I have reread the book! I do not feel as though I reread it enough! This was probably to be expected. Since writing tasks are running away from me I am not going to get to any position of clearer insight than this, so:
During the course of the book I was trying to map its structure onto various things. In particular I was thinking about magic and its destructiveness, and all the times its referred to as working by small carefully-placed changes -- I wondered about Ford's alternate history, and the small changes he made to get it, and the people the bricks of history's wall fell on as it came down.
Because this is to an unusual extent a book where the heroes mostly fail, until the very end. The first part of the book is three people having their lives destroyed, and then there's a murder mystery whose solution does not help, a document destroyed (does this help? To be honest, I've already forgotten, but not much I don't think), a rescue which immediately becomes worse than useless, several people in line to the throne not saved... By the time Gregory successfully deciphered the documents it felt almost eucatastrophic, that the truth could actually be salvaged by somebody acting at exactly the right time. And then he's almost immediately locked up, because even that information is incomplete. (So much information transfer! This is almost as much a spy novel as Scholars).
This parallel between the working of magic and the book was based on the idea that the whole book is in a way the story of Hywel doing a single bit of magic: it's the story of him setting things up such that he can destroy the red dragon when it arises, and the reason ninety percent of it is people failing is that ninety percent of magical success is failure, and the important thing is getting the success to happen where it counts. Only as a parallel that seems to be based on a large-scale broad-brush kind of structural thinking which, I am left with the feeling, neither Hywel nor Ford would use. I am left thinking that the nature of magic in this book is more to do with Ford's ideas about the actual limits of individual action. My memory of the final chapter had been more like 'Hywel finally executes his plan,' whereas it reads like 'Hywel finally realises that his method of doing business has limits, and allows himself to deviate very slightly from his method in a way that is consistent with its principles.'
(It's so interesting that wizards cannot, by any means whatever, hide their power from each other. This isn't quite true, in the end -- Hywel is hidden inside another body -- but at the point when in a whole bunch of fantasy novels someone would have said, 'Advanced wizards can conceal their magic, or maybe we have a rune which does that, how plot convenient!' Ford says, 'Advanced wizards can no more hide their magic than advanced engineers can reverse gravity.' He lets so many things be constraints).
There seems to me a interesting parallel between Hywel pushing the red dragon over the edge, and Gregory sticking his hands into his own mechanism to prevent a disaster and his friend's death. And then it's those two who go off together. I have no deeper reading on this.
I have not gone closely through Concordans about the history, because I feel as though it would be like reading careful analyses of a bunch of puns -- but I am left with a very strong feeling that I will like this book more and more as and if I learn more about how it's using history.
I still feel as though it would require diagrams for me to really understand how all the characters change over the course of the book. I was actually intending to draw the diagrams, but time has flown me on past that.
Mary's blessing... I feel as though it must have been something other than a pure intended forgiveness, because Cynthia is then able to choose to forgive them again -- I don't know. I don't understand it.
I... didn't realize until now that Dimi is comparing Edward to himself!
Nor did I. Thank you! I remember pausing on that paragraph with a small 'huh' of not getting it, and then moving on. Not an uncommon experience on this reread, although satisfying when I did get things like that.
It occurs to me now to wonder about Peredur's heart, and the fact that he and Cynthia kiss once and then go their separate ways -- there is a sense in which he hasn't restored his heart as much as he could have done, maybe.
(The sad loves of men on noble missions. This turns up in Scholars of Night too. I am instinctively suspicious of it as a kind of emotional plot, but on the other hand I feel as though Ford understands kinds of pain and life complexity which I don't, yet. With writing as opaque as Ford's, it's quite hard to tell where I disagree with him and where I just haven't understood him yet).
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Date: 2019-10-22 02:19 am (UTC)During the course of the book I was trying to map its structure onto various things. In particular I was thinking about magic and its destructiveness, and all the times its referred to as working by small carefully-placed changes -- I wondered about Ford's alternate history, and the small changes he made to get it, and the people the bricks of history's wall fell on as it came down.
Because this is to an unusual extent a book where the heroes mostly fail, until the very end. The first part of the book is three people having their lives destroyed, and then there's a murder mystery whose solution does not help, a document destroyed (does this help? To be honest, I've already forgotten, but not much I don't think), a rescue which immediately becomes worse than useless, several people in line to the throne not saved... By the time Gregory successfully deciphered the documents it felt almost eucatastrophic, that the truth could actually be salvaged by somebody acting at exactly the right time. And then he's almost immediately locked up, because even that information is incomplete. (So much information transfer! This is almost as much a spy novel as Scholars).
This parallel between the working of magic and the book was based on the idea that the whole book is in a way the story of Hywel doing a single bit of magic: it's the story of him setting things up such that he can destroy the red dragon when it arises, and the reason ninety percent of it is people failing is that ninety percent of magical success is failure, and the important thing is getting the success to happen where it counts. Only as a parallel that seems to be based on a large-scale broad-brush kind of structural thinking which, I am left with the feeling, neither Hywel nor Ford would use. I am left thinking that the nature of magic in this book is more to do with Ford's ideas about the actual limits of individual action. My memory of the final chapter had been more like 'Hywel finally executes his plan,' whereas it reads like 'Hywel finally realises that his method of doing business has limits, and allows himself to deviate very slightly from his method in a way that is consistent with its principles.'
(It's so interesting that wizards cannot, by any means whatever, hide their power from each other. This isn't quite true, in the end -- Hywel is hidden inside another body -- but at the point when in a whole bunch of fantasy novels someone would have said, 'Advanced wizards can conceal their magic, or maybe we have a rune which does that, how plot convenient!' Ford says, 'Advanced wizards can no more hide their magic than advanced engineers can reverse gravity.' He lets so many things be constraints).
There seems to me a interesting parallel between Hywel pushing the red dragon over the edge, and Gregory sticking his hands into his own mechanism to prevent a disaster and his friend's death. And then it's those two who go off together. I have no deeper reading on this.
I have not gone closely through Concordans about the history, because I feel as though it would be like reading careful analyses of a bunch of puns -- but I am left with a very strong feeling that I will like this book more and more as and if I learn more about how it's using history.
I still feel as though it would require diagrams for me to really understand how all the characters change over the course of the book. I was actually intending to draw the diagrams, but time has flown me on past that.
Mary's blessing... I feel as though it must have been something other than a pure intended forgiveness, because Cynthia is then able to choose to forgive them again -- I don't know. I don't understand it.
I... didn't realize until now that Dimi is comparing Edward to himself!
Nor did I. Thank you! I remember pausing on that paragraph with a small 'huh' of not getting it, and then moving on. Not an uncommon experience on this reread, although satisfying when I did get things like that.
It occurs to me now to wonder about Peredur's heart, and the fact that he and Cynthia kiss once and then go their separate ways -- there is a sense in which he hasn't restored his heart as much as he could have done, maybe.
(The sad loves of men on noble missions. This turns up in Scholars of Night too. I am instinctively suspicious of it as a kind of emotional plot, but on the other hand I feel as though Ford understands kinds of pain and life complexity which I don't, yet. With writing as opaque as Ford's, it's quite hard to tell where I disagree with him and where I just haven't understood him yet).