Nicholas van Rijn, Sandra Tamarin and Eric Wace struggled, suffered and survived together on the planet, Diomedes. Shortly after that, Sandra bore van Rijn's son, Eric Tamarin. Wace drops out of the picture but is remembered in a name.
Sandra's conference chamber on Hermes displays a "...Diomedean battle-ax." (XVII, p. 233)
"When at last [David Falkayn] stopped and regarded her, it was strangely right that he stood beneath the ax." (p. 238)
Very right. The unity of action between the first van Rijn novel, The Man Who Counts, and this concluding van Rijn-Falkayn novel, Mirkheim, is being affirmed. If we approach the Technic History in chronological order, then we have read The Man Who Counts long before reaching Mirkheim whereas, in the original order, we read Mirkheim as the culmination of the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy, then, two volumes later, encounter The Man Who Counts as part of the Avalonian history, The Earth Book Of Stormgate.
In this chapter, we appreciate some weather. The storm makes the conference chamber a gloomy cave but:
"Freshness blew in, though, loud and raw. Rain struck the garden like spears and hid sight of the world beyond its wall. Lightning flared, making every bare twig on the shrubs leap forth under a sheet-metal sky; thunder rolled across unending reaches while murk returned." (p. 233)
"Wind whooped, rain rushed, thunder went like enormous wheels. Winter was on its way to Starfall." (p. 239)
See also Alliterative Prose.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And the thundering being heard by Grand Duchess Sandra and Falkayn has, to me, a note of defiance, of determined opposition to Strang.
Sean
Post a Comment