"Imagination" VERSUS "Reality"

[unwrittensunset.livejournal.com]

MWT's books do wonders on the imagination. By leaving some details out for the reader to fill in, a vast world can be constructed without overloading the reader with too much information. Unfortunately, sometimes readers can end up imagining things that end up being quite different from what they actually end up being, especially when more details emerge as the books go along. The reader must then readjust their imagination in accordance...



The Hamaithes's Gift

To be fair, the cover of my book looked like this:


as opposed to this:


So when I imagined the Gift, I thought it would look more like this:


Technically, it's not really wrong -it is a riverbed pebble with hard to see engravings and subtle glimmers of a precious stone. But I was still quite shocked when I first saw the book cover for The Thief.

Costis
For some reason, "Costis" hit me as being a very cute and young name. So I imagined him being rather young, you know, 16 or something. Since Squad Leader didn't really say much to me (I thought it might have been some kind of cadet thing, in retrospect I don't know why... That first scene in QoA really reminded me of a high school student writing a reflection paper during detention...) and I reasoned that anyone who hits their own King can't be very mature, I was quite surprised to read later on that Costis was in fact older than Gen!! (though the books are not explicit about Gen's age, I suspect that he must be in his 20s in KoA, and around 16 in TT)

Eddisian clothes
Gen has colourful taste in clothes (After the Magus tears apart Gen's cheerful yellow shirt in TT). I thought that meant that this passion for colour was shared by all Eddisians. Plus, aren't the finest cloth made in Eddis? Surely this must mean that they can have any colour cloth made... So I was quite surprised to learn that Eddisians (in a conversation between Attolia and Gen from KoA) often wore black boots and black clothes! Alas, what inspired Gen's penchant for canary yellow..?

Nahuseresh
I got that his beard was oiled, but I somehow completely missed that it was split into two pointy parts until it was mentioned at the end of QoA when Attolia is speaking with Eddis. Huh.

On a site note: I'd really like to read more on Sophos' sisters.



What was your "oh, that wasn't quite what I had imagined" moment? :)

Comments

[qwentoozla]

I think you're right and the second cover is wrong about what Hamiathes's gift looks like! How could Gen have concealed the thing on the cover in his hair? The description sounds much more like a slightly sparklier version of what you imagined.

[unwrittensunset.livejournal.com]

It's what I think sometimes. But then again, perhaps we are mistaken about Gen's hair? (Afro-Gen style!)

But then again, I was thinking that perhaps the Gift pictured in the cover is the sparklier version used in the ceremony of The Great Rock Giving to Eddis. And that they somehow inserted the precious stone into a hard rock encasing...

[an-english-girl.livejournal.com]

Also agreed that the full palm size thing on the cover could not be hidden in someone's hair, nor frankly could the magus have been wearing that thing round his neck and not noticed the lost weight when Gen cut the strap.
I think Disney screwed the ages down to something (stupidly) much younger, but yes, I fully agree with /yours/.
As regards fabric and colour, I presume the Attolians and Sounisians dyed the cloth in order to do something to it to be grander than the goatfeet who made it. Real world textiles certainly follow this pattern: famous dye centres are rarely the places the fabric/fibres come from.
I always struggle to get the geography straight, and there's always the major face palm MWT wrote into it ... Gen, you viper!

[unwrittensunset.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I didn't know that about textile dyeing! That is quite enlightening, thank you!

And right, I would imagine that, with a bigger rock, the magus would have noticed something about Gift if it were heavy. I always wondered about this part though: if Gen stole the Gift away from the magus, then how can the healing/immortality proprieties of the Gift apply to him and "save" his life when the Attolian soldier (whoops spoiler ahead)kills him later in the fight at the base of the secret pass?

Hmmmm...

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

I've wondered that, too. I kind of thought it was because the gods gave it to him specifically in the temple under the Aracthus, and they wanted him to live so he could get it back to Eddis, so they stretched the rules a bit - it counted as a gift because it was given the first time, even though it changed hands once or twice in between.

Edit: I went back and looked at our discussion from the readalong when the last book came out, because I remember it came up then too, and hazelwillow had a great point:

I think what matters is that you stole it from the gods, because that really means the gods have let you steal it from them. ... Gen was someone the gods trusted to take the gift, and I don't think that trust would go away just because the Magus had it for a short time. So its power worked on him, and on other people he decided to give it to voluntarily. If someone had stolen it from Gen, it wouldn't have worked on them. ...

I had a hard time with this question for a while... (trying to find loopholes in this seemingly black and white magical rule...) until I started thinking about the whole system of the Gift being used to determine succession in Eddis, and in that context it suddenly made sense to me. I stopped seeing it as this magical rule, and started seeing it as part of this system that ensures peaceful transitions of rule in Eddis.

http://sounis.livejournal.com/317741.html?thread=7843373#t7843373

[unwrittensunset.livejournal.com]

Ooh interesting! While I was reading your post, a different thought occured to me altogether : by the end of book 4, isn't Gen, as orchestrated by the gods, the ruler of both Sounis and Eddis? So, in Gen's case, he perhaps didn't gain the throne of Eddis by theft of the Gift but was given (the Gift and by extension) succession to the throne directly from the Gods? So eversince he came into possession of the Gift, he was the rightful ruler of Eddis? Which is why Eddis is Eddis and not Eddia because it's actually ruled by a man(Gen)?

The plot thickens....

And I wonder what he will call himself now since Attolis seems... Un-encompasing for three countries. Maybe the Three United Countries Under Gen? Haha!

[barbedxcap.livejournal.com]

I read the book for the first time in the second cover, so that stone influenced my image of Hamiathes' Gift, though when I reread The Thief recently I, like you, realized the description didn't correspond with that illustration (though I love that cover!). I ended up modifying my mental image to sort of a hybrid of the stone you posted and the stone on the cover, a small pebble with a saphire at the center and some faint markings at the edges.

I'm constantly readjusting my mental images of both Eddis and the Magus. For the magus, I initially defaulted to a pale man with a Claude Frollo like look, but I kept having to modify him to being tan skinned like he's described. I guess the fact that he's high ranking and bookish made me default to pale skin, but since he travels it wouldn't make much sense. I imagine Gen being darker skinned though.

As for Eddis, I initially imagined her being about Attolia's height, but then in QoA she's described in Attolia's perspective as being short and broad shouldered, so I had to readjust that. Sophos, Pol, and Ambiades didn't have much of a physical description in the first book, so I just made up what I wanted. Attolia and her Mede ambassador were sufficiently described that I never readjusted my images of them. And Gen's dad ended up being described in the middle of QoA exactly how I already imagined him looking.

One mental picture I pretty much did my own thing with was the layout for Sounis, Attolia, and Eddis. I always make my mental map of them have Sounis to the west, Eddis in the middle, and Attolia to east of Eddis, but I'm pretty sure it's an inaccurate oversimplification. I've done the same thing in other fantasy books too, even if there are maps at the beginning. I guess it's stubborn/lazy reading, but the maps just don't mean anything to me until I actually read the book, and when I'm reading the book I'm too into it to stop and refer to the map, so I just guesstimate.

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this counts, but I had to adjust to the idea of baby Sophos growing up and courting Eddis and being manly in general. *sigh* They grow up so fast.

[unwrittensunset.livejournal.com]

He was so young indeed!! Back then, he was young enough to be tied to a stack of encyclopedias and thrown in the river... O___o

And the next thing you know, he'll be old enough to be having children..! (Please let there be a side story in the future with all the little children squished together in a tussle of some sort)

I wonder if Sophos has facial hair though, that still intrigues me...

Pronounciation

[ejmam.livejournal.com]

I pronounce the words like I would if they were Greek. Modern Greek, in particular, since that's what I know best.

So Gen's full name starts with an "Ev" sound, because the "u" after an "a" or "e" does that. But I don't think that's how Turner meant it. But I've read the books aloud a full times, and I can't stop.

Re: Pronounciation

[meadowphoenix]

That's really interesting that in modern Greek "eu" is pronounced "ev". In Ancient Greek, it's a diphthong and the "e" is essentially silent.

Re: Pronounciation

[ejmam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there a few changes from Ancient. Like "b"(beta) is more of a "v" sound, and they don't do the rough breathing thing anymore so a lot of the "h" sounds are gone. Some vowels are simplified -- I'm pretty sure I do Eddis wrong as well.

Thank you in modern Greek sounds like "efhareesto" (roughly) and it's from the same root as Eucharist if you want to see the ev thing in action. :-)

Re: Pronounciation

[meadowphoenix]

That's incredibly interesting. Thanks for sharing that!

Re: Pronounciation

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

This is so cool!

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

My biggest "oh" moment was about Gen's age. When I read TT I pictured him as a bratty 13-year-old. He said he was "small" and since the book was essentially a middle grade one, I figured he was pretty young. Then, QoA takes place just a year or two later and he's getting married. I guess with all the clues in the different books and the Disney short story, we decided he was about 18 in QoA.

I pictured Hamiathes's gift more like your version. I like the Vince Natale Donut cover but, man, would that be hard to hide in your hair.

And I've always pictured the Magus as a studious tall drink of water. :-) . A youngish Alan Rickman (http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/19400000/alan-rickman-alan-rickman-19405266-294-412.jpg)

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Oh! And Megan was talking to some kids recently about the writing process and she said when she revises she goes back and takes out about 25% of what's she's written. Anything she thinks can be figured out by the readers themselves, she gets rid of. It's cool that we are able to do our own visualizing and have to work to figure out all the clues we're given.

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

I'm always fascinated to hear about her writing and revising process!