The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog: Part 1 of 1

I promised. I offered up a handful of things I don't really want. Including My Point. My Point is like the law prohibiting jay-walking: it is a good idea but who really abides by it? Apparently there's a municipality nearby that is concerned about drunken people running across the highway. There are bridges, but I mean really, don't we all think we are invincible as squint at our shoes and concentrate on slowing the world around us down? We can't even sound out jay-walking then.

Granted I am still squinting at my shoes willing them to move while the rest of y'll impersonate Usain Bolt. Which still means you only have a one in four chance of making it.

However, now I am living up my to promise, which means I get to keep him. My Point. And all the rest of the things I don't really want. You can keep them if you want? I will hold on to the permanent marker though. When I am next incapacitated, maybe I can ink the world down. You gave that up too easily. What's your game? Or do you not care? Oh, you already have one? Both a point and a marker? A guinea pig?

My promise was to keep you updated about my reading of The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. (It's not exactly Reuter's story of the day, but I have promised you many other things, and none of them were any more enthralling.) I finished the book this morning. Approximately morning. Midday.

It is shorter than Mara and Dann, despite the lengthy title (try saying it as you're drawing wings on your shoes; question: if you are flying in the direction that the world is spinning, will it appear to stay still?) and its subject. The novel is concerned with history and the discipline of History. Rather, the protagonist is concerned - agitated - and incapacitated by the idea that records of the past have been lost.

In the prequel, Mara was the one concerned with the past. Now Dann has left her at 'the Farm' with her husband and is following the fractal perimetre of the coast as if he is looking for something he hasn't left behind. Maybe the search itself, the agitation, attaches to this concern of his sister's; maybe it is the proximity to the ice mountains that are 'Yerrup'.

I understand the anxiety: of not being able to hold... well, the world in my head. Of not recording every moment, as if the importance of the moment is in its living longer. Of not understanding why an ancestor has made something or done something. Of needing to understand because knowledge is an anchor - a resurrection of truth. Unlike Dann, I recognise that you can't create if you concern yourself with keeping the past alive. If you can't create, you weaken. If you can, you go to war over what is left.

Luckily we have Google so we can just sit back and let them run things. This reminds me of a book I once read, of a dystopia created by well-meaning politicians. Granted, I trust techies more than politicians.

Not to be flip, but being flip, Dann steals something else from his sister: crying at the drop of a hat. Or the shedding of dog hair. At first, these fits seem like a strength, of being able to recognise his traumas. But, as one character puts it, every refugee in the streams of refugees has suffered, but they route when given common cause and safety. Dann... needs a bib. Ok, that was flip. I am reluctant to replace this Dann with the Dann of the first book, however selfish and arrogant.

I can't decide whether the two books are similar or different. Is anything substantially new introduced? Does the second develop or resolve the themes of the first? Are the landscapes indicators of change or is the plot consistent despite their variations? Are the characters consistent or are the differences part of something else - the development of the themes, plots, pacing - or am I reading too much into what is just an happenstance of writing a sequel?

Mara and Dann is a few hundred pages short of an epic, but that's it. The siblings travel Ifrika, becoming exiles, refugees, soldiers, servants and royalty. Mara learns and analyses, inculcating her brother in her theories. Dann's knowledge (which he shares with Mara, more usefully) is that of survival. No matter how despondent the characters are, the reader always has the sense that knowledge is around the corner. Because this is an epic and this is how epics end. If seen on a movie screen.

 The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog feels like an exposition of just one scene from the prequel, even though it takes place mainly in two settings and only one of the main characters is the same. It is Mara and Dann concentrated but also expanded. Like orange juice, if the concentrated stuff were half as good. Dann still doesn't have the same power of analysis as his sister and sometimes seems to give up his knowledge of survival, but he has a new power over people.

And there is part of the answer to our conundrum. (Remember the one about history and recording the present while living it. Remember?) ('Part of' because first prize would be actually having all the records that were destroyed, but that's a bit like drawing wings on your shoes and expecting the world to stop.)

Why are you still staring at me like that? I'm not SparkNotes; that's as far as I walk with you. Or run. That highway there? Ok, you first. I need to squint at my shoes.