complain that the placement of that scene is too early in the book, and that many of the pivotal events of that day and night turn out not to be all that pivotal; threats never materialize and new threats unseen at that point turn out to be central to the later plotting. But while that detracts somewhat from the achievement of that sequence, there would certainly be some sort of thing to detract from anything of that magnificence, and it is typical of me, but wrongheaded, to concentrate on that aspect rather than on the achievement.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.