Tuesday 1 August 2017

Escape And Aftermath

I compared a rescue mission and daring escape in SM Stirling's The Tears Of The Sun (New York, 2012) (see here) to the dramatic incident involving the death of Dominic Flandry's fiancee in Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows. Reading on, we find that the similarity is closer than we had realized. In Chapter Sixteen, p. 483, of The Tears Of The Sun, a central character of the series lies on a pyre, having, we now learn, died in the escape. We knew that the mission was dangerous and cannot assume that all of the characters will survive till the end of the novel.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I assume you had Astrid Larsson Loring in mind. Her death was truly heroic in the manner of one of the heroes of the "Histories" she loved so passionately. Sometimes an author can reluctant to have a favorite character be killed, even if that would make for greater realism. So, it was sad but artistically satisfying for Astrid to be killed.

Sean