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More Vancebulary
May. 28th, 2008 10:27 pm( Click if you love erudition. )
As to the book itself, I'm again a bit conflicted. Vance occasionally treats his characters rather cruelly, or specifically kills them against common convention. Also, occasionally he gets lost in side threads that don't eventually have much to do with the main plot(s). In Lyonesse past the midpoint the work started to lose cohesion, though it did end up tightening up towards the slightly rushed end. Still, his take on the faeries of the Elder Isles is something I wish he wrote more about, it being a very much classic folklore view. Overall, three out of five stars, four if you're a language nerd. Despite all the shortcomings, I find myself constantly enthralled by the curlicues of his prose, even aside from the weird words -- which incidentally have lead me to understand the roots of several commonly used words better (enthralled, betrothed and alleviate spring to mind) aside from teaching me vocabulary that will be useful if only I remember it.
As to the book itself, I'm again a bit conflicted. Vance occasionally treats his characters rather cruelly, or specifically kills them against common convention. Also, occasionally he gets lost in side threads that don't eventually have much to do with the main plot(s). In Lyonesse past the midpoint the work started to lose cohesion, though it did end up tightening up towards the slightly rushed end. Still, his take on the faeries of the Elder Isles is something I wish he wrote more about, it being a very much classic folklore view. Overall, three out of five stars, four if you're a language nerd. Despite all the shortcomings, I find myself constantly enthralled by the curlicues of his prose, even aside from the weird words -- which incidentally have lead me to understand the roots of several commonly used words better (enthralled, betrothed and alleviate spring to mind) aside from teaching me vocabulary that will be useful if only I remember it.
