originally posted by OR
Like I said higher up, I'll re-read the series and try to look at it with a fresh perspective.I think a look at the people as characters might be easier than trying to pit either factions goals against eachother. A curse on both your houses might be a better attitude to take. You seem to have confirmed my opinion that the author has the moral of the story set in stone and it seems pointless to argue the point further. But, an alternative that involves magic centaurs, sorcerers, divine right kings, honest aristocrats and people dropping their prejudices for peace? What a utopian fantasy. 
I meant 'perfect'as being they always win battles, not their moral behaviour. Defending a castle is hardly dark, not compared to what Arithon did in previous books and not compared to the Alliances motives. Did it really not bother you that you knew the Alliance was always going to lose, that you had to go through the motions with the whole arrogant power=failure for so many books? They might be losing people, but the battles don't give this comparison, non civilain dead clansmen are rarely described and almost never are non headhunters shown as beating clansmen. They don't even shoot back! You know, with those big crossbows they carry around, becuase we only give longbows to lucky guards who kill Khadrim apparetly.
But Arithon does use end justifies the means, all the time, on his homeworld against Lysaers father, he outright decries those who acuse him of doing less, he does it to save clan lives at Tal Quorin and Vastmark' including breaking the prime balance by using magic to kill thus making him lose his magesight. Finally, from this far from comprehensive list, he decides killing several dozen guards to rescue one man, Fion Areth, because it niggles his conscience. He does change by traitors knot, but before then he was not an easy character to care for and even the lighter moments when he's singing didn't asuage my feelings on the matter.
Lysaer always held my sympathy from the off, you seem to imply that I didn't Sleo! 
originally posted by Annette
Arithon actually said nothing to justify his one unintentional act that caused deaths on Dascen
Elur, it was never his intention that Amroth's ships destroy themselves, but they did and people died. He never spoke up in his own defence, if Mak had not intervened Arithon would have died, and had been determined to do that since he was fished out of the wreckage.
And who so far on Athera has always won battles? The battle of Tal Quorin no one won, the clansmen of Deshir lost all their non combatants and about 3/4 of their fighters. Lysaer limped home with equally devastating losses. There was no winner.
The fleet burning was hardly a battle, it was an attempt to avoid fighting, and again there was really no winner.
Vastmark had even more devastating losses, and again there was no winner. Lysaer gave up and went home. Arithon managed to better defend the non combatants, but still what clansmen he had suffered losses. He was too ashamed to thank Erlien s'Taleyn for the help he provided so few of his clansmen returned home.
The battle of Daon Ramon hardly any of Jieret's 200 strong war band got to go home, most died. They knew it was suicide before they even tried to defend against Lysaer's forces. Surely no one could say Lysaer won, not after he was tricked into burning his own forces from Narms to a crisp.
Who won at Alestron? No one. The Alliance forces were packed off home, and the s'Brydion and their remaining defenders forced to leave their home and slink off to the woods to survive to fight another day. They would have fought to the bitter end and just plain starved if the fellowship had not intervened.
Lysaer's long standing battle to exterminate or enslave the clansmen of Tysan could hardly be called a victory, the only way to ensure the survival of the clan lines was to send most of them to Havish for sanctuary. And while managing to survive against such odds could be considered a victory for the clans, is not actually winning a war. Next we will see the continuation of that battle, as Lysaer's religious zealots attempt to finish them off by invading Havish.
And it should be pointed out that if Lysaer's forces ever managed to win and exterminated all the clans, they would actually lose. Because the fellowship would then be forced to exterminate humanity in order to try and ensure Paravian survival. So there is no way this situation can be resolved by fighting.
If there is a moral here it is that war solves nothing and there are no winners even if you manage to survive. Whether it is Dascen
Elur, Athera or even the original human civilisations humanity seems to be making the same mistakes over and over again. Which is not that different to what happens in the real world.
I will leave Janny to answer for the Utopian ending when she gets to that bit. Certainly we have seen very little of Utopian fantasies so far. Not even the Paravians seemed to have much peace.
originally posted by Sleo
OR, you seem to be quite good at missing the point. Nowhere has Janny Wurts claimed that there is no moral standpoint in this epic. What she said was that she wanted to write a story that shows that war and killing is always the wrong path. And Annette is right. Not one battle in this series is won by one side or the other. Tell me how you think the clan won at Daon Ramons? Do you think Jieret thought he won when they cut off his tongue? Hardly.
What the author has said all along is that this isn't the classic tale of good vs. evil. That is not the same thing as claiming moral grayness.
You are quite right about Alestron and the s'Brydions. There is absolutely nothing wrong with defending one's home. Nothing at all. The thing Arithon was trying to avoid was MORE KILLING! And IN THIS CIRCUMSTANCE, with a 'cause' founded on nothing more than the irrational hatred fostered by a CURSE engendered by the MISTWRAITH, more killing is to be avoided at all costs.
I was not referring to you at all with my comment about Lysaer. I was referring to my own prejudice against him, which ON REREADING I have had to modify. He is as much a victim of the curse as Arithon, and was basically a good man before it got it's clutches into him.
As for the prologue, what it says is "Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself." I don't think there's anyway to interpret any of this story as either good nor evil. The wraiths of the mist themselves have human roots. Lysaer is bound by a curse. Arithon, by virtue of his mage qualities, has been able to free himself – by trying to ferret out and face the truth. Lysaer has been unable to do that so far, not by any good or evil, but merely from the fact that he's human.
And the thing you've said that makes most sense is both sides are wrong. There are no 'sides' here. There is only reality twisted and corrupted by a curse.
originally posted by OR
quote from Annette: And who so far on Athera has always won battles? The battle of Tal Quorin no one won, the clansmen of Deshir lost all their non combatants and about 3/4 of their fighters. Lysaer limped home with equally devastating losses. There was no winner.
The fleet burning was hardly a battle, it was an attempt to avoid fighting, and again there was really no winner.
Vastmark had even more devastating losses, and again there was no winner. Lysaer gave up and went home. Arithon managed to better defend the non combatants, but still what clansmen he had suffered losses. He was too ashamed to thank Erlien s'Taleyn for the help he provided so few of his clansmen returned home end quote
Really, three quarter losses? I knew about the civilians being killed but my impression on reading was that the clans suffered near negligible losses with regard to their military; thus making Alliances massacre of them appear almost out of embittered spite.
No, Jieret did not win when he had his tongue cut out, but that was more a chase sequence than a battle. The point that I maintain with the battles is, and always has been, that it is STORMTROOPER syndrome. I do not like that. It makes the fighting predictable and reduces the threat posed by the alliance to almost comic. You know Arithon is going to find a way out, a horrifcaly painful one; but he will always do it and make the alliance look like incompetent idiots every single time. The only partial exception's to this are headhunters and when the alliance is under Sulfin Evend in Stormed Fortress. The alliance doesn't win, the clans don't win, its the outragious K/D ratio I can't stand. Its the fact we are NEVER told about mail clad alliance soldiers doing ANYTHING other than being massacered. This is just a minor gripe that I tagged onto the end of my monologue and has little bearing on the main point about moral greyness. If someone could provide me one reference, just one, of a mail clad alliance soldier killing an armed clansmen, not just infered, then I will gladly accept that I'am wrong on this particular prejudice. Honest
quote Annette Which is not that different to what happens in the real world.
I will leave Janny to answer for the Utopian ending when she gets to that bit. Certainly we have seen very little of Utopian fantasies so far. Not even the Paravians seemed to have much peace. end quote
Um, the smiley face indicates a joke. Utopian implies a perfect state, the paravians and the brotherhood of Ath represent ultimate moral enlightenment and goodness. No such force exists on this world, you can believe there are religions/philsophy that embody that; but that is a matter of faith. To create that moral rock in your universe, however difficult it is to achieve for the individuals in question, is a MASSIVELY utopian conception and implies that the world can be brought to perfect harmony with the nature and an idealistic world introduced. Which existed, BTW, before the revolts and the mistwraith arrived. The Paravians only had wars because the dragons are capable of reshaping reality if they're in a bad mood and could create monsters, thats not really any foible of their own.
I said it was a miserable series in the first few sentences of this book and is generally depressing; I meant that.
quote Slio OR, you seem to be quite good at missing the point. Nowhere has Janny Wurts claimed that there is no moral standpoint in this epic. What she said was that she wanted to write a story that shows that war and killing is always the wrong path. end quote
Then you completely agree with me good sir!
By producing a moral tale of this sort she can't tell us to make up our own minds. If we cannot judge between the factions, even if we can sympathise with the individuals then ultimately we can only accept what the author is telling us. When she incited Culloden and how History is manipulated; I as a historian understood that to be IMPARTIAL, or morally grey. It seems I was wrong to make that insinuation from her statement, but to my mind it seemed very close to declaring that. If Iam supposed to scream a curse on both your houses, then I do find it difficult to understand why she made one considerably more in the wrong and further away from the moral arbiters of this universe. Having a moral standpoint negates the reader making up their mind as the writer can shape the universe to fit their standpoint.
originally posted by Stephen Mulligan
But OR, history and the recording of history is NEVER impartial. I, too, am a trained historian and depending on the perspective of the historian, different events can be recorded in totally different ways.
As I have said, the series is a history, but we don't know, for sure, who is recording it
originally posted by Sleo
Quote from OR above: "Really, three quarter losses? I knew about the civilians being killed but my impression on reading was that the clans suffered near negligible losses with regard to their military; thus making Alliances massacre of them appear almost out of embittered spite. "
You need to reread Curse of the Mistwraith. The clan had no 'military' arm separate from the civilians. Women and children fought with the men. Do you remember Arithon arguing against this? And do you remember Pesquil and Lysaer attacking unarmed women and children, slicing them up and then Lysaer burning them to a crisp? And do you not remember that the clan was decimated? There were fourteen boys left the age of Jieret after that battle.
And I am a woman, not a 'sir'.
And of course an author has the prerogative to write the story he/she wants. Why are you arguing against that?
originally posted by Annette
quote:CotM pg 785 (mass market pb latest edition)Of Strakewood's complement of nine hundred sixty, scarcely two hundred men lived, half that number wounded; fourteen boys of Jieret's generation were all that survived Etarra's campaign against Arithon.
We were told what the battle of Tal Quarin cost the clans in the books, perhaps some more reading might uncovered the details some glossed over in their rush to get through the story. There is too much information to really take it all in with just a few readings. That many of the clansmen only survived because Steiven withdrew three hundred before throwing caution to the winds and going for vengeance. The headhunter tactic was successful, it brought the clansmen out of hiding into the open to be slaughtered. Even of the three hundred clansmen chosen to survive, they still lost one third.
quote:CotM pg 764 (mass market PB latest edition)The facts were given quickly after that, starting with Steiven's response to Arithon's first warning of disaster, orders that his war
captain had begged on his knees to be released from: to gather and withdraw from the fighting by force if need be three hundred hand-picked
young men. Steiven s'Valerient had then led the rest into ill-fated vengeance at the grottos.
quote:CotM pg 764 (mass market PB latest edition)Snapped past the memory of the brutalities beside the Tai Quorin, the scout shrugged a shoulder and resumed. "The three hundred circled wide and approached the melee from upstream. As well they did. Jieret and two wounded scouts could hardly have pulled you out alone." Quiet, Arithon absorbed this. If he had done nothing else, his final intervention with shadows had spared most of those clansmen Steiven had selected to survive.
I will leave those doing the re-reading to uncover the rest for themselves, but in no way is it possible to think the clans did not suffer massive losses every time they stood in defence against Lysaer and his army.
OR if you check out the Documentation section (on the left of the main page), under formatting you will see how to do the quotes and things. I am more used to forums with all the modern conveniences unfortunately, so have yet to work out how to do most things.
originally posted by OR
Laughs. Sorry about that Sleo, I did initially think of writing sir/madam but was in a rush so it slipped my mind. Sorry.
Oh very true, history is never impartial and much history is trying to get an agenda across. Which is what you're supposed to be wary of. Total impartiality is an impossible thing to achieve. I won't cite a modern example but for example Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a massive attack on christianity,effectively blaming it for the empires fall along with the decadent luxury and totalitarian milierism destroying democracy. All of which was refering to his own eighteenth century Britain as much as Imperial Rome. Janny's work, the moral it spins, can very much be taken to refer to modern political events; I believe I read several on this forum. It's not that it's wrong, but as I said in my last post, as i read it then, that was at odds with a statement that approached what I considered to be a declaration of impartiality. Which is quite a thing to claim.
Of course the author is allowed to write what they want. As I said, to my mind, asking somebody to make up their own mind is at odds with that. If she hadn't said that, I wouldn't have minded, it would have been just a typical violence is wrong moral tale; which is her prerogative.
They take massive losses, relative to their numbers, and I never disputed that. But they punch far above their weight, even when magic is removed. I know what the book is trying to tell me about non violence, I get the whole arrogant might thing, I get that nobody really wins and hence the book series being morbidly depressing.The fact that they lose is irrelevent, to suggest a similar example is Ghosts of Oynx in the Halo series (which I have no good will towards) where the heroes lose but kill such an astronomical number of covenant that they have no concievable way of killing because they're the weaker party out teched and facing aliens considerably stronger than them. Yet that was not how the books went and so I resented that ASPECT of the book. The same goes with light and Shadow, i dislike that ASPECT of the books.
(honest question) Stephen, when you say its a history, do you mean the seers writing down what they are seeing and being selective? Because I always thought the seers had the argument with the priests of light over the truth and so decided to look into the past. Thats a bit different from a history IMO.
Oh I remember the buthcery at Tal Quorin well. Yet the only thing I recall the non head hunters doing in that battle was being shot down in shadow or having their throats cut as they lay wounded or running in panic from the deluge. Janny's description does not give the impression that they do ANYTHING other than get mown down like stormtroopers. Annette, you quote some good passages, perhaps the alliance did crash into the clan lines or get a few with lucky crossbow rounds if 600 out of nine hundred were dead before they fought the head hunters and lost another fifty. But thats my point, its mentioned so much in passing.
I get the impression that Iam aggrevating several posters here, so I think I need to put some perspective on where Iam coming from. Just because I dislike a few minor aspects of the novel, or I don't care for certain characters, doesn't mean I don't love other elements of the book and I indicated as much when I wrote. But I would be here for an eternity if I had to put the good in with the bad, Dakar and the brothers in the beginning of COTM, Arithon and Dakar wandering Vastmark, Arithon the bard, the brilliant moments between Lysaer and Sulfin Evend and Talith. I could go on and on. Nor does it mean I don't 'get it' with certain themes the book addresses or that I crassly deny that a writer has no right to write what they want; that would be silly. My criticisms are pretty specific in nature and don't undermine my reading of the text. They are just minor facets of a complicated series and quite minor ones at that.
Iam not sure if I should continue with this thread, I cannot imagine why several posters would come back to address what I posted if you weren't interested; except out of some kind of Masochism. I've already accepted much, if not all of what the other posters have written. So, if anyone else posts then I'll respond to it. If not, then Iam fin.
originally posted by Annette
I doubt the sages wrote anything down, even in the third age visions can be recorded in crystal, or viewed in a scrying basin, Just like a magic video recorder capturing it as it happens, before it happens or even it seems ages after it happened. The Fellowship went back and had a look at the distant past at Meth Isle. Why would the sages not be able to do a similar thing?
I did not really find the series that depressing, although I am never going to be reading Peril's Gate any where but in the safety of my own home. Bit too much for the emotions that one, but it had an uplifting ending that made it all worthwhile.
If we had finished with the first book, Arithon finally had his chance to devote himself to music, and Lysaer a chance to find love and happiness with Talith. And there was peace for a while. Seemed a reasonably happy ending.
The second arc ended with Arithon given his freedom to explore the oceans looking for the Paravians. Vastmark survived and had prospects for improvement, Athera another time of peace. Lysaer reinvented himself as the Divine Prince, which seemed to be what would make him happy.
The third arc Elaira and Arithon seem to be getting a chance to be happy for a while. Lysaer has a chance to try and build a better future for himself and his people. Athera again has a bit of peace. And the s'Brydion well they get to commune with nature and the other clansmen in Atwood. That might not have suited some of the s'Brydion. Still it seemed an uplifting ending full of hope for the future.
Yes we went though depressing bits, but the ending of each arc seemed to resolve some things and provide hope, they are all still striving to get what they want, and changing with each new book. And there were good moments throughout the series.
And OR, we love having the place livened up a bit, please forgive us if we seem a bit over enthusiastic with our responses. You are entitled to your opinion, and we obviously would just love to change it. Does not mean you have to, or that you are wrong. You would not be here if you were not a fan of the series. I at least appreciate you being willing to share your thoughts about the books with us.
originally posted by Stephen Mulligan
OR, I'm from Northern Ireland - selective remaining of history is what passes for education round here!
Actually I do believe the sages are being selective especially in the way they record what they see