{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/972",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 972,
    "subject": "First impressions",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-24T11:56:02+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-24T11:56:02+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0011-0168@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Westlake",
        "address": "peter at harlequin.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-24T11:56:02+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) First impressions",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Wow!\n\nWhat a good book! There are so many arresting moments, both hinted-at\nrevelations and surprises pulled out of nowhere. Even \"little\" things like\nMora's personal problems are striking. I don't know why - the unexpectedness,\nor the fact that Horn takes time to help her while there is so much else\ngoing on, or just the fact that it's done so well. This is the subject matter\nof mainstream literature, yet it's hard to imagine any mainstream novel making\nit so readable or so interesting. And how many other great works of literature\nhave lines about being a girl trapped in the body of a blood-drinking reptile?\n... actually, that whole aspect of it is very moving. It reminds me, now that\nI come to think of it, of what must be about the most spine-chilling thing\nI've ever read - the alzabo in TBOTNS. This is different, though, in being\nmuch more hopeful. The inhumi are still living spirits, rather than horrific\nghostly echoes, and the tone of the book suggests that they might be redeemed.\nI can't imagine how, though - aren't they always going to be blood-drinking\nreptiles?\n\n\nBitten by the evidence:\n\nMr Clute's idea of Horn as inhumu doesn't seem right to me - as well as\nthe evidence adduced against it so far, the scene where Horn makes a big\nthing of telling Hide about inhumi not eating happens immediately after\nHorn has actually *shown Hide his own teeth*!\n\n\nIn hindsight:\n\nHorn's description of Silk as the *phantom* who has eluded him through three\nwhorls now seems particularly apt :-)\n\n\nBabbie:\n\nI'm glad Babbie got home all right, and that Mucor is sending him to\nHorn again, but how did he do it? I know he can row (a somewhat startling\nidea itself), but sailing back across the ocean is another matter. Maybe\nhe and Seawrack could do it between them, but why would she leave Pajarocu?\nWe'll probably get a throwaway line about him signing on with Wijzer...\n\n\nCruelty to Bears:\n\nIt's particularly noticeable how many parts of the story Horn starts\nto tell us about but doesn't finish.  Do we *ever* see him come back\nfrom one of his visits to Green, for instance? Or from Urth?\nAt one point Horn mentions that he has written almost nothing about\nthe rest of the adventures on the spirit trip to Green, which is what\nhe was supposed to have been writing about - aaagh! That Wolfe, teasing\nthe poor reader so!\n\nThe Secret:\n\nThe speculations here about the secret of the inhumi being to do with\nwilling sacrifice are very interesting, but don't address Horn's assertion\nthat it could be used to reduce the inhumi to mindless animals, not better\nbut not worse than crocodiles. And how does that fit in with the general\ntheme that we ought to be *nice* to them? \n\nI did feel very clever to have guessed that Sinew was bitten by Krait's\nmother. I need all the ego boost I can get, too, after reading the abstracts\nfor the symposium on Saturday. Anyone else from here going to be there?\n\nSpectacled Bear.\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}