The Devil in a Forest

John Smith · 14 May 2009, 20:10 · from 2009-May.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: jsmith2627 at att.net (John Smith)
Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 13:10:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) The Devil in a Forest
In-Reply-To: <1C551CD1CE5645E6ABB80379575C1261@eMachinePC>
Message-ID: <452639.10540.qm at web180208.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>


I've read The Devil in the Forest and I liked it.  It is good fantasy.  It's been many years since I read it, but some images stick with me.  For instance, the witch who tells fortunes by throwing "the thigh bones of men."

Best wishes,

Jack


--- On Thu, 5/14/09, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) The Devil in a Forest
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Thursday, May 14, 2009, 11:36 AM
> Am I really the only person on this list who's read this
> book? Really?
> 
> Okay. Here's what it is (not obvious from the summary
> on the back of the book). It's a re-telling Robin Hood.
> It's not clear where it is supposed to occur.  The names
> are English (or Scandinavian in the case of Gloin), so
> combined with the Robin Hood connection it's a slam
> dunk. But the references to King Wenceslas in the summary
> (not the book) suggests it might have been intended to take
> place in the Czech Republic of the 11th century. The
> enormous mountain that plays such a dominant role in the
> story (requiring more than a day's march to reach the
> summit) tends to bring to mind the Pyrenees or the Alps.
> 
> This is not a sci-fi story or a fantasy story. The
> "magic" that takes place is of the
> "real", naturalistic sort. Miracles are not ruled
> out, however. There is a Father Brown-style detective
> priest.
> 
> **SPOILERS TO FOLLOW**
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think all the loose ends are  wrapped up at the end (but
> with Wolfe, can one be sure?) EXCEPT for one of the
> characters (Gloin) being shot by an arrow. He was fleeing an
> attack by soldiers in the woods. The soldier's deny
> having shot him (no reason they would lie about it). The
> arrow was not from a military cross-bow. So that suggests to
> me that the arrow was fired from Wat's bow. But Wat had
> left his bow at the Inn, and by the end of the story it is
> made clear that Wat could not have reclaimed it until after
> Gloin was shot.
> 
> So who shot him? Joselynn's father? Could he have left
> his duties at the Inn to go with the soldier's to hunt
> for the refugees? Maybe --if all the soldiers were involved
> in the search. He might have left with the bow and shot
> Gloin so the soldiers would catch him and let Joselynn
> escape. Or he might have done it so Joselynn would not be
> alone with him in the woods. But there's no reference in
> the book that suggests her father knew how to use a bow, and
> it was a risky shot considering how close Gloin and Joselynn
> probably were to each other. Anyway, he seems like the ONLY
> viable choice, but he's still an unacceptable one in my
> mind (something that happens a lot when I read Wolfe).
> 
> J. 
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net