Harkfast Q4

clash_bowley

This book was full of rapes, murders, and torture. Why did the author take this tack? What was gained and what was lost in showing this brutality

Apocryphal

Presumably it's the age old conceit that life in the past was hard, brutish, and short. We don't much take that view anymore. I wouldn't say the book was 'full' of it, but there was certainly more than necessary.

RichardAbbott

There was a lot, I felt, and on all sides so there certainly didn't feel like there were good guys and bad guys - everyone was pretty brutal to each other. probably the ones that I found most unpleasant were when the story was set up to make you think that there;'s be a dramatic rescue at the last minute, but there just wasn't. The girls still got raped, the blokes still died etc. Presumably this is how Hugh Rae perceived these times, but it didn't make me want to read more of it, and like @Apocryphal I think that opinion has shifted about this. (Maybe, as a sudden thought, this was another reason he didn't continue to write the series - lots of readers really didn't care to find out more)

NeilNjae

Agreed. I think it was a novel of it's time of writing.

clash_bowley

I addressed this in my comment on Q1, I think, so I will not repeat it.