Wednesday 11 April 2018

Raven POV

Chapter XI of Poul Anderson's The Night Face is narrated from the point of view of the aristocratic Lochlanna military leader, Raven, who swears by "Death and plunder..." (Flandry's Legacy, p. 641) When Raven leaves his cat, Zio, in his spaceship cabin:

"Zio scolded him in absentia for several minutes." (p. 644)

In this single sentence, the point of view has shifted from Raven either to Zio or to a disembodied observer left in the cabin with the cat. I highlight this point because Anderson usually exercises complete control over the narrative pov and it is interesting when it very occasionally becomes unfocused or wanders away as it does here.

Nuevamerica had attempted trade with Orillion (VII, p. 611) and successfully rebelled against Lochlann when the latter was fighting the Grand Alliance. (III, p. 572) I mention these points because neither Orillion nor the Grand Alliance is referenced anywhere else in the Technic History. Are Nuevamerica or Lochlann named as members of the Allied Planets in the following instalment? The series ranges far in space and time.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Plainly enough, Orillion and the Grand Alliance were among the later successor states of the fallen Empire. That is, they were probably successors of the first barbaric, shaky, and precarious of the states which arose in the ruins of the Empire. Analogous to some of the shorter lived barbarian kingdoms which came into existence after the Western Empire fell (such as Burgundy, the Ostrogothic Italian kingdom, and the Vandal kingdom in North Africa).

Sean