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Felix's Reviews > Viriconium

Viriconium by M. John Harrison
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bookshelves: fantasy

I liked "The Pastel City" a great deal. The rest of it felt to me like various shades and degrees of suppurating meh. "A Storm of Wings", in particular, felt like a pale imitation of "The Pastel City", but weak, wan, a bit unpleasant, and - worst of all - drawn-out and boring. I started skipping and quickly found myself just skipping to the end. Having reached the end, I felt a momentary urge to go back and read it all properly, but it passed very quickly. The rest I also skipped and skimmed at high speeds.

Now, I get it that the repetetiveness and pale-copyness are in fact part of the over-arching meta-point, I do, but it just didn't really work for me, except in a few isolated moments. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, pedestrian, philistine, but I like to have a proper plot that can be made sense of eventually.

Anyway, "The Pastel City" on its own is a solid 4.5 at least. The rest, like I said...

P.S.
Mr. Harrison's vocabulary is amazing, especially in words that pertain to shades and colours. I think I know my English pretty well - but, this, this was the true glimpse of a wholly different world for me.

P.P.S
Please read Charles Heywood's review. /review/show...
He sums it up admirably:

Unfortunately, the delicate and successful balance that Harrison achieves here, between reality and heroism, is destroyed in the sequels that Harrison wrote in the 1980s. These are awful books, full of squalor and nihilism, morbidly bizarre, totally lacking the heroic edge and flashes of faded beauty and glory that make the feeling of unalterable decline in "The Pastel City" bearable for both characters and reader.

I do wonder, though, if according to this logic we should not be compelled to pronounce Norvin Trinor, the seeker for vitality, as the true tragic hero of the book? And does that not undermine Mr. Heywood's and mine own reading of the text?
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Reading Progress

July 24, 2021 – Started Reading
July 24, 2021 – Shelved
July 24, 2021 –
page 25
4.44% "Okay, so I've read the first short story "Viriconium Knights" and I'm sorry, but - what?! What is going on here? It feels as this there is a prequel somehwere I should have read first. Otherwise I don't really understand at all what's all this in aid of.

But maybe things will clear with the next novella? I very much hope so. Not that greatly impressed with the story on its own."
July 24, 2021 –
page 49
8.7% "Ok, it makes a bit more sense now."
July 25, 2021 –
page 62
11.01%
July 27, 2021 –
page 120
21.31% ""Inaction bored the soldier; moroseness overcam the poet; a wholly mis[placed sense of responsibility possessed the Queen: in their separate ways they tried to meet and overcome the feeling of impotence instilled in them by what they had learned from the Lord of the Birds, and by the enigma he represented." (p. 120)

If you like such things, this is the book for you..."
July 27, 2021 –
page 122
21.67%
July 27, 2021 –
page 127
22.56%
July 27, 2021 –
page 155
27.53% "Not bad at all, the Pastel City part."
July 29, 2021 –
page 185
32.86% "Once again, I don't quite get what is going on. So far I read one novella - The Pastel City - which I really liked and 3 short stories, of which one was basically disgusting imho and the other 2 were quite ok but I just don't understand how it is all related. Maybe we have some sort of Viriconium multiverse on our hands? The War of the Two Queens is mentioned in 2 pieces but I can't square mentions."
July 29, 2021 –
page 185
32.86% "Whos is "the old queen" who seems to have had a long reign? She cannot be Canna Moidart. Is the Mammy Vooley (even the name is unpleasant sound to my ears, for some reason)? Is the down-to-earth Cromis of the story the same Cromis of the novella? A descendant? A refleciton of him in a parallel universe? What is going on, guys?

And why, oh why, they kept saying "the Moidart"? Is "Moidart" actually a title like Khan?"
July 29, 2021 –
page 234
41.56% "I don't know, it just drags..."
July 29, 2021 –
page 247
43.87% "Some skipping has been found to be sadly necessary to make progress."
July 30, 2021 –
page 365
64.83% "Okay, I cheated. I started skipping passages, then chapters, then I just forwarded to the end of "A Storm of Wings". I'm sure I missed a lot, but also maybe not. Sorry, just couldn't take it. Will be trying the remaining stories now."
July 31, 2021 – Finished Reading
August 1, 2021 – Shelved as: fantasy

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