Knight Moves also bothers me by being incomplete Zelazny pastiche. Walter Jon Williams had the habit, his first handful of novels, of writing each one in the manner of a different SF author, a tic I was highly ambivalent about at the time, and applauded when he finally started writing his own books. (Tho' I was amused by how the sequel to the William Gibson novel was a Bruce Sterling novel.) Unlike the others, which were style pastiche, Knight Moves is pastiche of a specific book, This Immortal. Using a specific model invites closer comparison, and while Williams is a good writer, he had neither Zelazny's prose control nor story verve.
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Date: 2024-05-07 03:45 pm (UTC)