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- Neils Artur Langevin
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I have concluded the Eagle is by far Jack Whyte's least satisfying piece of literature to date, and pales in comparison to any book in the entire Dream of Eagles Series. I guess he realized his readers would be disappointed with Arthur no matter how he portrayed him, so he made the focus of the book Gaul as he did with Clothar. This would be fine except for the fact the 300 pages spent in Corbenic make absolutely no contribution to the story. I really think he would have been wiser to have spent those pages portraying a brutal campaign against Horsa's Danes with an epic battle at Badon Hill. As I have mentioned earlier there is no mention of Horsa after the first pages of the book, which is strange considering he has been the main antagonist in the past few books. Which brings me to another point, didn't Donuil's wife once have a vision that there would be a great battle between Horsa and Arthur. I think it occured in the Saxon Shore, but I havn't read it in some time.
Is no one going to call me on this post? I know you guys want to!
I have to admit. I've started a number of replies to this post.
Don't worry it's coming.
cheers,
Ptar
When your only tool is a hammer
everything looks like a nail!
Were you looking for some heated debate? :P
The Eagle was not what I expected, but it was still a good book (good, not great).
"...least satisfying to date?" Nah. Don't even get me started on Clothar. That's the only JW book I don't think I'll ever re-read.
http://users3.nofeehost.com/tonyamy
I've been a fan now for about 6 years, and I always lurk around here. I am 75% thru The Eagle, and unfortunately I tend to agree. The book thus far has been disapointing. No offense to Jack, because his original series are my favorite books...period, but these last two are not at all what I had expected. In my opinion The Eagle refers to Arthur and yet he doesn't really have much of a role. The whole Gaul expediotion just seems like bust work or filler material. I guess my biggest disappointment is the lack of character development. I honestly feel no attachment to Clothar like I certainly did for Publius, Caius, Merlyn, and even Uther. (maybe most of all Uther). Don't mean to rant, but I do feel let down. I know according to Jack he never intended to write this part of the tale, but I just wish since he ecventually decided to tackle it that he could've taken a more aggressive perspective. Whew...sorry again about the rant.
J:ohmy: :angry: :evil:
I didn't mind Clothar because at least there was a reason for the setting being in Gaul.
Alright, I just finished "The Eagle" this evening, and have been chewing on the end and the book as a whole since I started reading. Since I've been reading these books for the past 10 years (I read the Skystone at 16) and have literally grown up with them, I have never had a particular attachment to the characters like I did with Publius, Caius, and Merlyn. I'm thinking that maybe Mr. White did this on purpose.
I'm actually glad that the character development isnt as strong, because I wouldn't have been left with such a hole by finishing a series that took me 10 years to complete. Kind of like the preverbial "world ending with a whisper instead of a bang" theory.
If we were left with the same sort of attachment that we had when we were smelting with Publius and riding with Merlyn, then we would be clamouring for more books, something Mr. Whyte probably doesn't want. Just my not-yet-formed complete opinion.
**Spoilers**
I find it interesting that so many people refer to very specific things that they would have liked to see in this final book. Horsa, Badon, and other legendary settings and antogonists are all works of fiction as they relate to a single man called Arthur. The closest writing about "an Arthur" that I am aware of as far as time is concerned occurs some 200 years later.
So, how should a contemporary writer approach one of the greatest legends of all time? Certainly not in the first person, not unless the writer's ego is on the same scale of said legend.
Any other concrete ideas?
Regards,
Chief Scott
No matter how Jack Whyte approached the ending of the story there would still be readers that would have thought it should be done a different way. Its the old "You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time." I myself was just so happy there were more books that he probably could have written "humbug" 12,000 times and I would have been okay with it (well o.k., maybe not just that one word)
Maybe I'm a lazy reader but I try to just enjoy what the writer had done and not try to nit-pick too much. After all, they have done something the majority of the people can't or won't attempt and if the reader is at all lucky they have done it well.
IMHO, which is all it is, the contempoary writer of fiction should try to please themselves and we can just hope to be included in a good journey.
But I agree that first person is a little pompus
"Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe."
-- Galileo Galilei
Perhaps one way to deal with Arthur would have been in the way Jack dealt with his father, Uther. As a stand alone book, it was written in third person, and I think it worked well. I didn't find myself any less close to Uther than any of the other characters.
However, then the story would have to be more like every other story written about Arthur... in that it would be about Arthur. Before the books came out, Jack said he was doing something different with the well-known triangle, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I've never read anything that was nearly solely about Lancelot.
As for the last line, I wonder was that the character, the author, or the readers speaking. I know I'll miss the characters I've gotten to know over the past 8 years or so that I've been reading these books. Thank you for many great hours of reading and re-reading, Jack.