Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Our hero (?): Dilvish

The introduction of Dilvish in The Changing Land is pretty incredible. He leaves an impression and Zelazny manages to maintain the air of mystery about him despite his origins being spoiled on the back of the book.

We readers might know that he's escaped from Hell, but exactly how isn't just left unanswered, based on what information we're given about Dilvish, it's also left sounding a little ridiculous.

Though Dilvish appears to be completely comfortable being out of place.

One of the elements of my first impression of Dilvish is that he's barely even aware that he's escaped from Hell. Dilvish's dedication to hunting down the sorcerer Jelerak seems so complete that nothing else matters - aside from remaining inconspicuous.

For all of his powers, there's definitely some element of self-consciousness that comes across when Meliash points out that his counter-greeting is out of date, as well as his referring to "the Society" as the more sexist "the Brotherhood."

Thus, Dilvish hardly seems the marauding badass type. Though there's a ton of potential for that to change.

No comments:

Post a Comment