[Dragaera] Steven Erikson (was: Reading series)

[Maximilian Wilson]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Konrad Gaertner <kgaertner at tx.rr.com> wrote:
> Yes.  It'll be about 9,000 pages when finished, and none of it is
> unnecessary padding.  Lots of characters, lots of nations and
> cultures, lots of ruins.  Some of the prologues are set hundreds of
> thousands of years before the main events, and some of the POV
> characters aren't mortal.

I like Erikson's stuff, but I have to admit that Brust does a much
better job of conveying a sense of age. Erikson *claims* that
Anomander Rake and the T'lan Imass are all hundreds of thousands of
years old, but Sethra does a much better job of conveying a sense of
having hundreds of thousands of years of experiences under her belt.
Partly that's because she has a backdrop against which she's operating
(the Empire and the Cycle), and partly because Erikson has a really
vague sense of time both within the plot of the series and in the
backstory--he knows that certain things happened a long time ago and
he pulls out a suitably impressive number, but doesn't seem to have
much idea of the history that would have happened in the meantime.

So as far as continuity goes, I agree, Brust is better.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)

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