The varying perspectives that Kay offers in River of Stars definitely gives the book a very epic feel. As a storyteller, this varied cast lets Kay become a sort of film director, taking the entirety of his fictionalized Asia as his novel's setting rather than limiting it to where a handful of characters live. Parts of the strangeness encountered throughout Kitai and the Steppes even resemble the oddities on R. Scott Bakker's continent of Eärwa.
But, once again, and contrary to Bakker's The Second Apocalypse series, we're just not given much time with the novel's characters. Though it does seem that there is a boundary to the pool of characters from which Kay draws them.
Chapter XIII follows Lu Chao, the emissary from Kitai and the brother of the poet Lu Chen, as he meets with the Altai war-leader, Wan'yen, and it follows only Lu Chao. Since the last chapter concentrated on a short period of time and this concentrate on a single character, a pattern can be seen emerging.
Despite my earlier impressions, there is a limit of sorts set onto every chapter, but the definition of each chapter's limit changes. Perhaps it's this fluidity to the construction of the book's chapters that leaves me with the impression of flowing water.
On its own, such flowing water is just water. But if looked at from further away it becomes a river. In much the same way, each chapter has featured a nearly stand-alone arc told within the limitations of time or number of perspective characters. Yet, taken together, these chapters form a larger plot that the narrator surely knows but never seems to acknowledge. Just yet, anyway.
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