{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4605",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 4605,
    "subject": "Undines AND The Skirmish AND Castleview",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2006-05-20T02:18:08+00:00",
    "last": "2006-05-20T02:18:08+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<19ee41770605191918o139b8279j39b933070eaa1360@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jack Redelfs",
        "address": "jackredelfs at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2006-05-20T02:18:08+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Undines AND The Skirmish AND Castleview",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Nicely put, and as I've speculated recently\n(\nhttp://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2006-April/001892.html\n),\nI believe a case can be made that the undines are actually serving the\nHierodules rather than the Megatherians."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "You've made some insightful observations, here, but I have to disagree. I\njust finished\nreading Lictor (I believe this is my 4th or 5th ride on the magic carpet),\nand Severian,\nmusing on his experience with the undines, refers to them as loathsome or\nmonstrous.\nSeverian seems to be a good judge of character (if not infallible), and I\ntrust\nhim on this. (For example, he never seemed comfortable with Talos and\nBaldanders,\nlong before he learned the extent of their sinful nature.)\n\nI found another interesting bit in this reading, on page 276 (the last).\nSeverian and\nthe island folk have just sacked the castle and Banished baldanders.\n\n\"So too, this lonely tower was to prove a gateway--the very threshold of the\nwar,\nof which a single far-flung skirmish had taken place here.\"\n\nAn odd statement. How could this fight on the shore\nof lake Diuturna (momentous as it may have seemed to it's own\nparticipants) have anything\nto do with the great clash between the armies of Commonwealth and Ascia?\nIn light of this question, one could easily parse the\nsentence metaphorically. One\ncould infer that the storming of Baldy's castle was a small part of the\nwar called War,\nthe great conflict that never ends. But in another sense, this skirmish was\nindeed a\npart of the Commonwealth/Ascia struggle, which is actually a war between the\nAutarch\nand the Conciliator (whom we now know Severian to be) and Erebus and friends\n\n(championed by Baldy). Once again, I'm struck by how Wolfe's writing is\nso layered\nand full of insights, real and inferred, both equally enthralling.\n\nAn another random note.\nI just finished Castleview, and I must say I was dissapointed. Wolfe\ncaptured my\nintellect, as always, but for the first time he failed to capture my heart.\nNone of the\nhuge cast of characters was truly sympathetic to me. Also, I was\ndissapointed at\nhow Wolfe eluded to Arthurian legend (and older myths) without really\ninvoking it's\nspirit. Oh well, who am I to complain if, out of the 18 or so Wolfe novels\nI've read and\nreread, one turns out to be a clunker."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}