[Dragaera] [Tangent] Great age (Sethra vs. Malazan)

[Maximilian Wilson]

On 8/11/06, Jose Marquez <jhereg69 at earthlink.net> wrote:

> then you end up with a really long run-on sentence. But the main idea is
> that all of that would pararectally put the Empiricals in sync with the
> Cycle. I wonder when the number 17 really took hold in Dragaeran
> society. I bet Sethra knows...

One of the things I think Steve does well is to really convey the
magnitude of Sethra's age. In an empire of Dragaerans whose lives make
ours look like mayflies, Sethra is so ancient as to make their lives
look human (or Eastern) in comparison. As Vlad observes in /Issola/,
it's as if she's been around long enough to have lost interest
ornamenting that which is naturally plain, brightening that which is
naturally severe, etc. Events in the First Teckla reign which are
ancient history to us are part of her personal history. I mean, Sethra
is _old_, and I think this is conveyed quite well. Contrast this with
Steven Erikson's Malazan novels, which I really enjoy, but which have
500,000-year-old characters like Anomander Rake who don't seem, for
whatever reason, as old as Sethra is. I sometimes get the feeling that
most of that 500,000 years consisted of nothing happening... the End
of History, as Fukayama would have called it.

-Max

-- 
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.