Also, given that we were given snippets of her stories, I wanted them to be in a different style, or to contribute more to the story overall. Maybe some people liked the extrapolations of the story of the bell; I wanted more of the actual story, or more meta-commentary within the stories, or something.
Yes. In Song for the Basilisk, the opera being written by Hexel Barr necessarily comments on the action of the novel, since it is inspired by the same (not quite as safely) historical (as everyone thinks) events that form the story, and indeed as the opera evolves it comes uncomfortably close to the truth that the various characters have not yet put together—to its composer's dismay, it looks like an act of politics. Gwyneth's story was just sort of there. I would have preferred to see half a dozen different stories, each an entirely different explanation, or something that could be affected by the plot around it. And given the setting, her language should have read nothing like McKillip's.
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Yes. In Song for the Basilisk, the opera being written by Hexel Barr necessarily comments on the action of the novel, since it is inspired by the same (not quite as safely) historical (as everyone thinks) events that form the story, and indeed as the opera evolves it comes uncomfortably close to the truth that the various characters have not yet put together—to its composer's dismay, it looks like an act of politics. Gwyneth's story was just sort of there. I would have preferred to see half a dozen different stories, each an entirely different explanation, or something that could be affected by the plot around it. And given the setting, her language should have read nothing like McKillip's.