Familiarity

The People Of The Wind is the fourth and last appearance of the planet Avalon in Poul Anderson's Technic History and the sixth and second last appearance by an Ythrian or Ythrians in the Technic History. These finite numbers of instalments generate a sense of a much longer acquaintance with a place and a people.

David Falkayn's mother, Athena, and brother, John, each appear only once, in different scenes, in Mirkheim. But we know the Falkayn family.

(Tolkien has Mirkwood. Anderson has Mirkheim and Mistwood.)

The city of Gray on Avalon seems very real and familiar when Daniel Holm glances out his window:

a clear winter's day although, at this latitude and altitude, there is no snow so that the hills remain green with susin;

whooping wind, cold but exultant;

dancing whitecaps on Falkayn Bay;

cloak-clad men and women;

swooping Ythrians.

We are there.