Saturday 5 December 2020

Favorite Anderson Novel?

Early morning post.

The People Of The Wind might be my favorite Poul Anderson novel: great characters, character interactions and inter-species interactions, imaginatively and sympathetically described Ythrians, future historical continuity and cross-references, exotic Avalonian setting - like the unique Japanese setting of Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice. Of course, several other works share such features. Mirkheim has an even larger cast of characters and a more important historical turning point.

The two main themes of The People Of The Wind  are perhaps living in troubled times and flying high. It begins:

"'You can't leave now,' Daniel Holm told his son. 'Any day we may be at war. We may already be.'"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT I, p. 437.
 
It ends:
 
"Muscles danced, wings beat, alive to the outermost pinion. The planet spun toward morning. My brother, my sister have found their joy. Let me go seek my own.
"Snowpeaks flamed. The sun stood up in a shout of light.
"High is heaven and holy."
-op. cit. XIX, p. 662.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND has many strengths and virtues, alto I found Christopher Holm, with his starry eyed infatuation for the Ythrians, smug and irritating for much of the book. But Anderson probably meant him to be like that, and to show some of that nonsense getting knocked out of "Arinnian." So PEOPLE was in some ways also a "bildungsroman."

There are other Anderson books I liked better, such as the recently reread ENSIGN FLANDRY, or THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN.

Ad astra! Sean