Really, I'm working. Honest.

[kippurbird]

More from that guy who is trying to be like Tolkien.



Now that we've seen his overly wrought introduction, we move into the second introduction. This is a series of journal entries that our author has supposedly found. They follow the format of they found but incomprehensible because it's missing information and parts of it are illegible trope. There are also a lot of footnotes. And I mean a LOT of footnotes.

16 March, 1889 – Rachford Abbey – Derbyshire

I pass between two stones upon a hill, bridged by a wide lintel of stone… A trilithon form, but larger than any I have seen in my waking hours…
Like an unwanted caller, it (the dream) has only become more persistent, and of necessity its meaning more clear. Though I cannot say how I know this, I am now certain beyond any doubt that the answer I seek is to be found on these isles. ^[1]
10:00 am – Received a most unexpected post from E_____, wherein he has enclosed a cutting from the P____ Journal.^[2]
There is no doubt in my mind this is related to the dreams.
Must leave at once to find this Mr. D_____.

---

^[1]
meaning the British Isles

^[2]
The article describes the case of a Mr. Dougal, a fisherman from Skye, who arrived at the Three Hounds tavern on 10 March, 1889, with the incredible claim that only six hours prior, he set out for a day's work leaving his wife and children safe in their home in the year 1879. When he returned to the site of his old home, he found there the grave of his wife, dead five years, and his surviving son refusing him entrance or even recognition, while pronouncing him a deceiving spirit come from the sea. The unfortunate fisherman lay the blame of his troubles on a fragment of stone that he found beneath the water just that morning. The authorities characterized the stone as a peleir tarnainaich (thunder stone), or in plainer words, a meteorite.

I think if the story were told in this particular style (rather like Bram Stoker's Dracula) it would be interesting. Unfortunately on page twenty, he starts the actual narrative.

It begins with a literary device which the name escapes me. However I shall show it to you so you can know what I've forgotten:

Wherein our protagonist, on his 12th birthday, peruses the pages of an interesting book, has a dream pertaining thereto, and reflects upon a matter of great importance.

Now this in itself is not a terrible device, look at what the contents of the chapter are going to be: A twelve year old boy reading a book and thinking. Riveting, don't you think? I don't want to read a book that begins with a kid reading. You need some sort of action. A person in a place with a problem. Something to hook the reader.

The prose that follows is dull and ponderous a sample here is provided:

Even before his lids were closed, his spirit was wafted to that palace of glass and painted iron so far away, where the air inside was no less close and warm, and heavy with the smell of tropic green. And he was kneeling of a sudden on the whitened pebbles, that he might study and admire the bottle-blue wings of a Peleides Hyacinthus. He watched in fascination as the creature quenched its thirst from the edge of the bowl held aloft by an impertinent and poorly-clad nymph of stone.

Who really thinks in terms of scientific names of creatures? Especially a twelve year old boy? And "was wafted"? The prose is purple and therefore made perplexing to read. It takes a long moment to figure out what the paragraph is saying.

Here also we have the beginning of Stu-dom for the nameless boy.

Refreshed somewhat by his half-minute of slumber, the boy returned to the occupation which had engaged his attentions for most of the afternoon. These new pages of the book depicted a wide landscape of hills in water-color green. He read the legend traced in gilded ribbon across the clouds.

- A l'aube des temps, lors le monde estoit encore naissant, l'homme
eut vray connoissance de terres d'enchantement -

The meaning of the words was clear to him at once -- even in this antique form. Thanks in no small part to his travels, such things came easy to him.

We don't know what language this is. If it is an antique form, why would traveling help him learn it. Usually such languages aren't spoken anymore. I know there are linguistic people around. Do you know what language this might be? French maybe?

The footnote reads, as translation: In the first age, when the world was young, the countries of faërie were known to man.

Look! First Age! Faërie! Known to Man! Tolkien! First age was the time of the elves, second age was the fading of the elves and the beginning of the time of man, third age was the time of man. How utterly predictable!

More purple prose with infodumping, using the pictures for that. It would be more interesting if he was actually talking to someone as opposed to thinking things.

Then we get an odd sort of paragraph:

Indeed, scattered before him on the table was the only evidence to remind him that today he was now twelve years old. But the reader should not expect to find the soldiers of lead, nor the mechanical wonders which other boys might receive as gifts. Jack Berkeley had never had much use for games or toys. On the contrary, before him on the table were several miniature wooden figures from the epics of Rama, which he had arranged in his own particular way, that he might better survey them in their ferocious glory.

Now, I'll give slack to the reference to the reader, as this is a commonish device used in the time period of when this is supposedly being written. HOWEVER, look, This is the first time we get the boy's name: Jack. And second, Jack is so special that he doesn't do what ordinary children do. He's much more sophisticated than normal kids his age. Though I would still call miniature wooden figures arranged in a battle toys. Just different kind of soldiers.

There's a nice infodump about the figures and what they mean. I don't really care about it though. Though I imagine that they'll become important later on. Rather like Tristan's ability with his throwing knives.

The chapter ends with him getting called away for dinner. Absolutely nothing of interest happened. Or at least,nothing happened. I suppose people could call it character development, but I'd like to see him do something instead being told.

Comments

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

The wizards: Deeeeep Hurting! Deeeeep Hurting!

Seriously, though...I really wonder how this guy got an agent. But then again, Robert Newcomb got an agent.

[authoressarktos.livejournal.com]

I see what you meant...this guy needs to get something going, have some reason for introducing the character is such an odd way...but he doesn't. It's like he randomly decided what to put there...

Oh, and a book made of letters like that would be called an epistolary, I think. Personally, I agree that he should go that way. I was actually nodding approvingly during that example letter at the beginning. Decent style, void of much purple prose and obviously carrying important details...he'd need to work on organizing it properly, but that's a better option to take IMO.

[syderia]

A l'aube des temps, lors le monde estoit encore naissant, l'homme eut vray connoissance de terres d'enchantement
It's a weird mix between modern and fake old French. I'm pretty sure vrai (true) was never written with a y.
As for his translation, he's using it for his own purpose. The sentence actually means "At the dawn of times, when the world was just being born, men had true knowledge of lands of enchantments."

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

That's a fairly low bar. Somewhere along the way frigging John Norman had to have had an agent.

[mranon-y-mous.livejournal.com]

People are faking Ye Olde Frenche? O.o

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

"We don't know what language this is. If it is an antique form, why would traveling help him learn it. Usually such languages aren't spoken anymore. I know there are linguistic people around. Do you know what language this might be? French maybe?"

It is, as syderia pointed out, a mix between modern French and "old" French (I don't know how much forms have changed, so I can't tell you how accurate it is.)

As for the first point ... knowing a number of related languages (ex French, Spanish, Latin, Italian, Portuguese are all related) makes it easier to figure out languages in the same family, even without formal training. Even if you can't pick up on the grammar, you'll be able to understand most of the vocabulary because related languages are heavy on cognates. I have a friend who likes to speak Latin, and I can usually get the rough gist of what he's saying because I have an extensive English vocabulary and know some French and Spanish.

Theoretically, if you learn a number of unrelated languages, that'll make you quicker to learn language in general because a) you have a wide variety of schemas to connect a new language to, and b) the areas of your brain for learning language are highly developed from having so much practice.


However, traveling does not necessarily mean one has actually *learned* foreign languages enough for either of those things to apply to you.

[oelikathebitchy.livejournal.com]

A l'aube des temps, lors le monde estoit encore naissant, l'homme
eut vray connoissance de terres d'enchantement

As everyone else has pointed out, that's definitely French. But it seems to be lacking some accent marks. Just out of curiosity, is that the way he originally had it? It's very different from the "BLINDED BY UMLAUTS!" beginning.

Also, even knowing the modern form of a language doesn't always help you translate antique forms (and I assume that Jack knows French, if only because other languages wouldn't help him automatically translate like that). Languages change a lot over time, especially if they've switched alphabets. A quick Google turns up some examples of Old English that look very, very strange. And since I'm very much not an expert in languages, I'll leave it at that and hope somebody with a better education replies.

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

I think he should have just cut this chapter and put the info into the next. At least then it might actually have something happening!

[subieko.livejournal.com]

Agreement on the language bit--it's French, although with some funny spellings that I suppose are meant to be old. And I also agree with the translation being something like 'In the [l'aube, not sure what that is] of time, when the world was still being born, man truly knew enchanted lands.' Not a word about faeries or countries--that would be 'pays de [faeries]'.

And I actually liked that bit at the beginning, especially foot note number two--the writing style of that was almost like an account of a myth or a bit of a travelogue. But then the actual chapter with Jack sorely disappointed me, because the style is quite different, and I didn't like it as much.

I have to admit, I'm a great fan of that device, whatever it's called. Because Winnie-the-Pooh books had it, so I remember it fondly...^_^;;;

Jack seems dull so far. Are there any signs of him developing a personality?

[emily-goddess.livejournal.com]

I had to google Peleides Hyacinthus. He's being deliberately obscure, or else assuming the reader has more knowledge than she's likely to have. Either way, it's annoying.

As for chapter one: I agree. I don't care how important it may be eventually - for right now, watching the kid read a book and play with his action figures is boring. That's assuming some of this stuff will ever be important, aside from showing us the kid's speshulness.

[wariena.livejournal.com]

His style reminds me of a friend of mine's- it's almost unreadable because the writer seems to think that good writing = big fancy words. When it comes down to it, there are <1% of writers who can pull purple off, and this guy really isn't one of them. If I bought this book I'd have thrown it out the window by now. >

[jacedraccus.livejournal.com]

Weren't the Winnie-the-Pooh books more cryptic about it? I mean, the way this guy has it, every single bit of relevant information is given straight away. "Kid reads a book and has a dream."

The rest is just tacky window dressing?

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

I have to agree, I mean obviously he can write well, but for some reason he likes really, really purple stuff. Once more I think this has a lot to do with how he got an agent.

[subieko.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, the Winnie-the-Pooh books did it much more skillfully, but it still reminds me of them. ^_^;;;;

[berseker.livejournal.com]

Hum... well, I probably wouldn’t buy this book if I saw it in a store. The beginning it too boring. I think the footnotes and brochure-like details upsets me more than his prose. But that’s just me.

Aaaaaand about the footnotes… did he read Susanna Clarke? Because it sounds a little like the ones she does. Of course, that might be just a coincidence (not being sarcastic here. It probably is just coincidence. It´s just that it reminded me of her stuff).

[authoressarktos.livejournal.com]

Maybe there are goldfish agents as well as editors?

(edited for spelling fail D:)