(no spoilers)
During the perusal of the second of the volumes of Paarfis fine
historical novel, "The Viscount of Adrilankha", one must periodicly
pause so as not to overwhelm the senses with pleasures nor to cause
the patrons of ones childs dentists, the implacable Hitchcock and
Fear, to wonder as to the cause of the continued giggling of the
parent while his child remains in the grip of the pliers for the
purposes of extraction of teeth of wisdom. (Your humble scribe
remains unconvinced of the utility of the extraction of organs of
wisdom at a moment when one is preparing to eject said child from
the home for a four year sojourn in pursuit of wisdom, but this is
neither here nor there, as am I.)
During such a pause, the notion entered my somewhat but temporarily
disordered mind as to what one of the as-yet-unpublished memoirs of
Vlad called Taltos might be concerned with, especially when conjoined
with the limitations on the series such that one of the volumes must
inevitably be entitled 'Tiassa.' Numerous Tiassa have peopled the
writings concerning Dragaera, whether they be those from the inimitable
Paarfi (I speak ironicly, of course) or those from the memoirs of Vlad,
the phrasings of whom much more resemble that of certain delicate but
delectable breakfast delicacies after having been subjected to an excess
of time in overheated waters. Lamentably few of those Tiassa have been
mentioned by name by either author, and while we mean no insult to
the many unnamed Tiassa, the most prominent of the the Tiassa we
have had the pleasure of encountering are Khaavren, Daro, and the
current novels eponymous character Pel, The Viscount of Adrilankha.
As we have seen from Vlads own somewhat spare narration, his own
somewhat checkered and possibly exaggerated career (for what mere
Easterner could expect a career worth documentation in over seventeen
volumes) does indeed overlap with at least one of the three Tiassa
whose names we have had the unreserved pleasure of noting just
briefly before this terse sentence.
Readers of the most cultured and sophisticated palette, inevitably
drawn as we are to the elegant and cultured phrasings of Paarfi,
are often confused or even repelled by the abbreviated and often
classlessly coarse phrasings of Vlad, whose influence is often
assumed to be the hopelessly overrated Seamstresstreet but which
is actually linked to now largely unread Sprin'tel Smallkentha.
With some readers, this has even led to an inability to fully
appreciate or even enjoy the tales of Vlad, despite their useful
if accidental illustration of the seeds of the changes which took
root in the latter days of the reign of Zerika the Fourth and
flowered in the excessively just and therefore tumultuous reign of
Norathar the Second.
While a formal rewrite of the novels of Vlad into a more acceptable
form might not be worth the effort, approaching as it does the same
levels of difficulty as translation from Eastern to Dragaeran, it
cannot be said that there is not some nugget of utility and
entertainment in Vlads abbreviated meanderings, not unlike the
manner in which a strip of dried kentha has a certain gustatory
enjoyment of its own even if it cannot be fully compared to an
evening at Valabars (both a topic and an establishment which Paarfi
himself neglects, but to which Vlad justly returns repeatedly).
It is my small conceit that if there were only some readily
apprehendable key which would translate from the excessively
abbreviated Vlad to the fulsomely ornate Paarfi and vice-versa, the
manifold readers of Paarfi might be able to tolerate if not actually
enjoy the stories of Vladimir Taltos while simultaneously permitting
one or perhaps both of the latters fans to expand their literary
horizons and enjoy the the more cultured tones of the former. With
some trepidation I would even go beyond this small conceit and even
approach, albeit with appropriate timidity, the possibility of making
a suggestion that when the esteemed publishing house Glorious
Mountain reaches the time to assemble Vlads own tale of Tiassa,
that we be permitted to see the tale both in the voice of and from
the viewpoint of Vlad Taltos, and simultaneously in from the viewpoint
of the Tiassa (and one which we may hope comes from the esteemed
names above) but in the more cultured tones we know actually occurred
and are related by Paarfi. In this matter both Vlad and Paarfi (or
a student inspired by him) might hold to the traditions established
by the two aforementioned authors (although we might gingerly use
that term when referring to Vlad), such that Vlad would produce 17
chapters in his own style while Paarfi or his student would augment
this to 34 chapters by including those materials which Vlad, either
thru ruthlessness, laziness, or ignorance, is unable to present
properly.
Such a novel might well unite the readerships of both authors, leading
to increased pleasures for the cultured and noble followers of Paarfi
and the possible employment of the followers of Vlad as lackeys to the
aforementioned cultured readers.
Anxiously awaiting the response of any of the involved parties to this
humble suggestion, I remain, deeply in debt for the ongoing histories
of both the inestimable Phoenix Guards and the inadvertent catalyst Vlad
Taltos,
Steve Simmons, BGS, ScTuC Eng, BOFH.
--
"You are writing children's books, you need to be a ruthless killer."
J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, in
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2998198.stm>