Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I wrote something about the first Falcon Lord book last month, here.   I would now like to add a few words about the sequel, the title of which also serves as the headline to this blog entry. I can't be as enthusiastic. We return to the same familiar island and meet the old gang again, and the plot is handled well -- a nice mix of the new the old, and some twists on the elements that are carried over. BUT ... Metrov's command of prose style seems to have left him. I'll give just one sentence by way of example. In the midst of the climactic battle of good and evil, when all his epic machinery comes together, Metrov writes this: "The fighters became pawns in a dizzying ballet, a symphony, cacophonous and head-splitting, orchestrated by a devil's baton." There are lots of ways in which I hate that sentence. Let's start with the end: "orchestrated by a devil's baton." An orchestra might be conducted by a devil, and by a natural me...

Falcon Lord: Book  One, The Lost Isle of Perpetua seems in its early going a standard fantasy/adventure. Like Carcium although a good deal better. I was never able to get into Carcium . But Falcon Lord hooked me early. Here is its opening: "Brighton listened. While feeling the sun warming his face, and taking in the salt air mixed with falcon's musky odors, he heard only the distant waves." I like the two word minimalist first sentence. Subject verb. The subject is the name of the protagonist in this story, the son of a "Falcon Lord" and eventually, after he has undertaken a hazardous journey and been tested as such a protagonist must be, "Falcon Lord" himself. The second sentence gives us data from three senses as Brighton experienced it at a certain moment: smell, touch, and hearing are all represented. And the data are familiar from our world, even the duskiness of falcon feathers seems right.  As I say, in its early going this read...