"FEIST, Raymond E - The RiftWar Saga - 1 - Magican" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feist Raymond E)

own. I hesitate to admit this publicly, but the truth is that part of the
success of the book was my ignorance of what makes a commercially
successful novel. My willingness to plunge blindly forward into a tale
spanning two dissimilar worlds, covering twelve years in the lives of
several major and dozens of minor characters, breaking numerous rules
of plotting along the way, seemed to find kindred souls among readers
the world over. After a decade in print, my best judgment is that the
appeal of the book is based upon its being what was known once as a
"ripping yarn." I had little ambition beyond spinning a good story, one
that satisfied my sense of wonder, adventure, and whimsy. It
turned out that several million readers-many of whom read translations in languages
I can't even begin to comprehend-found it one that satisfied
their tastes for such a yarn as well.
But insofar as it was a first effort, some pressures of the marketplace
did manifest themselves during the creation of the final book. Magician
is by anyone's measure a large book. When the penultimate manuscript
version sat upon my editor's desk, I was' informed that some fifty thousand
words would have to be cut. And cut I did. Mostly line by line, but
a few scenes were either truncated or excised.
While I could live out my life with the original manuscript as published
being the only edition ever read, I have always felt that some of
the material cut added a certain resonance, a counterpoint if you will,
to key elements of the tale. The relationships between characters, the
additional details of an alien world, the minor moments of
reflection and mirth that act to balance the more frenetic activity of
conflict and adventure, all these things were "close but not quite what I
had in mind."
In any event, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the original publication
of Magician, I have been permitted to return to this work, to
reconstruct and change, to add and cut as I see fit, to bringforth what is
known in publishing as the "Author's Preferred Edition" of the work.
So, with the old admonition, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it,"ringing in
my ears, I return to the first work I undertook, back when I had no
pretensions of craft, no stature as a bestsdling author, and basically no
idea of what I was doing. My desire is to restore some of those excised
bits, some of the minor detail that I felt added to the heft of the
narrative, as well as the weight of the book. Other material was more
directly related to the books that follow, setting some of the background
for the mythic underpinning of the Riftwar. The slightly lengthy discussion
of lore between Tully and Kulgan in Chapter Three, as well as some
of the things revealed to Pug on the Tower of Testing were clearly in this
area. My editor wasn't sold on the idea of a sequel, then, so some of this
was cut. Returning it may be self-indulgent, but as this was material I
felt belonged in the original book, it has been restored.
To those readers who have already discovered Magician, who wonder if
it's in their interests to purchase this edition, I would like to reassure
them that nothing profound has been changed. No characters previously
dead are now alive, no battles lost are now won, and two boys still
find the same destiny. I ask you to feel no compulsion to read this new
volume, for your memory of the original work is as valid, perhaps more