The Steel of Raithskar (Gandalara, book 1) by Randall Garrett & Vicki Ann Heydron

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Steel of Raithskar (Gandalara, book 1) by Randall Garrett & Vicki Ann Heydron

Comments

[chrysostom]

One of the few things I remember (other than the massive reveal in book 7) is that wood was super rare. His father had a precious floor made of little slivers of different woods.

[melita66]

I...like this series but I started it with book 3 or 4, then read the earlier books after finishing book 7. I remember the first books containing a lot of people hating Markasset / not understanding why he's so different. Markasset prior to Richard taking over is not likable.

At the time, I hadn't read any Randall Garrett, or at least not to the point of recognizing/liking his work so the series didn't seem disappointing to me compared to his other work. I think it's also the first time I encountered (big spoiler for last book) so that came as a surprise to me. Or maybe I had come across (big spoiler) first in another series I read a bit later but hadn't realized it was the same thing.

[keith_morrison]

You know, if you're not really going to put down the spoiler, there's no need to make it look like you are.

[(Anonymous)]

No, no, you're just not parsing it correctly. In this case, the terms "big spoiler {for the last book}" in parentheses are not being used as a spoiler warning for material to follow, but as a metasyntactic placeholder for the spoiler material itself, like "REDACTED" or something like that.

"At the end of the movie, we find out that Rosebud is (big spoiler) the sled he used as a kid." <- what you thought the usage was.

"At the end of the movie, we find out that Rosebud is (big spoiler). Although I'm not sure why it was so important as to be his last word." <- actual usage.


It could have been better phrased, but spoiler conventions vary.

[melita66]

^^ this.

Keith, I've just never looked up the markdown/whatever conventions for Dreamwidth to do hidden text or some other way to handle a spoiler. I didn't want to use <> or [] as those sometimes have meaning and can mess up the formatting.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if this works? (using <span style="color:black; background-color:black"> to mask text) Hidden text.

It works in preview, but there was a previous posting where I tried doing some text color change and I think it worked in preview but was stripped out when I actually posted. Maybe because I'm anonymous? Can someone with an account try it?

[bolindbergh]

Super secret.
For trolling purposes, you can use █████ (U+2588 FULL BLOCK) for mock redaction.

[dragoness_e]

I still have the entire series in boxes somewhere. Serviceable sword & sorcery, with the really cool Big Reveal at the end. A certain other series also featured the same venue, geographically speaking. I keep meaning to re-read it sometime. (Which puts it far ahead of Horseclans or Darkover...)

[adrian_turtle]

Sometimes I wish I was organized enough to have a box labeled "serviceable sword & sorcery."

[dragoness_e]

I wish I was that organized, too. The stored books are stored haphazardly in numbered boxes, and somewhere on someone's disk drive is a spreadsheet that tells which books are in which boxes.

I meant the series was "serviceable sword & sorcery".

[jreynolds197]

I would cite Wikipedia as a source for this, but they cite me.

Sounds like an excellent opportunity for some Citogenesis!

[(Anonymous)]

Browsed the first, and found the parallel between the framing device and the health of the author incredibly sad. I kept imagining Heydron trying to conjure Garrett an imagined life somewhere, with her.