However, I am finding it hard to pick up one or two of the narrative threads. What had Raupasha done to annoy Kashtiliash? I have flicked back through the text but not found it yet. Meanwhile, Brigadier Kenneth Hollard's audience with Kashtiliash demonstrate how allies should negotiate. There are common interests and mutual respect but also, crucially, strength on both sides. Hollard is able, indeed obliged, to tell Kashtiliash that he may exile but must not kill Raupasha because she is under the protection of the Republic.
By contrast, personal relationships between William Walker's followers are, as we expect, dreadful. Odikweos (Odysseus) swears by the Kindly Ones (another Neil Gaiman connection) that he will kill Alice Hong if he can. Let me guess now that that is how she is going to die...
Had the Furies been renamed the Kindly Ones that far back?
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The King of Babylon was angry at Princess Raupasha because soon after the Assyrian yoke over Mittanni was broken, she "claimed" Kenneth Hollard as her consort, without first asking him and consulting King Kashtiliash. The King had wonder if this was some devious maneuver by the Nantucketers. Also, Raupasha was acting as tho she was an independent sovereign, rather than as someone totally dependent on Nantucket and Babylon. The truth was simpler, the princess was merely young and inexperienced. And Kashtiliash fortunately soon realized Raupasha had not meant to cause any trouble.
Sean
Sean,
Thank you. And I really should not need help with reading a book properly!
Paul.
The narrative structure of OCEANS is rather complex -- it works if read straight through, but can create difficulties otherwise. I was experimenting with how to handle multi-viewpoint, multi-timeline books.
Euphemistic renaming is a very old phenomenon -- you can trace a whole bunch of cases in the Indo-European languages. Particularly in words that evoke either fear (supernatural terrors, animals like wolves and bears) and or taboo (sexual and scatological stuff). Eg., The Germanic languages all use a word for "bear" which isn't descended from the PIE word *rktho, as it is in the Romance, Celtic and Indo-Iranian families. Instead it's from a term meaning "the brown one". In the Slavic languages, a similar substitution was made and the word for bear derives from "the honey eater"; in the Baltic languages, the term is derived from "the shaggy one". A similar taboo-avoidance was used in all three branches; other evidence suggests a fairly late connection between the proto-languages intermediate between Proto-Indo-European and the ancestors of Germanic, Slavic and Baltic. Or for a more modern example, most of our English sexual terms aren't "Anglo-Saxon" at all, they're recent coinages or medieval loans from Dutch/Low German or French.
Kaor, Paul!
Any time! And part of the problem came from the complex narrative structure of OCEANS, as Mr. Stirling himself explained.
Sean
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Yes, I too noticed the complex narrative structure of ON THE OCEANS OF ETERNITY. I did wonder a few times if the book was needlessly complicated. Then I realized it was technically similar to the "interlaced" structure of Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS, with the story freguently shifting to the POVs of different characters.
Sean
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