Phoenix Guards

[jack]

This is awesome! It's Stephen Brust's homage to the Three Musketeers, set in Vlad Taltos' world, but thousands of years ago.

I loved Three Musketeers. Somehow Dumas' discursive, humorous style just really resonated with me ("He thought he saw the barrel of a musket glitter from behind a hedge. D'Artagnan had a quick eye and a prompt understanding. He comprehended that the musket had not come there of itself, and that he who bore it had not concealed himself behind a hedge with any friendly intentions.")

I find I like Three Musketeers in a similar way to how I like Name of the Rose or Cryptonomicon: they have the same approach of spelling things out in humorous excessively detail, but Three Musketeers spells out obvious things, and Cryptonomicon spells things out using unnecessary mathematical analogies. However, I know other people don't subscribe to those similarities.

It naturally has the problem that you can't write a more serious book in that abstracted style -- the beginning of Count of Monte-Cristo bothered me for that reason. It feels silly to say "and he proposed a conspiracy and the others agree" or "he fought vigorously and prevailed", and you want to object it couldn't happen, whereas in Three Musketeers it makes sense. You generally need to impute the text to a fictional author, treating it as a bit legendary, and then it works.

Brust avoids the trap of following the original too closely; many incidents are reflected in spirit but not detail. If you like either Three Musketeers, or the Taltos books, I think this is very worth reading. (As is typical for books described, it is available to borrow :))

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Paarfi, bless him, is inspired by a specific translation of the d'Artagnan romances from the 1880s, the translator's name alas nowhere to be found, which my understanding is that Brust came across entirely by chance (I've seen the originals, they're in pameladean's living room), and Tor has published that translation of The Three Musketeers.

It's worth noting that like Dumas in the Drame de France (his overall title for the cycle of historical novels going from La Reine Margot and sequels through the Musketeers books, the Revolutionary-era Joseph Balsamo series and related works, the unfinished Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine and culminating in Monte Cristo, of which I am pleased to say I have almost all, which makes about two metres of shelf space) presenting what he views as the natural progression of history from Medici feudalism through Louis XIV's absolutism, the pre-Revolutionary aristocracy, and culminating in Monte Cristo as the embodiment of the modern man, Paarfi has very visible political biases, and even a cursory comparison of Paarfi's historical details with the conversations Vlad has with people who were there for the events in question shows that Paarfi makes history up out of whole cloth the way it should have been. This is particcularly visible in Five Hundred Years After.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

the same approach of spelling things out in humorous excessively detail

It helps to explain this if you know that, like Dickens, Dumas wrote many of his novels for serial publication, and was paid by the word. (Not sure what excuse Stephenson has.)