Scar Night: January Book Club Discussion

[dsmith]

I really enjoyed this book, and look forward to a sequal. I was just starting to get involved in the characters and care about them when the book ended. I noticed that the book is on a special display at the Borders Books near me. When I first tried to buy it they didn't even have it. I found the world the author built very fascinating! It seemed very original to me. I've been trying to read The Long Run for the february discussion, but I can't get through it. I'm taking a short break to read Lisey's Story first.

[dwndrgn]

I finally got a copy and have started tonight. So far I'm a bit confused but not bored.

[Parson]

I was both confused and bored for about the first third of the book.

By the way, it looks as though the fierce vowelless one is about to drop something on us? Is it a book bomb?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Somebody has the defend the letter "w," and I guess it falls to me. So versatile is this mighty letter, it can serve either as a consonant or a vowel. In "dawndragon" it is undoubtedly a vowel, even if it has been cruelly severed from the other half of the diphthong.

dwndrgn, confusion seems to be the universal lot of those who read the early chapters.

[dwndrgn]

Well, I'm almost halfway through and I'm a little less confused but still a bit puzzled by quite a few things. Maybe I'll understand it all once I finish but I have a feeling that I probably won't. Here's a question: I cannot picture the city itself. It is 'chained' but to what? I'm not sure I understand this bit. If it is chained to the ground and floats over the abyss, why are there chains above the city? If it is chained to the ground but hangs down from the cliff, why isn't there a vista of the cliff face when looking up? I'm just having trouble imagining all of this and I wish he had given us a bit more background on the city itself - I don't mind a few mysteries here and there but it would be a great deal easier to enjoy the story if I could imagine it. So far it isn't making much sense to me. Don't get me started on the League of Ropes either. Goodness. Anyway, I'll check back later as I get farther in.

[BookStop]

I wasn't 100% on the city's whereabouts either, but I kind of imagined it was chained over the top of an abyss, with the chains reaching toward the outer part of the top of the wall. (almost like a funnel) Of course, I would also think folks on the outskirts would be able to see what the chains were attached to as well - maybe the side was very far away...

[Parson]

Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton

Somebody has the defend the letter "w," and I guess it falls to me. So versatile is this mighty letter, it can serve either as a consonant or a vowel. In "dawndragon" it is undoubtedly a vowel, even if it has been cruelly severed from the other half of the diphthong.

dwndrgn, confusion seems to be the universal lot of those who read the early chapters.

a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes y --- plus w with a diphthong! Can you support this? I was of the opinion that it was just the fact that we have to create the vowels in order to speak. Hebrew was originally printed without vowels and they were supplied by the speakers out of sheer need.

[Parson]

Originally Posted by BookStop

I wasn't 100% on the city's whereabouts either, but I kind of imagined it was chained over the top of an abyss, with the chains reaching toward the outer part of the top of the wall. (almost like a funnel) Of course, I would also think folks on the outskirts would be able to see what the chains were attached to as well - maybe the side was very far away...

Almost the way I imagined it. I thought of someone obviously lightyears ahead of the present occupants technically, stinging the chains so they formed a kind of spiders web that hung. As time went on they were added to and we even read about parts being reinforced and fixed until by the time of the story it was not completely clear to everyone which were key chains (oh!terrible pun!) and which were convenient chains.

[Teresa Edgerton]

"W" can be a vowel with or without a diphthong. That's how they taught it in school in my day. "A, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w." They may have down-graded Pluto from a planet, and the serial comma may be nearly extinct, but if "w" has ceased to be a part-time vowel nobody ever notified me.

(If you can't hear the difference between the way the "w" is pronounced in "dawn" -- where it's a vowel -- and "why" -- where it's a consonant -- feel how your mouth forms the different sounds.)

As for the matter of the chains, I pictured it as being suspended from the top of the cliffs and hanging down into the abyss. But I think the foundation chains may be at a fairly shallow angle, and the city isn't very far down.

I also think there are chains attaching different parts of the city, and almost certainly smaller chains between the city and the cliffs, put in later as the whole thing became heavier with new parts added on. I see it as an immense tangled network of chains old and new, and very little of it (if any at all) planned out carefully after the city was first built. It's like they're always patching up shoddy workmanship, instead of ever tearing down sections and rebuilding them properly. (That's a good point Parson made about the original builders being immeasurably more sophisticated in terms of their technology.)

In the slums, people can't afford to secure things with more and more chains, so they use ropes instead. It's sort of the equivalent of living in tents or cardboard shacks because you can't afford proper building materials.

[Parson]

Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton

"W" can be a vowel with or without a diphthong. That's how they taught it in school in my day. "A, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w." They may have down-graded Pluto from a planet, and the serial comma may be nearly extinct, but if "w" has ceased to be a part-time vowel nobody ever notified me.

Okay, I may have gone to an inferior Iowa school. A statement which is about as close to an oxymoron as there can be, back in the 1950 and 60's but I never, ever heard about w as a vowel. I was thinking that you might have gone to school where they speak "English" instead of "American" but your public profile puts you in California which makes that unlikely.

As to Pluto, I never really believed it was a "regular" planet after I saw how differently it orbited the sun than the other planets. But it does give a lot of Science Fiction a pretty obvious marker. I remember a book (Heilein's "A Step in Time"?) where the hero is suddenly transported to the distant future and he tries to figure out if he is on earth or not. When he asks how many planets the answer is 10. So he's not quite sure where he is because as he says "They might have found another one." How would that have worked if the answer would have been 8?

As for the serial comma, I still use it. I believe it makes the meaning of the written word clearer.

[BookStop]

I say we should stand and fight for the serial comma! And as for 'w' being a semivowel, yeh, I see it. In the word 'wow' in acts as a vowel - wau.

[dwndrgn]

Ok, finally finished the book. I must say I'm a bit disappointed in the ending. I had finally gotten over not being able to 'picture' Deepgate and all of it's chains and then the final scenes need that image to be able to assimilate. How does a chain holding up the city be below it, at ground level moving up? The Tooth is on the ground when it cuts one of the foundation chains which logically says that it moves up to the city. Then, the broken chain sweeps through the city? And a city being held up by heavy chains has ground access where all the survivors of the city can walk out into the desert? It just seems a bit strange though that could be my incompetant thinker.

I suppose the actual plot itself was interesting enough, a god worshipped for centuries is discovered as a fraud, but only by those close to him and then he is destroyed. What about the masses of survivors? How are they to know what has happened. Will they ever? Will they just believe that their 'god' has abandoned them? Will they ever have faith in anything again? Or will they just move their faith onto the next 'godlike' image they come accross? I must say that though I was a tad disappointed, I'm still interested in finding out what may happen next. Are all the gods to be revealed as unworthy?

Oh and Theresa, the reason the League of Ropes confused me was because it seemed that it was a portion of the city suspended over another portion of the city, else they wouldn't have needed the rope bridges. Why would they need to build their hovels above the city?

What about Blackthrone? Was it just a convenient device - a mountain of rock from the sky with an ore that would create chains strong enough to contain an entire city? Or is it a clue to the previous civilisation that created the Tooth? The book gave me more questions than answers. A bit bloodier than I would have liked but it was interesting enough.

[dwndrgn]

On the other hand, I think this was a calculated decision on the part of the author. I think he wanted us to see how sheltered and isolated Dill was. How his mental and emotional development had been stunted by the unnatural conditions in which he lived. And maybe something about his essential purity that he wasn't twisted by it as well. But having made that decision, perhaps he did lay on the childlike innocence a little too heavily. It was a bit confusing in the early part of the book.

Yes, he did seem more childlike but I tend to believe it was done deliberately for two reasons. First he was completely sheltered, lived inside the temple for most of his life alone and isolated and with only elderly or annoying priests to talk to. Perhaps I agree that it was a bit overdone, especially since near the end, when he has been revived that he basically has no personality at all. Does he even say anything over two or three words? That could be due to the strangeness of the angelwine. I suppose we may see about that in later books.

Deepgate was a fascinating character and I do hope it gets revived and becomes a bit less dead - much like Dill after the angelwine.

Oops, must go, doggy has to pee! More later.

[jenna]

Mmmmm I was a bit confused about the chains at first, so I just let my brain come up with something that made semi-sense and then let it go! I imagined it hanging with the right side being chained across to the left cliff and the left side to the right cliff, and then supporting chains below the city. It doesn't really work from an engineering point of view, but I think if I had spent too much time thinking about it I never would have finished the book!

[dwndrgn]

Unfortunately I was unable to come up with a logical setup for the city. If I had been told that it was just magically suspended, I wouldn't have had an issue. But, it was held up and supported by chains so those chains should have a logical placement. And, they probably do but the author didn't give me enough information to get it. Now, it didn't make me hate the book or anything, it was just kind of like an itch I couldn't scratch which probably dimmed my enjoyment of the story itself.