As promised last week, I posted the review to Steven R. Boyett’s Elegy Beach, which I thought was a fitting sequel
Boyett’s voice in Ariel was crisp and honest, and much the same can be found here. The framework of the two novels is similar as both are essentially quest fantasies wherein the heroes must travel to the enemy’s stronghold and bring him down to save the world. One thing about Elegy Beach is that despite a similar voice and structure, Boyett gets experimental with the style and employs a different tone. In the style, he decides many sentences, regardless of whether they are declarative or inquisitive, end in periods. It is off-putting for most of the novel, but it does eventually feel a natural fit for the story. Tonally, Elegy Beach is a more somber story. The interaction in Elegy Beach between Pete and his son Fred are minimalist at best, but that sparseness speaks more volumes than words. Interestingly, Fred learns more about his father’s past through hearsay and being a fly on the proverbial wall than through Pete’s own words.
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