[Dragaera] Reading series

[Jeffrey Kiok]

Being a rabid Dune fan myself, I feel a bit compelled to interject.

While I agree, Maraget, that Brust has much better continuity than the  
Herberts, I do think, in fairness to Frank Herbert, it should be  
pointed out that there are two Herberts you're talking about, and I  
think many a Dune fan rates the one far higher than the other.

I think (thought) that Frank Herbert's sixth book ended the series  
masterfully, and that his son essentially created a new storyline  
(destroying the old one) in order to create the seventh and eighth  
book in the series.

-Jeff
On Jan 19, 2009, at 3:47 PM, Margaret Young wrote:

> I spent a good part of my winter break re-reading two series
>
> The Vladiad (for my own purposes)
> The Dune Series (for a project a student of mine is working on)
>
> One of the things that really stands out on rereading Brust is how
> tight his continuity is compared to the various Herberts. Brust has,  
> of
> course, played wonderfully with various levels of unrealiable narrator
> (unrealiable for more than one reason). We do obviously find cracks in
> our relentless rereading but some of Herbert's (even in Frank's books)
> are quite noticeable. And frustrating.
>
> One of Brust's nice touches is to go back and either clarify or use an
> apparent discontinuity whereas the Herberts just .... well they just.
>
> It is always a problem when a series of books are written over an
> extended period of time — the writing of them becomes much more
> similar to the problems involved in keeping continutity in a  
> television
> series than what one associates with writing.
>
> Anyway, one of the joys of Brust to me is that his work continues to  
> be
> a joy. Indeed I find myself reading at least as carefully the fifth or
> sixth time through as I did the first.
>
> Which in my mind is one of the things which distinguishes one level of
> writing from another.
>
> Margaret
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dragaera mailing list
> Dragaera at lists.dragaera.info
> http://lists.dragaera.info/listinfo.cgi/dragaera-dragaera.info