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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: To Reign in Hell [SPOILER]
Message-ID: <1369@shark.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-May-85 03:11:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.1369
Posted: Wed May  1 03:11:25 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 3-May-85 03:48:50 EDT
References: <1823@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 82
Summary: 

In article <1823@topaz.ARPA> @RUTGERS.ARPA:Newman.pasa@Xerox.ARPA writes:
>From: Newman.pasa@Xerox.ARPA
>WOW!
>
>I just read To Reign in Hell (by S. Brust) and it is a rreally grreat
>book. To be quite honest, I didn't think it was as good as Brinn's stuff
>(sorry SZKB), but it is well worth the paper it is printed on and much
>more!

I don't know about how it compares with Brinn, but I was really disappointed
myself, after the great recommendation by Zelazny and all.  Oh, sure, the
writing was nice enough, but it got just a bit forced in places, and I found
myself anticipating turns of phrase, or horrid puns, and there they were,
staring me in the face.

> I really like the fact that it is only a novel - I like series,
>but I like novels too, and there are too damned few of those around!

Uuuuuhmn, looked an awful lot like a lead-in to a sequel to me.  Any
word on this, SKZB?

> The
>characters are great, and the book left me wishing I was a little more
>familiar with the biblical account of this stuff.

There IS no such account.  There might be some traces of this in the
Jewish scriptures, but since many of our Jewish cohorts claim that there
is no mention of "Satan" as an angel in the Hebrew...

Brust credited Milton's "Paradise Lost" as a major source, if I recall,
and there are other plays and poems on the topic going back quite a ways.

> In addition, I relly
>like Brust's writing. It never gets in the way, and there is some great
>humor. I particularly liked the first sentence of the book. I must have
>read it over four or five times before I turned the page. I liked it
>enough to go out and buy Jehereg (spelling?), which is waiting on my "to
>read" shelf.
>
>I am left with but one small question: does anyone have any idea why
>Beelzebub speaks in Medieval English? 

Because he read the originals to Faustus.  Actually, that was one of the
touches I liked, but it wasn't Medieval English, only archaic english.
True Medieval English would have been rather hard to read.

The things I didn't like:  The characterizations all started out real
nice, but as the villainy progressed it got to be just a bit too much
to take.  If Brust wanted to offend Christians, Moslems, and Jews, he
did a real good job of it.  My real complaint, however, is that the
choice was the OBVIOUS one.  If you want to make it tragic, take the
cheap way, make Satan the good, honorable one who refuses to go along
with the duplicitous and rather foolish Y*hw*h.  And of course God is
"just another angel" and Yeshua is the last created angel, rather than
the coequal or even the first created.  Yawn.  

It's been DONE.  A multitude of times, it's been done.  If you want tragedy,
make the real tragedy come out of the real losses.  I would be impressed
if the conflict between obedience and choice had been handled in a way that
didn't make God into a proto-Nixon.  Or which dealt with a truly omnipotent
God, or a truly omniscient God.  The mechanism of reducing Y*hw*h into a
mere angel, limited and accessible, is just too easy.

I dunno.  Maybe its just because I have seen too much of that type of thing
coming out of cults, new and ancient, and it isn't a new approach to me.
Perhaps it was because my religion was offended.  I imagine the same kind of
dissonance happens to Hindus who read Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant" series.
Oh well.

>>>Dave
>
>PS: Here is another question unrelated to the general topic. Being
>unsure where to ask, I will ask the kind-hearted SFLovers. What in blue
>blazes does :-) mean?? 

That is the infamous Snicker Icon.  It is usually left out of articles
which are intended to be taken as humour, leading to hurt feelings and
attacks of offensensitivity.  Some people leave it out because they detest
smiley faces of any form.  It infests the Usenet more than the Arpanet,
where people are politer and don't have to tell everyone when to laugh.

Hutch