Hamlet is about being dead:
the ghost;
the skull;
the soliloquies.
Action-adventure fictions describes frequent violent deaths. Can it tell us what it is like to know that you are being killed? SM Stirling does. A woman resisting an attack on her village feels a sudden cold in part of her body, watches a sword enter her stomach and come out red, smells something foul, falls, feels her head pulled back by the hair and sees her scalp held before her as throat is slashed open. Her point of view ends so there is a double space before the next paragraph.
We know that some of the characters believe in reincarnation but not whether this novel is a fantasy where such beliefs turn out to be literally true - although we do not expect it. As a rule, as in real life, physical death is the end for a fictional character.
Unpleasant but realistic.
It is appropriate to reference Arnold Schwarzenegger's rewrite of Hamlet.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Mr. Stirling certainly knows how to convincingly describe what a violent death FEELS like to the person who was mortally wounded.
Sean
Paul:
I have to say that adaptation of Hamlet appeals to me. Particularly the castle blowing up.
Paul:
I recall, by the way, one of the final scenes of Cry Wolf by Wilbur Smith, set during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. There were three main characters, two men and a woman, and one of the men, mortally wounded, hears an Italian say of him that he's dead. He thinks, as nearly as I can remember the line, Why, yes; I am. This time, I really am, and tries to grin, but....
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