Author Topic: PC091: Three Days And Nights In Lord Darkdrake’s Hall  (Read 13766 times)

yicheng

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Reply #25 on: March 08, 2010, 10:53:58 PM
Did the author reveal what the main character's 'interest in human suffering' was? I imagine its in preventing said suffering, but I have no idea if I'm right.

I think the duality of that interest is what makes this character engaging.  I find it plausible and fascinating that she may have an interest both in causing *and* preventing human suffering.  For me, it's kind of like one of those History's What-If's: how if you take one person with the right natural talents and skills, tweak his environment one way, he becomes Winston Churchill; tweak it another way, and he turns into an Adolf Hitler.  It's that inner-conflict with in her that makes her believable for me.



augustleo

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Reply #26 on: March 17, 2010, 01:05:09 PM
This story reminded me of my Warcraft Rogue character. Loved the fight scene in the bathroom. But...the story felt incomplete or a middle chapter in a much longer book. So in the end it left me unsatisfied.  :-\



mbrennan

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Reply #27 on: March 21, 2010, 03:25:27 PM
I know it always detracts from my enjoyment of a story when I have to put it down partway through and come back to it later, as I did here, so I'm trying to process my reaction through that lens.  But I think I would have liked to get more detail on what Stoneburn and the lieutenant stole from Lord Darkdrake.  It was left vague enough that I didn't really grok the protagonist's reaction to that revelation -- and if it was possible to infer from the hints what had happened, then my interrupted listening made it impossible for me to spot.  So I didn't really end up seeing the "who do I trust?" aspect I was clearly supposed to get.

As for the lack of magical elements, Ruritanian fantasy (secondary world, no supernatural content) is a recognized subgenre, if not one that's ever been terribly widespread.  Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy is an example I recently revisted.



avocado

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Reply #28 on: April 13, 2010, 03:31:06 AM
I hadn't thought of this story as sword-and-sorcery.  Hmm.  Another point in its favor.

Seconding an earlier comment, Mur Lafferty was a great choice to read this story.  I could believe she might be scared, but that she might also throw a knife into the back of my skull.

And knife-throwing and swordfighting, after being hungry and chained for three days?  Those are some action story tropes, and once I started split-screening it in my head, between our heroine and the butt-chinned action hero from Central Casting who might have been given the part in a less interesting version of the story, it didn't bother me one bit.  (It did make me question what I think of as "normal" in stories like this, though.)



avocado

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Reply #29 on: April 13, 2010, 03:39:41 AM
Oh, and if anyone wants to read Leah Bobet's explanation about a certain question and how it affects the characters' choices, here's the discussion on her LiveJournal (http://cristalia.livejournal.com/178212.html).  I'm linking it because it didn't Google easily for me.