SM Stirling's English prose is excellent. If I find an occasional anomaly, this is only because I am rereading very closely and carefully, noticing details missed on two previous readings.
"The woman looked around the room. Even hanging from the chains, Narayan felt a slight tingling chill as he met them. They saw more than human beings were meant to see..."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Fifteen, p. 285.
What are "...them..." in the second sentence and "They..." in the third? Clearly, from the context, they are the woman's eyes. However, grammatically, these plural pronouns do not refer back to any plural noun in the first sentence. That sentence needs to read something like: "The woman cast her eyes around the room."
But how many readers are going to notice that in this action-packed adventure sequence? Imperials raid a traitor's house to rescue Athelstane King while Athelstane King leads a raid to rescue Narayan Singh! King's men, who have scaled a tower, hear the front door being blown in by they do not know who! King has his second confrontation with the dreadful Ignatieff whose robe is caked with "...dried and rotting blood." (p. 282) Evil personified and incarnated.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! I've read THE PESHAWAR LANCERS no less than THREE times and I never noticed the anomaly you pointed out here. Drat! (Smiles)
And one thing I remembered from the raid on the traitor Allenby's house was how one of the characters noticed with pained distaste the Satanist "icons" in the passage leading to the "chapel."
Sean
Post a Comment