The Pastel City

The first book in the Viriconium series In the distant future, a medieval system rises from the ruins of a technology that destroyed itself Ard knights ride their horses across dunes of rust, battling for the honor of the Queen But the knights find to menace them than mere swords and lances A brave quest leads them face to face with the awesome power of a complex, lethal technology that has been erased from the face of the Earth but lives on, underground. Free Download eBook The Pastel City author M. John Harrison – kino-fada.fr M John Harrison, one of the youngest of the young Turks of the New Wave science fiction fantasy movement, wrote The Pastel City 1971 as an anti fantasy, a sword and sorcery epic that would frustrate the expectations and disturb the complacency of devotees of the watered down Tolkien and third rate Howard and Leiber imitators that flooded the fiction market of the time Now,than forty years later, it is clear that the New Wave has accomplished its task so well that The Pastel City seems M John Harrison, one of the youngest of the young Turks of the New Wave science fiction fantasy movement, wrote The Pastel City 1971 as an anti fantasy, a sword and sorcery epic that would frustrate the expectations and disturb the complacency of devotees of the watered down Tolkien and third rate Howard and Leiber imitators that flooded the fiction...Fantasy has always had its moralizers and its mischief makers, those who use the symbolism of magic to create instructive fables, and those who use the strangeness of magic to tap into theremote corners of the soul, and then obscure their transgressions behind the fantastical facade Like Moorcock, Leiber, and Vance, Harrison is playful, he is rebellious.Indeed, in his swift, pulpy approach, Harrison very much resembles those authors, but his voice sets him apart There is a scintillation, Fantasy has always had its moralizers and its mischief makers, those who use the symbolism of magic to create instructive fables, and those who use the strangeness of magic to tap into theremote corners of the soul, and then obscure their transgressions behind the fantastical facade Like Moorcock, Leiber, and Vance, Harrison is playful, he is rebellious.Indeed, in his swift, pulpy approach, Harrison very much resembles those authors, but his voice sets him apart There is a scintillation, a sophistication, a turn of phrase which shows a practiced hand, and unlike many fantasy authors, Harrison s voice is very consistent He is aware of what he is doing, the e...M John Harrison s The Pastel City is a title I picked up from, I believe, James Cawthorne s Fantasy The 100 Best Books It s a fine read, and it had me thinking around the mid way point that the story was becoming an Anti Rings story, but that s probably not accurate The Pastel City does have many of the standard features you can find in a great number of fantasy novels a brooding poet warrior alone in his castle, a young and beautiful queen under siege, a bad and older queen, a cranky dwa M John Harrison s The Pastel City is a title I picked up from, I believe, James Cawthorne s Fantasy The 100 Best Books It s a fine read, and it had me thinking around the mid way point that the story was becoming an Anti Rings story, but that s probably not accurate The Pastel City does have many of the standard features you can find in a great number of fantasy novels a brooding poet warrior alone in his castle, a young and beautiful queen under siege, a bad and older queen, a cranky dwarf, a traitor, etc What makes this story different is that it casts these familiar figures against a wasted landscape that reminded meof the Forbidden Zone from Beneath the Planet of the Ape s, than thevaried world of Middle Earth In other words, The Pastel C...My god, the language The names tegeus Cromis Canna Moidart I was underlining whole pages copying them out Nominally, this is a book about a poet warrior roaming a depleted planet In truth, I think it s a book about how beautiful and bad ass English can be.3.5 starsORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.Viriconium sits on the ruins of an ancient civilization that nobody remembers The society that was technologically advanced enough to create crystal airships and lethal energy weapons is dead These Afternoon Cultures depleted the world s metal ores, leaving mounds of inscrutable rusted infrastructure with only a few odds and ends that still work The current citizens of Viriconium are baffled by what they ve dug up, but they have no idea what an 3.5 starsORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.Viriconium sits on the ruins of an ancient civilization that nobody remembers The s...This opening salvo in the Viriconium series benefits from Harrison s icily fertile imagination and innate writing chops but the latter was still at a raw, developing stage back in 1971 when The Pastel City was originally published, and there really isn t much to distinguish it from other rote fantasy from the same period A decrepit, grim, and feral atmosphere reminiscent of Moorcock, or even Glen Cook s The Black Company in its earlier incarnations helps, but it cannot fully compensat This opening salvo in the Viriconium series benefits from Harrison s icily fertile imagination and innate writing chops but the latter was still at a raw, developing stage back in 1971 when The Pastel City was originally published, and there really isn t much to distinguish it from other rote fantasy from the same period A decrepit, grim, and feral atmosphere reminiscent of Moorcock, or even Glen Cook s The Black Company in its earlier incarnations hel...The first book in the Viriconium cycle, The Pastel City holds up in that classic seventies.75 mass market paperback on a rain afternoon way I m an unabashed fan of all of the Viriconium stuff, and while this singular book is merely a preamble to the greater things to come, it can be...harrison is a wonderful writer evocative, sweeping, musical, and strange and this is the best book i ve ever read about knights in the far future fighting ancient brain eating robots my only complaint is that it wasn t longer not at the end, but in the middle.Pues ya iba siendo hora de ponerse con Viriconium, lectura que he ido postergando una y otra vez, principalmente porque Harrison es un autor al que prefiero leer traducido, disfruto m s su prosa traducida al castellano que ley ndolo en original Esto es algo curioso que me ocurre tambi n con otros finos estilistas del g nero fant stico, como Angela Carter o Gene Wolfe Aunque no tengo ning n problema para leer en ingl s, algo que llevo haciendo desde hace m s de veinte a os, y creo saber disting Pues ya iba siendo hora de ponerse con Viriconium, lectura que he id...Wow This maybe the most succinct and technically perfect science fiction novel I ve ever read Very pleased with my first M John Harrison reading His writing is the closest to Peake s I ve seen yet, both stylistically and in his availability to write some of the most beautiful prose I ve read.I would like to share my favorite passage that shows Harrison s grasp on setting and beautiful descripti...

• English
• 17 December 2017
M. John Harrison
• Hardcover
• 158 pages
• 0385082630
• M. John Harrison
• The Pastel City