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

[Jose Marquez]

Maximilian Wilson wrote:
> 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.
>   
Forgive me; I am unfamiliar with Fukuyama and the End of History. Could 
you summarize?

I agree with you on Sethra's age. I can almost imagine how being that 
old, you really are more mountain than human (Dragaeran).

Jose

-- 
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