Critique #4: John League
Katharine Kerr June 16th, 2006
Submitted June 16, 2006:
Eric Eagle-Eye, King of Haiwalinden, Scourge of the Kings of the Seven Plains, the Just, the Righteous, the Fair Sword and Saint of the Harvest, vomited into the roses outside the chapel. The smell of wet rot clung to him, but there was a steady breeze off the lake, so I held my head up and breathed deeply of the cold air while I waited for the King of Ages to finish emptying his belly.
“Shouldn’t have had the fish,†he said.
“Or the eels,†I added.
The king nodded. “Or the mutton.â€
“Or the mead.â€
The king nodded again, bent forward over the roses and retched.
Not exactly the stuff of song and legend. But Eric Eagle-Eye, Scourge of Kings and Saint of the Harvest, was a young man. My king, the one vomiting on the flowers, was an old man, tired, flabby and possessed of a continually sour stomach.
John,
This is terribly amusing. You’ve done a nice job of contrasting the courtly romance with the actual reality, though the last two sentences had me rereading them several times. I wasn’t certain at first whether the king was under a wicked enchantment or you were just using an overly shortened construction to say that he’d been young when he’d gotten the nifty titles and he was old now.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading the next section, though I’m not certain if you’d be able to keep the amusement factor this high throughout. But that’s what reading a story is for.
What can I say….I thought it was pretty great actually
kinda reads a little like a couple of the legends like Pratchett or Adams…
Can’t wait to read a little more.
Not everyone will share my view but everyone is entitled to their opinions hey.
It was amusing, but the gritty reality of throwing up was a real turn off for me. I don’t think, if I’d picked this up in a store I would have carried on reading. But that’s a purely personal choice, not because of the writing, and, as seen, others found it funny.
The last para was confusing and I couldn’t work out if that was a deliberate deception or a mistake, so that threw me. Like Kevin, I read it several times and it still didn’t make sense and seemed a bit too coy perhaps?
At the same time, I found the patiently waiting narrator very intriguing. It was him I wondered about once I got past the retching.
I really liked this a lot. Like the others I got thrown in the last graph, but a couple rereads made it clear that this poor bloke is sick–despite all the courtly hoopla about his youth and power and so forth. i would definitely turn the page on this one.
I’d add only that you might shorten the opening list of Exalted Titles. Yes, it’s meant to provide irony, and it does, but it goes on a bit too long.
Thanks to all. Funny, I didn’t even notice the vagueness in the last paragraph, but when I read the story I see an old king. When you read the story you don’t see an old king because I haven’t shown you that he’s old, just that he’s sick. Being subtle and evocative is nice but so is being accurate.
Thanks again.
This is great–funny–but the one thing that gives me pause is the roses. I can’t help but think that one could probably find something less prickly into which to vomit? Marguerites, perhaps, or creeping thyme?
Other than that, I think this is wonderfully amusing, and I like the poignant image of the legendary king reduced to a sick old man. I’d definitely read on!