The first three books are in a class of their own. And I say this who read them as an adult. There's a structural shift in the three Tentir books: they're very much a trilogy, but almost switching genres to incorporate more of the school story, and as a unity, they feel like the middle movement of a sequence. The Sea of Time feels like a transitional bridge out of that middle movement; a reprise of some elements of God Stalk but differently configured, and it is, I think, structurally the weakest of all the books because it is a bridge, rather than successfully a thing in itself. It does not glory in its strangeness the same way the books have before - and there is an encounter between Gerridon and Jame that seems entirely too easily passed over. (I hope that is not all there is to it.)
And Tori is given far to little to do with his POV sections here.
But I still love Jame, and I'm still fascinated by the world Hodgell draws. So I'm hoping that after this transitional bridge, things will pick up.
no subject
The first three books are in a class of their own. And I say this who read them as an adult. There's a structural shift in the three Tentir books: they're very much a trilogy, but almost switching genres to incorporate more of the school story, and as a unity, they feel like the middle movement of a sequence. The Sea of Time feels like a transitional bridge out of that middle movement; a reprise of some elements of God Stalk but differently configured, and it is, I think, structurally the weakest of all the books because it is a bridge, rather than successfully a thing in itself. It does not glory in its strangeness the same way the books have before - and there is an encounter between Gerridon and Jame that seems entirely too easily passed over. (I hope that is not all there is to it.)
And Tori is given far to little to do with his POV sections here.
But I still love Jame, and I'm still fascinated by the world Hodgell draws. So I'm hoping that after this transitional bridge, things will pick up.