[Dragaera] [SKZB] SKZB allusion sighting in Ringo

[Philip Hart]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Maximilian Wilson wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 12:06 AM, Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> On Sun, 14 Sep 2008, Maximilian Wilson wrote:
>>
>>> 'But if he could simply absorb the power of the priestess, even with a
>>> goddess behind her, then simply blasting him with power would fall right
>>> into his hands. It would feed him. But shooting him seemed out as well.
>>
>> "then simply blasting him with power would fall right into his hands" ???
>>
>> Maybe "would play" would help, but the pronouns are still a mess.
>
> The pronouns are fine. "He" is David Drake. "Her" is "the priestess."
> "It" is "blasting."

I disagree - "If he could absorb the power, then blasting him with 
power would play into his hands" - yes, the referents are ok on 
inspection, but one does inspect when seeing this pronoun pattern, 
which one doesn't wish to have to do; and the switch from nominative to 
predicate is a sign of the sentence's obvious problems.  I suspect the
entire sentence, and "It would feed him", could be dropped without any
loss.  Unless the style is the point, in which case never mind.

I don't think I've ever had the experience of reading a sentence by
SKZB and saying to myself, "No, that doesn't work."