The Anubis Gates - Chapter 6 - Yesterday Drunks - Spoiler

[Jonathan]

And so we have the classic 'dead girlfriend' bonding moment with Damnable Richard. (This is a much better 'dead girlfriend' story than the mawkish one from the Fionavar Tapestry.) Why can't anyone be a drunk without needing a sentimental backstory? Damnable Richard is a lot of fun to read, even though he exists for almost no plot purpose whatsoever.

Doyle starts to realise that there are other people from the future around, by their whistling, investigating this is a great mistake of course and will only lead to pain. Don't carry loaded guns folks!

And in the most boring part of the chapter, Tay tries to assassinate his son. How can murder be duller than a couple of drinks in a pub, well we don't have anything invested in either of them.

Oh, and we meet Ashbless! Yay!

[Richard]

When I was in my late twenties, I attended the wedding of a woman who had been quite a great love of mine several years earlier in college. Whilst there I ran into a guy I'd known slightly, who had been her boyfriend some time before me.

At the reception we started talking, then wandered over to the hotel bar, and kept talking for hours. We were buddies for a few years, 'til he got married and moved away.

So, sometimes guys *do* bond in drunken mawkish moments. While I don't think Powers is too high on the sensitive-author scale, he seems to have grasped that many men open up to other much more easily with a bit of, er, social lubricant.

Still, the scene really wasn't too good. It called for an author capable of gently and consistently voicing emotions, doubts and anxieties. Powers isn't that subtle.