Death of the Necromancer
Sep. 13th, 2014 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI'm currently reading Martha Wells' fantasy, Death of the Necromancer. (I thought I was rereading it, but absolutely nothing is familiar.) I think I might post a review when I finish, but something just struck me, about 2/3 of the way into the book.
One way of interpreting this story is as a Sherlock Holmes homage, told from the viewpoint of Moriarty. No, seriously: there are rough analogues of Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, and even Irene Adler. (A character has just been introduced who may be an analogue of Lestrade, except that he seems to be extremely competent....) The world depicted resembles late 19th century London, despite the fantasy trappings and a certain Frenchified air; there are photographs and steam locomotives, but no automobiles - the well-to-do get around the city in horse-drawn carriages, of a variety of makes.
Now I'm going to have to work to restrain this view, because there's much else going on, and confining myself to one interpretation is a mistake. This isn't a straight-up pastiche like Anderson's "The Martian Crown Jewels" (whose detective is a Martian named Syaloch, and it literally took me years to realize how that was pronounced); it's much richer than that.
One way of interpreting this story is as a Sherlock Holmes homage, told from the viewpoint of Moriarty. No, seriously: there are rough analogues of Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, and even Irene Adler. (A character has just been introduced who may be an analogue of Lestrade, except that he seems to be extremely competent....) The world depicted resembles late 19th century London, despite the fantasy trappings and a certain Frenchified air; there are photographs and steam locomotives, but no automobiles - the well-to-do get around the city in horse-drawn carriages, of a variety of makes.
Now I'm going to have to work to restrain this view, because there's much else going on, and confining myself to one interpretation is a mistake. This isn't a straight-up pastiche like Anderson's "The Martian Crown Jewels" (whose detective is a Martian named Syaloch, and it literally took me years to realize how that was pronounced); it's much richer than that.
