Recent reads
Legend, by David Gemmell. Better than average military fantasy. No orcs here. No goblins, no dragons, no elves with pointy ears (at least none that I noticed). Just a collection of men and women who have come to the fortress of Dros Delnoch to make a hopeless last stand, defending their homeland against an unstoppable invading tribal horde. Some, like Druss the Axe, are aging legends. Some are career soldiers, some are outlaws or aristocrats or rootless wanderers.
According to rumor, the author began this, his first published novel, after finding out that he had cancer, and had in mind a symbolic link between the fortress and his own body. If he survived a certain length of time, the fortress would stand. If not, the fortress would fall. David Gemmell died earlier this year, many long years after first being diagnosed.
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Pablo @ 1:44PM | 2006-11-10| permalink
I never liked the fight motif with respect to cancer. (And not just because I'm a pacifist.)
Unlike a virus, cancer is not a foreign invader. It is a part of your body the way any other cell is. So if you declare war on cancer, you are declaring war against your own body.
A better motif would be the Inquisition or Macarthyism since you're trying to find and contain insiders who secretly live among you but shouldn't.
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Felix @ 3:50PM | 2006-11-11| permalink
Your objections make sense, logically, and perhaps that particular metaphor would be better applicable to an infectious disease.
It's sort of a moot point, so far as the reader is concerned, since the actual text of Legend is simply a military fantasy tale without any obvious overarching metephors. I only knew about the author's metaphorical view of the story because someone mentioned it on a fiction-discussion listserv.
Entertainingly, your suggestions of a parallel to the Inquisition or McCarthyism would tend to case a favorable light on those two institutions.
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