Tuesday 2 July 2013

Targovi's Luck

Targovi thinks that:

"Thus far his luck had been neither especially fair nor especially foul. Most of it had been made for himself."

(Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012, p. 414)

Do we agree with this? So far, Targovi has:

scaled a high stone wall with Tigery speed and claws;
approached an occupied building unobserved;
looked through a window and seen a Merseian, who should not be on an Imperial planet;
entered the building and killed the Merseian, cutting his head off for evidence;
despite knowing only the alphabet and a few words and phrases in Eriau, told the Merseian mainframe to "Microcopy everything" and received three discs from it.

Next, he leaves the building, climbs a tree and crosses the wall, again unobserved.

I would say that he has had the luck of the Devil! - or maybe of Javak the Fireplayer.

However, I was relieved when the necessary climactic thud and blunder at the end of this book and of the previous volume, A Stone In Heaven, was accomplished so smoothly. Anderson is an action-adventure writer so his heroes must fight their battles but what I mainly appreciate is everything else: Anderson's prose, characterization, hard sf and political fiction. Flandry's conversations with his adversaries, Aycharaych and the Imperial pretenders, are far more interesting than any fisticuffs or gunfights that he might have with them.

Of course, at the end of each of these novels, the immediate conflict is resolved and the crisis averted. Fictions usually have happy endings. But the History of Technic Civilization includes times when the crisis was not averted. There was a Time of Troubles and there will be a Long Night...

2 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I would say, rather, that Anderson manages to make the action scenes in his novels logically follow from the personalities and ideas and beliefs of his characters. That is what makes his action scenes works. And, of course, Anderson makes sure not to needlessly prolong the action sequences.

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Another thought I had was that a bold and intelligent person like MADE his luck because he saw chances, asssessed risks, and decided there was enough possibility of success to justify taking those risks.

Sean