Soldier of Sidon

Rex Lycanthrosaurus · 27 Jul 2006, 04:30 · from 2006-July.txt.gz

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From: lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm (Rex Lycanthrosaurus)
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 23:30:57 -0500
Subject: (urth) Soldier of Sidon
Message-ID: <1153974657.12388.266974086 at webmail.messagingengine.com>

> To those who have read their ARC Soldier of Sidon -
> did Wolfe recapture the
> tone of the earlier Soldier stories?  Could someone
> read them one after the
> other without noticing a shift in style with the
> third book?

Delurking briefly.

Imo there are substantial differences in style between the first two
Soldier books and the third.

Latro, in Mist and Arete, almost seems to be channeling Severian when he
writes. The sentences are long and complex, with lots of thoughts and
followup observations set off by semi-colons, and there are many lyrical
touches throughout both books. 

Latro, in Sidon, writes in much leaner, declarative, sentences with very
few adjectives, and the book seems closer in style to The Wizard Knight
than anything else in the Wolfe canon.

That being said, however, I think Sidon is the most accessible of the
three works. It's certainly the shortest and can be read in a long
evening, and someone who hasn't sampled the series yet might even start
with it, then go back and read the first two installments.

Rex
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  Rex Lycanthrosaurus
  lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm

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