From: "Nigel Price" 
Subject: RE: (urth) Re: Wizard Knight and after
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 12:02:32 +0100

Oh, ages ago, David DiGiacomo wrote:

>>I would distinguish between underappreciated
>>and low rated books.  I think that if the
>>Soldier series is underappreciated, it's
>>because very few readers are sufficiently
>>well read in history to have more than a vague
>>understanding of it.  CASTLEVIEW is also
>>underappreciated, because it's incomprehensible
>>(but good otherwise).

>>In contrast, THERE ARE DOORS and PANDORA BY
>>HOLLY HOLLANDER are low rated because readers
>>understand them (?), but dislike them.

Strange, isn't it? I really like "Pandora by Holly Hollander" - it's
charming, witty, and well executed - and thought "There are Doors" was quite
brilliant, if decidedly odd.

Is "Castleview" really incomprehensible? The narrative seems radically
compressed, certainly, and there are what may be signs of haste in the
composition, but essentially it is GW doing a sort of late twentieth
century, midwestern Charles Williams, and as such is excellent fun.

For the record, I rate the "Soldier" books very highly indeed and am
constantly surprised that we don't discuss them on the list more often.
Personally, I would love to see "Soldier of Sidon" (or whatever it might be
called) published.

Nigel (who is slowly reading his way through two weeks' worth of accumulated
Urth lists, having been away on holiday, and has now read Fernando Q.
Gouvea's response to David DiGiacomo's posting...he agrees with Fernando and
probably wouldn't have bothered to type out the above if he'd read that
message first!)


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