[Dragaera] re Iorich???

[Jerry Friedman]

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov's novel /A Hero of Our Time/
consists of five stories about a man named Pechorin in
the Caucasus mountains, told in the order that the
fictional Lermontov learns them (first through another
narrator), not the order they happen in.  Vladimir Nabokov
writes,

"This involute structure is responsible for blurring
somewhat the time sequence of the novel.  The five
stories grow, revolve, reveal, and mask their contours,
turn away and reappear like five mountain peaks attending
a traveler along the meanders of a Caucasian canyon road."

I look forward to being able to say that about "the
nineteen novels".

(This is not to say that if you like the Vlad books,
you'll like AHoOT, as we called it in high school.
Though there is a duel, and a little playing around
with narrators, and there are some Cracks.)

Jerry Friedman


--- On Mon, 8/10/09, Jeffrey Kiok <blackbird0 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Jeffrey Kiok <blackbird0 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Dragaera] re Iorich???
> To: dragaera at dragaera.info
> Date: Monday, August 10, 2009, 6:54 PM
> It's been a while since I responded
> to the list, not that I ever did a lot, but I wanted to say
> this:
> 
> What i like about the progression of the "Vladiad" (I saw
> someone call it that, but I can't call it that with a
> straight face, sorry), is that its progression is very
> human.  Vlad isn't in control of his own destiny, and
> events come to him as they do, and he deals with them. 
> He's involved in crime, he gets divorced, he has an epic
> battle with the gods.  Somehow, the temporally
> disjointed nature of the series I feel makes Vlad seem more
> real, because you don't necessarily learn about people in
> chronological order.
> 
> I guess what I'm saying to say is that when you meet a
> human being, you don't necessary learn about them
> chronological order.  The concept of the temporally
> linear "biography" is a very peculiar and artificial
> concept.  When I meet someone, I don't learn about
> their birth, but about what they're doing more recently, and
> it takes a lot of learning to dig into their past, to gain a
> more complete understanding of them.  You end up
> learning more about a person, most often, by learning about
> their past, than learning about their present or their
> future, but you don't necessarily learn about their past in
> a linear manner.
> 
> And I feel that the manner in which Vlad's story unfolds
> more aptly mirrors the human experience of knowing about
> person.
> 
> -Jeff
> On Aug 3, 2009, at 11:21 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> 
> > Well, since everyone wants to know my opinion, I
> thought
> > the series reached a peak with /Athyra/ and stayed in
> > the alpine zone with /Orca/ and /Dragon/.  The
> next
> > three books were back on the level of, say, /Teckla/.
> > 
> > --- On Mon, 8/3/09, Steve Rapaport <steve.rapaport at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 
> >> Funny you should say this.
> >> 
> >> I feel disappointed by Dzur and Jhegaala too, not
> because
> >> the writing or
> >> story is poor in either one, but because anything
> after the
> >> climactic battle
> >> between gods and Jenoine and one-armed Easterner
> just
> >> seems, um, ante-climactic. [sic]
> > ...
> > 
> > Before the climax?  That certainly applies to
> /Jhegaala/.
> > 
> > But the battle in /Issola/ was too silly for me to
> call
> > it climactic.  (They still fear Verra, do
> they?)  /Issola/,
> > /Dzur/, and /Jhegaala/ all had very Cool Stuff, but
> they
> > also had what felt like incidents that were just
> there
> > to keep the story going.
> > 
> > I too want to know what happens to everybody, but I
> also
> > want a secondary character as interesting as Cawti or
> > Savn.  Lady Teldra had interesting thoughts, but
> C. and
> > S. had both those and interesting feelings.
> > 
> > And don't get me wrong.  I got hooked with
> /Jhereg/ and
> > /Yendi/, which in my opinion are the two worst books
> in
> > the series.
> > 
> > Jerry Friedman
> > 
> > 
> > 
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