Sephy wrote:
>
> The broader range of characters in the El/Tam diversifies it enough to
> make it fun. One could go through all the endless comparisons again
> (eg Polgara vs Sephrenia etc etc) but that takes the fun out of reading
> a rollicking good yarn. That's what the Bel/Mal and the El/Tam are;
> they were never meant to be anything more.
I'm still not convinced that the character comparisons are all that
accurate, anyway. Polgara and Sephrenia are two that are probably quite
close, and there are others, but because people see those few similar
characters and, perhaps, similar dialogue they can look *too* deep to
see other "identical" characters.
As an example, the Kurik/Durnik comparison I mentioned last week. These,
to my mind, are totally seperate characters. Kurik would say and do
things that Durnik would not even consider, and vice-versa. Do you
really think Durnik would have had the affair that Kurik did? Yes, they
are both very practical characters and, yes, they both die - although
Kurik isn't re-incarnated, DE just brought in another practical
character who was different again to Kurik and Durnik.
Kring and Hettar are another pair often cited as being similar. I don't
see it, myself, the only similarity is that they belong to a horse
tribe. They have very different value systems, and dialogue and actions
written for one simply doesn't work for the other.
DE does use a formula to create a set of Quest Companions that's almost
straight out of Diane Wynne Jones' "Tough Guide To Fantasyland", but the
individuals behind the stereotype are very much that.
I'd have written all this last week, but the newsreader expired the
relevant post before I got a chance to :)
--
Teut
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