Sunday 3 March 2019

A Wandering POV And A Missing Child

Poul Anderson, New America, "The Queen of Air and Darkness."

Eric Sherrinford and Barbro Cullen converse. At the bottom of p. 167, we are given her point of view (pov) when she remembers her husband. On p. 169, we get his pov when he regards her. Thus, the pov wanders in a single conversation.

They investigate a missing child, her son. Stieg Larsson's Mikael Blomkvist investigates a missing teenager, his employer's niece. In Anderson's story, I would have preferred if we had not seen the stolen child with his kidnapper before reading the conversation between his mother and the detective. In Larsson's novel, I have some criticisms of the police investigation (see here) although I might modify the first criticism (only slightly) on re-rereading the novel.

As always, I am finding much more in this Anderson story by critically rereading it and blogging about it.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I thought it made sense to see the stolen child at the beginning of the story. The point of that story was not ONLY the missing child, but also what KIND of people were ultimately behind the kidnapping. THAT we don't find out for sure till much later in "The Queen of Air and Darkness."

Sean