Riddle 2 - Details about sailing a small boat

RichardAbbott

There's a lot of narrative space given to this, from passengers about handling the vessel to the cramped living quarters to the reactions of other vessels' captains and crews to the wisdom of travelling in such a craft at that time of year. This affected the pace of the novel considerably compared to a modern book - you're pretty much half way through before there's much detail at all about the spy aspects. Did this work for you? Or was there too much at the expense of other aspects of the story?

BarnerCobblewood

No I liked it. I think that it might be interesting to see how the descriptions of these technologies / techniques differ from the techno / magic babble that often appears in SF settings. I don't know if it's because I know the description maps onto an actuality, or if they are actually composed different in a way that enhances verisimilitude instead of leading to my eyes glazing over.

NeilNjae

I didn't mind the descriptions of sailing, as they fed directly into the decisions the characters were making, and how they interacted with the people and setting around them. It's not like the long meandering digressions of Moby Dick.

As for the pace, it wasn't too bad, I think. Dollman's attempt to sink the Dulcibella is revealed fairly early, and that gives some structure to the first chunk of the book, as Carruthers and Davies track down Dollman and his motivations.

Apocryphal

I liked it and didn’t find it excessive, but I like sailing and I like reading fiction and history books about sailing, so I am very much atypical.

clash_bowley

I freaking love books about sailing, the more technical the better! This one was very satisfying! So I'm a total outlier and my opinion shouldn't count.

kcaryths

Didn't work for me. I know next to nothing about boats, or sailing, and so this was like a foreign language for large swaths of the book. Like they just sailed and then stopped and then sailed some more and then stopped and then wandered around on land and then sailed some more.

clash_bowley

@kcaryths said:
Didn't work for me. I know next to nothing about boats, or sailing, and so this was like a foreign language for large swaths of the book. Like they just sailed and then stopped and then sailed some more and then stopped and then wandered around on land and then sailed some more.

Sounds like my wife's reaction to the Lord of the Rings book. "They tromped around, and then tromped around some more, did something then started tromping again. There was a whole lot of tromping involved."

kcaryths

She has a very good point. While I do enjoy Lord of the Rings, there is a LOT of tromping going on!