"Books - David Eddings - Rivan Codex, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

seven thousand years, you'd better have a chronology and pay close
attention to it, or you're going to get lost somewhere in the 39th
century. The histories of the Alorn Kingdoms are fairly central to the
story~ but it was the history of the Tolnedran Empire that filled in all
the cracks. You'll probably notice how tedious the Tolnedran History
is. If you think reading it was tedious, try writing it. It was absolutely
essential, however, since much of the background material grew out
Of it.
Most of the similarities between the people of this world and our
imaginary one should be fairly obvious. The Sendars correspond to
rural Englishmen, the Arends to Norman French, the Tolnedrans to
Romans, the Chereks to Vikings, the Algars to Cossacks, the Ulgos to
Jews, and the Angaraks to Hunnish-Mongolian-Muslim-Visigoths
out to convert the world by the sword. I didn't really have
correspondences in mind for the Drasnians, Rivans, Marags, or Nyissans.
They're story elements and don't need to derive from this world.
By the time we got to the histories of the Angarak Kingdoms, we
were ready to dig into the story itself, so the Angaraks got fairly
short shrift. I wanted to get on with it.
There were footnotes in the original of these studies, but they
were included (with identifying single-spacing) in the body of the text.
These are the mistaken perceptions of the scholars at the University of
Tol Honeth. The footnotes I'm adding now are in their proper location
(at the foot of the page, naturally). These later notes usually point out
inconsistencies. Some of this material just didn't work when we got into
the actual narrative, and I'm not one to mess up a good story just for the
sake of sticking to an out-dated gameplan.

The addition of The Battle of Vo Mimbre was a sort of afterthought. I
knew that epic fantasy derived from medieval romance, so just to
reenforce that point of origin, I wrote one. It has most of the elements of a
good, rousing medieval romance - and all of its flaws. I'm still fairly
sure that it would have made Eleanor of Aquitaine light up like a
Christmas tree.

I wanted to use it in its original form as the Prologue for Queen of
Sorcery, but Lester del Rey said, 'NO!.' A twenty-seven page prologue
didn't thrill him. That's when I learned one of the rules. A prologue does
not exceed eight pages. Lester finally settled the argument by
announcing that if I wrote an overly long prologue, he'd cut it down with
a dull axe.

Oh, there was another argument a bit earlier. Lester didn't like
'Aloria'. He wanted to call it 'Alornia'!!! I almost exploded, but my wife
calmly took the telephone away from me and sweetly said, 'Lester,
dear, "Alornia" sounds sort of like a cookie to me.' (Alon-da Doone?)
Lester thought about that for a moment. 'It does, sort of, doesn't it? OK,
Aloria it is then.' Our side won that one big-time.

I'm not passing along these gossipy little tales for the fun of it, people.