Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Next up: 1635: The Wars for the Rhine. So far the usual flaws of the third-party books. Too many characters and viewpoints. The author may know exactly who all these people are and their relationships, but they need to make more of an effort to ensure that the reader does as well!
|
The afterword explains all. The novel started as some shorter pieces that were re-written to make a novel covering that area and period.
The short stories included subsets of the characters in the novels, and were manageable. The novel had too many characters introduced too quickly (and many with similar names - a common problem when fiction involves historical characters and it's not possible to change the names!).
In the end it was OK, but it was harder work than I like.
Next I read "Black Moon" the fifth book in the Poldark book series, recently shown as part of the second TV series of the current BBC adaptation.
Good fun, and it's interesting to see what changes the adapter has made.
And now straight on the "The Four Swans", the sixth book in the book series, and that's also part of the second TV series.