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Daughter of Redwinter Q2: The setting and side-ramblings
Ed McDonald seems to love exploring random aspects of his world (such as moon horses, duties of a retainer etc). Did this work for you or was it frustrating? Was the world coherent in its presented geography and history? Did you want to find out more or were you impatient to get back to the main thread?
Comments
I am a fan of Herodotus. I love telling stories through digression! Worked perfectly for me, but I will bet I am alone here.
It's funny - first time I read this I hardly noticed the digressions, but after @NeilNjae 's comments on starting to read they were much more apparent to me. However, I ended up enjoying them all the more because of the fact that Ed McDonald uses them so much to bring in plot elements.
Really?! You often complain when the author strays off the story into diversions, saying you wished he'd just get on the the story. You bring it up every time we discuss the Book That ShaIl Not Be Named, for example. So how do you really feel about digressions? Obviously they work for you sometimes, but not others...
For my part, I had no issue - indeed didn't really notice that there were 'digressions'. What were the 'digressions'? I could totally see what you were saying to Neil, @RichardAbbott, about how the pace changes after the semi-opening scenario with the demon. Once we get to Redwinter, the pace really slows down and settles into a sort of domestic blah blah for a while, and I felt like much of this was intended to help set up future novels in the setting.
Normally, I do love exploring a setting, and I certainly don't mind using digressions to do so. The Forest Laird as so far spent some time discussing medieval Longbows, and how the Spanish Yews became inaccessible in Spain after the moors invaded, but some seedlings were saved and brought to Italy where they live in carefully guarded groves. I like that level of detail in a novel - especially a fantasy novel. It helps make the world feel real by giving it depth. That said, I think I was surprised that 'moon horses' were not more consequential to this novel, in the end.
I think what I meant by "digression" here was something that could potentially have been pruned out if one was being ruthless with the main target of the story (viz, the unmasking of Veretaine's true identity and how he was defeated while at the same time exonerating Ulovar). But... those same "digressions" were instrumental in highlighting not just character traits but also bringing in important plot or world features, so in that sense were not digressions at all.
That's what I was talking about as well, Richard!