{"id":164,"date":"2002-09-21T17:43:40","date_gmt":"2002-09-21T21:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=164"},"modified":"2002-09-21T17:43:40","modified_gmt":"2002-09-21T21:43:40","slug":"smith_sherwood_4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/09\/smith_sherwood_4\/","title":{"rendered":"Smith, Sherwood, and Dave Trowbridge: (05) The Thrones of Kronos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"85477032\"><\/a> <a name=\"link_85477032\"><\/a> <\/p>\n<p>Last Friday night, when I finished reading <strong><cite>The Thrones of Kronos<\/cite>, the last book of Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge&#8217;s Exordium series<\/strong>, I had the following thoughts more-or-less in this order:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Arrgh!<\/li>\n<li>You looked up &#8220;exordium,&#8221; you should have expected this.<\/li>\n<li>Well, that was&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. strange.<\/li>\n<li>Maybe reading a big complicated book in tiny chunks during lunch, and then in the same room as Chad watching <cite>Pleasantville<\/cite>, wasn&#8217;t such a good idea&#8212;you know you don&#8217;t block out distractions very well.<\/li>\n<li>Clearly I need to read this again. In large distraction-free chunks this time.<\/li>\n<li>Hell, it&#8217;s going to be forever until I can manage <em>that<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So I finished my re-read yesterday night, and anyone who cares will be pleased to know that it was much less strange when read under proper conditions. However, people who like their fiction to conclude with all the ends tied neatly in a bow should probably avoid this; put another way, if you didn&#8217;t like <cite>Tigana<\/cite>&#8216;s ending, you&#8217;ll hate this one. (The authors did warn us, though: the definition of &#8220;exordium&#8221; is &#8220;a beginning or introductory part.&#8221;) I have a reasonable tolerance for this sort of thing, so I&#8217;m basically resigned to the unresolved parts of this series; there&#8217;s just one thing that, in my opinion, fits better with the main plot than as a life-goes-on. On the other hand, I&#8217;m probably biased because I just really want to know&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond the ending proper, this volume was an almost entirely satisfying conclusion to the series. I&#8217;m not entirely sure what one particular plot thread ended up contributing, but beyond that, I really enjoyed it. I wish I had time to re-read it all from the start, but I&#8217;ve started an actual job (gasp! shock!) and the next couple of weeks in particular are not going to lend themselves to reading long complicated works.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been trying to think of other things to say here about <cite>Thrones<\/cite> and failing miserably, because they&#8217;d be incomprehensible without spoilers. Also, I&#8217;m coming down with a cold and have to Entertain shortly, so I&#8217;m a bit distracted. I plan, sometime, to write up a general review for sf.written and to append spoiler comments to that; I&#8217;ll post the link here in a comment when I get around to it (conducting spoiler conversations is rather awkward in this format).<\/p>\n<p>But, in short: yay, space opera. Go agitate for Baen or someone to reprint these.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Friday night, when I finished reading The Thrones of Kronos, the last book of Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge&#8217;s Exordium series, I had the following thoughts more-or-less in this order: Arrgh! You looked up &#8220;exordium,&#8221; you should have expected this. Well, that was&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. strange. Maybe reading a big complicated book in tiny chunks during &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/09\/smith_sherwood_4\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Smith, Sherwood, and Dave Trowbridge: (05) The Thrones of Kronos&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,73,15],"tags":[391,416],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-exordium","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-smith-sherwood","tag-trowbridge-dave"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}