{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1941",
    "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": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1941,
    "subject": "Lons Sun Worth It?",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-11-08T19:54:45+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-08T19:54:45+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0430@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-08T19:54:45+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Lons Sun Worth It?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Aha--here it is; at the back of my mind I knew I had a second point of\ncontention with Timothy Reilly (what a lot of Irishmen we have here....):"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Actually, I had the same experience, (though I stopped rather earlier),\nand\nfor the same reason: the more straightforward narrative style of the Long\nSun books, (and many others - including short stories - that Wolfe has\nwritten), is I find much less aesthetic than the clear-eyed, calm and\nphilosophical (and perhaps mildly Proustian) first person voice of the\nBOTNS\nand 5HC.\n\nAre the Long Sun books worth persevering with given this stylistic\npreference?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I felt the same way you did at first, dismayed, really. At that point,\nmantis and I had not yet joined the group and I posited them to him them as\n(almost) YA novels (Young Adult). But we read them closely together, arguing\nover many things that the group has now covered so often that I can't\npossibly bring then up again, or I would have virtual vegetables thrown at\nme from every direction. And I grew to admire the series a great deal.\n\nThe triumph, my friend, in this series is in the plotting, which is\nabsolutely masterful, much more intricate than in the New Sun series. This\ntruly is a clockwork universe where every part meshes with every other part,\nwhere not a phrase is dropped by accident, where everything is hidden, but\nfair clues are only half-hidden. It's a giant jigsaw puzzle, and to solve it\nyou'll either need to keep notes, have Sev's memory, or read the Whorl\narchives carefully (don't do that yet!). I have gone over this series with a\ntoothbrush, and I believe there is only one example of an instance where a\ncharacter is hustled off stage for a while just because the author (Wolfe,\nnot Horn) couldn't be bothered with her for the moment. And that doesn't\nhappen till the fourth book. Horn says that the lacunae in his book stem\nfrom his lack of experience, but the Maker behind Horn is a very very crafty\nfellow who likes to make the reader work up a sweat. None of us agrees, to t\nhis day, on everything in this \"simple\" series, not only the theological\nstuff, but such matters as the relative importance of Dr. Crane (whew, that\neggplant missed me by only an inch!).\n\nBesides, you ought to read it to understand the new series. Don't despair!\nDoubt everything! (Don't read the archives!)\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}