Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I definitely agree with the "last minute" feel to the resolution of the Outland story. I was getting the feeling even in the first half that Carroll was leaving the Outland farce behind because he couldn't meld that properly into the serious side that was developing. The tacked on conclusion seems to confirm that.
And Uggug. He struck me as the least culpable of the "villains", so why pick him to get the short end of the stick? It makes no sense - to my morality, nor to Carroll's I would have thought (especially given one of the lectures Arthur gave) - to forgive those that should have known better, but to reject the one that never really had a chance.
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The second book was a tremendous letdown. Even with its flaws, I thought the first book had so much potential, teasing storylines left often, throw-away concepts, that I was looking forward to how Carroll would resolve them. Instead, it seemed as if he abandoned all the promising, inventive, ground-breaking aspects to focus on the dreary and done-that.
I suspected things were going to go badly when I read the introduction to the second book, where not only did Carroll explain the dream mechanism for moving between worlds, he identified in exhaustive detail each time it happened. This was unnecessary, insulting to the reader, and showed a lack of faith in his own story-telling ability. One of the fun parts of the first book was figuring it out and seeing how it worked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Uggug reminds me of Dudley Dursley.
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I had that thought, too. And as with Carroll's making Uggug the butt, it wasn't very nice of Rowling (who prides herself on her sensitivity) to fat-shame a character, especially a child. I'm quite sure this point has been made. A pig-tail, really? That's lovely. Were there any fat kids at Hogwarts other than Crabbe? Were there any
good fat kids?
Rowling is someone else who feels compelled to explain what she really meant, too.