{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/149",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 149,
    "subject": "Wolfe's NEW SUN (was Rhialto the Marvellous - Jack Vance)",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-05-22T17:25:25+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-22T23:15:35+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v23-106-7@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mike Berro",
        "address": "mikeb at massmedia.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-22T17:25:25+00:00",
      "subject": "Wolfe's NEW SUN (was Rhialto the Marvellous - Jack Vance)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "aleistra at leland.Stanford.EDU (Andrea Lynn Leistra) wrote:\nAdvice: Never read the _Book of the New Sun_.  It's an amazingly wonderful\npiece of literature, but - gasp - you will not know all the words in it.\nAnd neither will your dictionary, unless your dictionary is the OED.\n(They *are* all real words, just very obscure ones)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "  I am really upset that I did not like the New Sun books (I read the first\nfour.)  I was so sure that I would, based on the recommendations of people\nwho like Vance, that I spent large sums on the first editions (a fetish of\nmine), giving me an even greater incentive.  It just didn't do it for me.\n\n  The writing was very good, enough to get me through the four books, but\nunlike Vance, who (in at least some of his novels) never makes a pretense\nof telling a grand story, I felt in the SUN books that there was a subplot\n(or twelve) that was kept hidden from me, and never resolved.  Perhaps they\nare resolved in the sequels, but I don't enjoy being kept in the dark for\nso long.  Perhaps I missed the resolution (although I did understand all of\nthe words.)  If I'm just imagining a subplot, then my opinion of the book\nis even worse.  Overall, it seems a \"portentious\" book, with little\nresolution of the portents.  With Vance, each chapter is a delight (even\nwhen he is describing tortures), so that the payoffs are almost immediate.\n\nMike Berro"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v23-106-8@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Kevin J. Maroney",
        "address": "kmaroney at crossover.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-22T23:15:35+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: Wolfe's NEW SUN (was Rhialto the Marvellous - Jack Vance)",
      "in_reply_to": "<sflovers-v23-106-7@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "mikeb at massmedia.com (Mike Berro) wrote:\nThe writing was very good, enough to get me through the four books, but\nunlike Vance, who (in at least some of his novels) never makes a pretense\nof telling a grand story, I felt in the SUN books that there was a subplot\n(or twelve) that was kept hidden from me, and never resolved."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "<MASSIVE SPOILER>\n\nWhat, the story of a young torturer's apprentice growing up, becoming king,\nwrestling Satan, and evolving into God isn't grand enough?\n\nAnd in the sequel, he both saves and destroys the world.\n\nKevin Maroney"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}