OK. We have reread to the end and there is maybe not much more to be said. There are human beings but we do not read their points of view. We are not told either how they had come to this planet or how they came to be stranded upon it. There is an explanation of the climate change: a heavy sun and a large moon frequently alter the planet's rotation. The "Night Folk"/human beings help the Wold People without harming the Charioteers. Poul Anderson's characters are always problem solvers.
When Ak'hai'i realized that he must appeal to the Night Folk, he had a quieter than usual Andersonian moment of realization:
"I came back to my body knowing what I must do." (p. 7)
Next: "Terminal Quest." This is unappealing at present but we will have a crack at it.
2 comments:
That's an analogue of the intrusion of the Corded Ware/Battle-Axe culture into Europe.
Incidentally, for a long time German scholars believed that the Indo-Europeans started in what's now eastern Germany and western Poland.
This was wrong -- they started in what's now the central-eastern Ukraine -- but it's an understandable one.
The original IE-speakers moved into the Danube valley and Hungary. Then some of them went over the Carpathians into... what's now eastern Germany and western Poland.
From there they spread explosively from Ireland to east of the Urals -- the Indo-Iranians were descended from that branch of the IE family, for example.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And one interesting curiosity is that Lithuanian is still more closely related to Old Indo-European than other western IE languages. Close enough that interested Lithuanians can somewhat puzzle out Sanskrit texts.
Ad astra! Sean
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