In Starfall on Hermes:
"Spring was full-blooming in Starfall when the patriot army stormed it." (p. 271)
"On the right flowed the Palomino, brown and murmurous, its opposite shore rising in green slopes where villas lay scattered and fallaron trees bloomed golden. On the left, older houses stood close-ranked, deserted, their windows blind. Ahead swelled the hill, steeps and terraces, gardens and bough-roofed walks, to the gray bulk of the Old Keep. Beyond it lifted the lattice of Signal Station and a pastel glimpse of the New Keep." (p. 273)
As with the descriptions of Ysan buildings, squares and streets in The King Of Ys (with Karen Anderson), it is as if Poul Anderson had stood in the place that he describes. Maybe the Palomino and its surroundings are a real place with their names changed? - although any river through a city is going to have buildings and maybe some trees on its banks and probably other larger buildings visible nearby.
Although we had known that David Falkayn came from a planet called Hermes, we had not seen the planet before Mirkheim and now receive a lot of information about it, which is welcome. It will be visited once more a long time later in A Stone In Heaven.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Anderson might have been inspired in his description of Starfall by real cities and rivers like London, with its Thames River (with the Tower of London an analog of the Old Keep).
Ad astra! Sean
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