IMPORTANT HANS OF ICELAND UPDATE

[melannen]

I am now about 100 pages in, and it is starting to pick up a little!

Right now, there are six people sheltering from a sudden storm in the Cursed Tower (where any cross brought across the threshhold bursts spontaneously into flame):

Our Hero Ordener, the heir to a Count, who is in disguise as a common soldier afaict just because he enjoys suddenly revealing that he isn't one at dramatic moments;

Benignus Spiagudry, the local coroner/mad scientist, who is in disguise as Anyone Who Is Not Spiagudry because he was forced to desecrate a corpse is his care and is therefore a wanted man;

Hans of Iceland, the outlaw, who is in disguise as a monk, and is the one who forced him to desecrate said corpse because he wanted the skull to drink the blood of his enemies out of;

Orugix, the official Trondheim executioner and his wife, who are not in disguise, but are *totally* rocking the "we are executioners who live in a cursed tower so we might as well go all out and be GOTH AS HELL" life;

And a Lutheran pastor who as is as far as I know not in disguise (? seems unlikely)

Ordener is there because he has bribed Spiagudry to take him to the hideouts of Hans because Hans has stolen some papers that will prove the innocence of the falsely persecuted father of Ordener's paramour Ethel, who is also being courted by the brother of Ordener's fiancee who is part of a plot to destroy Ethel's father using a proletarian revolt led by a patsy who is in disguise as Hans, except said fiancee's brother is actually secretly the illegitimate son of the executioner's brother (and, worst of all, enjoys reading French adventure novels!!!)

Still not sure what the pastor is doing there.

MEANWHILE, an "Anonymous Personage" has driven up to the nearby town in a gilded, but unmarked, carriage.

Comments

[sheliak]

That sounds kind of amazing, and yes, the random Lutheran pastor sticks out like a sore thumb. Surely he has some kind of dark secret or mysterious hidden identity! Surely no genuinely random pastor would take shelter at such a place, and in such company! (... or maybe he is busy boggling at everyone else's enthusiastic ridiculousness? But that might be a bit too self-aware.)

I take it that the first 100 pages were less entertaining?

[melannen]

It's more that he spent the first 75 pages or so introducing one new character and location after another (or occasionally introducing them twice while being coy about the "disguise" thing) so it took me that long to figure out wtf was going on and whether or not I cared. And, I mean, the prose is never going to be exactly, um, gripping, in this one.

It took to about page 50 before I even figured out what century it was and what country they were in.

By the time Frederic and Ordener were attempting (and failing, due to general failiness) to duel over the girl I was interested enough to keep going, though.

Also the first scene is in Spiagudry's morgue featuring a bunch of one-off characters we never meet again and detailed descriptions of three drowned corpses (only one of which has been relevant to anything so far) so that didn't help.