Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

Lee Berman · 15 Dec 2011, 13:48 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:48:27 -0500
Subject: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
Message-ID: <SNT123-W19F0448B0071FDE9EE535FCFA30 at phx.gbl>

>Antonio Pedro Marques: Curious bit here: I've never got the 's&s' feeling from any 
>of the Sun books, not even NS. Nor do I get much futuristic sense from tFHoC (I do get
> it from various of GW's short stories).

I tend to agree. Especially on tFHoC. Of course my first few readings of that were the 
novella only. Mr. Million and cloning aside, it felt like 19th Century France had been 
transplanted somewhere else intact.  The spacey, spooky stuff happens mostly in the 
second section of the full novel (hidden within a native American sort of venue, 
of course.

In my first reading of BotNS, I felt I was in for more of the same, which I actually
didn't like. Reading tFHoC always left me with a feeling of dread and being trapped
and Severian's story was the same albeit in a medieval rather than Victorian era.  

But, I was pleasantly surprised that with Severian's exile, his life and the story opened up 
nicely. It was gradual, but I remember at some point realizing, "oh, a sword, a giant, a 
sleeping beauty, magic, palaces..now I know what sort of story I'm in!". Funnily,  the lack 
of a point on the end of Terminus Est was an effective disguise. It seems more like a tool 
than a weapon for so much of the story. The sorcery is likewise disguised, by scientific
trappings.

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