Of Lancard and Lady Trent
6 May 2019 04:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI have been re-reading A Natural History of Dragons in installments, very slowly, not so much because I want to savour the writing, although it enables me to do so, but because I am rather dreading reaching the remembered end of the story -- hindsight makes the whole thing horribly poignant. I keep thinking 'oh no, it's this next bit' and then finding that there are some more 'safe' bits of the story to enjoy before then....
eBay have been persistently sending me special offer 'tokens' due to my not having used my account for a long time, and the terms and conditions on the latest one indicated that it was actually possible to use it to pay for the entire purchase, i.e. to get something for nothing at their expense. Which is the only sort of promotional offer worth having, unless you happen to have a burning desire to visit a given shop anyway. And since it turns out to be possible to obtain a copy of the sequel, "The Tropic of Serpents", for less than five pounds second hand including postage and packing (which, given that a small parcel costs a minimum of three pounds nowadays, means that the books themselves are being sold off for a pittance) I risked putting in an order, as I've regretted for a long time not having picked up both books together at the time I first saw them.
I never buy new books without having read them first; the ones I occasionally invest in are things that I have gone out and sought on the grounds that I had read them and liked them very much already. (I can think of two exceptions, both non-fiction, both very expensive and purchased on the grounds of Internet recommendations, one of which I never finished reading and one of which wasn't nearly as useful as I'd hoped.)
I just hope this one is worth it; it could very easily be a horrible let-down after the previous book, or (quite likely) undermine what I loved about the previous book, given that the protagonist has a long and productive career to counterweight the minor shadows over her giddy youth...
Further news on Lancard: he definitely gets to keep his name after all. We really can't have a whole load of scenes between "Raoul and Roncard", apart from anything else! Instead Lagarde (after a prolonged study of a handy Google-scanned book of French surnames beginning with L, their meanings and origins) will become "Laporte", which is a similarly slightly-lower-class-sounding name with close enough connotations (his ancestors lived by the gate instead of guarding it :-p)
I think Lancard and Laporte can decently appear on board the same ship without causing confusion, just as Reux and Raoul can: we have lost the repeated "ard" towards the end of both, and P and C are more distinct than G and C...
Still not sure what I'm going to do with Lancard (currently still functioning as translator; I've managed to put myself in a situation where only one person is fluent in all the languages spoken by all the people in the scene, and it isn't the viewpoint character!) in the next part of the story. Presumably he will appear in the tickertape parade at the end?
eBay have been persistently sending me special offer 'tokens' due to my not having used my account for a long time, and the terms and conditions on the latest one indicated that it was actually possible to use it to pay for the entire purchase, i.e. to get something for nothing at their expense. Which is the only sort of promotional offer worth having, unless you happen to have a burning desire to visit a given shop anyway. And since it turns out to be possible to obtain a copy of the sequel, "The Tropic of Serpents", for less than five pounds second hand including postage and packing (which, given that a small parcel costs a minimum of three pounds nowadays, means that the books themselves are being sold off for a pittance) I risked putting in an order, as I've regretted for a long time not having picked up both books together at the time I first saw them.
I never buy new books without having read them first; the ones I occasionally invest in are things that I have gone out and sought on the grounds that I had read them and liked them very much already. (I can think of two exceptions, both non-fiction, both very expensive and purchased on the grounds of Internet recommendations, one of which I never finished reading and one of which wasn't nearly as useful as I'd hoped.)
I just hope this one is worth it; it could very easily be a horrible let-down after the previous book, or (quite likely) undermine what I loved about the previous book, given that the protagonist has a long and productive career to counterweight the minor shadows over her giddy youth...
Further news on Lancard: he definitely gets to keep his name after all. We really can't have a whole load of scenes between "Raoul and Roncard", apart from anything else! Instead Lagarde (after a prolonged study of a handy Google-scanned book of French surnames beginning with L, their meanings and origins) will become "Laporte", which is a similarly slightly-lower-class-sounding name with close enough connotations (his ancestors lived by the gate instead of guarding it :-p)
I think Lancard and Laporte can decently appear on board the same ship without causing confusion, just as Reux and Raoul can: we have lost the repeated "ard" towards the end of both, and P and C are more distinct than G and C...
Still not sure what I'm going to do with Lancard (currently still functioning as translator; I've managed to put myself in a situation where only one person is fluent in all the languages spoken by all the people in the scene, and it isn't the viewpoint character!) in the next part of the story. Presumably he will appear in the tickertape parade at the end?