triptych hinges
Often it has seemed to me that rather than the Stone Dance being a trilogy it would be better described as a triptych – it isn’t three works, but rather a single ‘picture’ in three parts. This feeling has found its way into the structure of the books.
Here I would like to comment on the first chapter of both The Standing Dead and The Third God. These alone do not stick to the close 3rd person perspective used elsewhere in the Stone Dance. In this respect they can be considered as the hinges on my triptych – hinges that hold together the three ‘panels’ of the books. (Pushing the analogy near breaking point: the Song to the Earth, the poem appearing at the beginning of The Chosen, could be seen to be the clasp that opens and closes the whole work.)
This is all a rather elaborate way of saying that you can read the first chapter of The Third God as an entity somewhat separate from the rest of the story – and as a link between The Standing Dead and The Third God proper, the action continues in the second chapter.
*grin* chance would be a fine thing! You will find that I have brought the old wallpaper into this site. I will try and produce some new ones as soon as I can…
Speaking of tryptchs, I would love to see you uploading those desktop wallpapers again. Maybe a few new ones, I imagine one basing on the really great cover of TTG, or something mixing themes from all three books.
Did you ever think of having some posters printed? The cover of TTG in _BIG_ would be grandiose. Well, on the other hand I wouldn’t want the stonedance commercialized like the lord of the rings or something…
Oh gosh, you’ve got me tempted to the max with putting the first chapter online … But, as hard as it may be, I still resist that temptation! for now
Ricardo, you gave me THE most strenuous cliffhanger experience in my whole life, as waiting a solid six months back in the days was a dreadfully arduous task – from the night I finished reading THE CHOSEN unto the day when THE STANDING DEAD was being published, so I could read on and see what will happen of Carnelian and Osidian. I’ll never forget how much pleasure it was finally delving into Vol 2 of your marvellous STONE DANCE trilogy – but I’ll also never forget how much I counted the weeks and days until I could lay my hands on THE STANDING DEAD.
It’s only two and a half weeks until Vol 3 is there. So I’m not really counting weeks any more – I’m counting HOURS! And if I’d now read the first chapter … I would start counting the minutes.:-0!
my point with all this waffle about triptychs was to reassure people like you that reading this would not leave you hanging… I am only too aware of how much, in the past, I have been guilty of that…*wry grin*