Friday, 7 September 2018

The Byworlder, Chapter XI

This chapter, like VI, is somewhat unsatisfactory. When Yvonne is kidnapped in Los Angeles, Skip, utilizing his knowledge of the local "Underworld," a sort of recognized criminal subculture, tortures a guy who might be able to give the FBI a lead to the kidnappers and the guy can.

Like the rescue-of-an-immortal-from-a-hospital sequence in The Boat Of A Million Years, this chapter strikes me as an unnecessary intrusion of Anderson action-adventure fiction into a novel that is really about something else. We still have not been told in so many words what was Skip's big idea about the Sigman although it obviously has something to do with the Sigman perhaps being more interested in art than in other means of communication.

I turn the page to XII, Skip meets Yvonne's military minder, Colonel Almeida, and I close the book for the night. Back here tomoz.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

While I agree Chapter VI of THE BYWORLDER was, unfortunately, weakly written, that is not how I recall Chapter XI. I thought it was a REALISTIC touch by Poul Anderson to have Skip torturing the "sorcerer" in that chapter. Men who are desperate will often do things they would never otherwise dream of doing.

Sean