Sunday, 12 January 2020

A Circus Of Hells, Chapters One And Two

The first two chapters of Poul Anderson's A Circus Of Hells have already received considerable attention. See:

Irumclaw
Irumclaw II
Tide And Twilight
Citizen Ammon
Citizen Ammon II

Emergent themes are:

receding empire;
raucous Old Town;
scandalous "joyhouse";
its ambitious proprietor.

Out of this concatenation, Dominic Flandry concocts a scheme to delay imperial recession. His local agent, so to say, Leon Ammon, is high on the list of characters that we would have liked to see again. In fact, I would have liked to read a few more chapters set on Irumclaw but the action of the novel has to race on to Wayland and Talwin.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I used to regret how short some of Anderson's novels were, until I realized how much he was able to pack into them. But, I agree, I would like A CIRCUS OF HELLS to have been several chapters longer. I would have liked to have seen more of Leon Ammon either in this book or later on in another story. And I would have liked to have seen more about the Wayland AI.

Ad astra! Sean