midpoint thoughts (Guns of Avalon)
Jun. 6th, 2013 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silverflight8I'm struggling a bit through--wait, I forgot the title of the book--The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny. I think I'm struggling because a) Corwin, the protagonist, and b) the weird language switching.
Corwin: I'm not getting a bead on him at all. He's very powerful (walks in Shadow, much more powerful than normal humans, regenerates flesh, used to be a powerful leader of some sort, etc) but he just doesn't seem to be very interesting. He's royalty but he's been distanced so long from his extensive family that all the political drama is being narrated to me (or to him, he's catching up) in little dribbles and at great distance. So far the most interesting person I've met is Dara, who I do quite like and understand, at least, even if I have a bad feeling about this seventeen-year-old girl. What happened to Lorraine doesn't reassure me. But Corwin--he's just kinda there.
Language: OK, what's up with the switching between high-fantasy and vernacular? Here's an excerpt with more formal language:
Nothing especially archaic, but not entirely modern, right? Especially that first statement. But then there's dialogue like this:
It keeps doing this. Corwin refers to his father as "Dad". His sword is "Grayswandir" (very pretty). And the whole thing's set with parallel universes (that's what "walking in the Shadow" means, you can walk between worlds and pick what you land in), and so there exist an Avalon. There's a Lancelot we meet. And Uther is mentioned by name. But we also have Ganelon, who I always associate (apart from the Kushiel's Legacy one) with the Song of Roland, the medieval epic. All these influences keep jerking me around, merging kind of confusingly.
Corwin: I'm not getting a bead on him at all. He's very powerful (walks in Shadow, much more powerful than normal humans, regenerates flesh, used to be a powerful leader of some sort, etc) but he just doesn't seem to be very interesting. He's royalty but he's been distanced so long from his extensive family that all the political drama is being narrated to me (or to him, he's catching up) in little dribbles and at great distance. So far the most interesting person I've met is Dara, who I do quite like and understand, at least, even if I have a bad feeling about this seventeen-year-old girl. What happened to Lorraine doesn't reassure me. But Corwin--he's just kinda there.
Language: OK, what's up with the switching between high-fantasy and vernacular? Here's an excerpt with more formal language:
He was young and fair of hair and complexion. Beyond that, it was hard to say at a glance. It is difficult, I discovered, to obtain a clear initial impression as to a man's features and size when he is hanging upside down several feet above the ground.
(Page 70)
Nothing especially archaic, but not entirely modern, right? Especially that first statement. But then there's dialogue like this:
"Don't worry about it. It's not contagious."
"Crap," she said. "You're lying to me."
"I know. But please forget the whole thing."
(Page 44)
It keeps doing this. Corwin refers to his father as "Dad". His sword is "Grayswandir" (very pretty). And the whole thing's set with parallel universes (that's what "walking in the Shadow" means, you can walk between worlds and pick what you land in), and so there exist an Avalon. There's a Lancelot we meet. And Uther is mentioned by name. But we also have Ganelon, who I always associate (apart from the Kushiel's Legacy one) with the Song of Roland, the medieval epic. All these influences keep jerking me around, merging kind of confusingly.
Tired and drunkish ...
Date: Jun. 7th, 2013 08:09 am (UTC)That said, I've read only one book by Zelazny, Lord of Light, and that was I was 16 or 17. I thought it a pretentious bunch of garbage then, and hindsight has never convinced me to re-visit that analysis, no matter how many Hugos the guy amassed.
It's my (semi) considered opinion that switching between the vernacular and high-fantasy is a difficult trick to pull off. Tolkien (of all people!) managed it very well, but its presence is most often indicative of a lazy hack. (Jesus! I really didn't think much of Lord of Light, did I? That almost certainly means I got it completely wrong or totally right.)
Lord of Light (yes, as I hazily recall) was the Hindu pantheon turned into silly science fiction superheroes. Your final paragraph suggests to me that he tried to do the same thing with the Arthur legends in Guns of Avalon.
Which title, incidently, is almost certainly a play on the title of a 1961 World War II movie called The Guns of Navarone, which might, possibly, say something about Zelazny's intentions.
Re: Tired and drunkish ...
Date: Jun. 7th, 2013 09:48 pm (UTC)I've never thought of Tolkien as switching at all, though admittedly it's been awhile; I think it's probably a sign of skill if you can switch language 'levels' without bludgeoning your reader with it.
Huh, yeah, maybe you're right about the merging of worlds. It's really disconcerting as it switches back and forth, fantasy to suddenly 1950's perspective on things (no De Beers mining company in this world, no Ernest Oppenheimer to have controlled it, etc). I'm not sure I really like it.
Thanks for the tip about The Guns of Navarone! There's this Circle (darkness) which is creeping over the land (sort of??) and for most, virtually unassailable, so that sounds like it might be a connection.
Re: Tired and drunkish ...
Date: Jun. 12th, 2013 02:09 am (UTC)Never too late for a re-read (said the man who's gone back to that particular textual well probably more than 30(!) times. Some books just speak to us ...
I think it's probably a sign of skill if you can switch language 'levels' without bludgeoning your reader with it.
He mostly did it through dialogue: vocabulary, cadence, sentence-structure, all differed among different characters, but also among different cultures (the Rohirrhim, for instance, spoke an almost archaic English).
Anyway. I'll stop, lest I spend the rest of the night thinking about Tolkien ...