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A review by calabrag
Icelander by Dustin Long
3.0
I could have given this book a solid 4/4.5 stars id it weren't for the extensive borrowing from the Amelia Peabody books. I thought this story was very interesting and the structure of the narrative was very clever, but I can't understand the author's purpose in using Elizabeth Peters' characters, structure, and premise. Was he trying to make some statement about the books? Trying to imagine where life might have gone for these characters after the existing installments (if that's the case, it's very distressing since Amelia's analog is dead, Emerson's is senile, and Nefret's turns on the Ramses character and goes back to her oasis civilization)? Or maybe he just loved the characters so much that he wanted to use them (which makes this seem like glorified fan-fiction)? Dustin Long mentions in this interview that he wanted Ymirson's name "to have certain resonances," mentioning Radcliffe Emerson specifically, but also that he's "trying to avoid being derivative even in a self-conscious way." I don't see how you can end up with a product that uses so much of another series and pass it off as just one of myriad influences on your text. I also find it a little suspicious that the jacket description openly compares Icelander to several other authors/works (Agatha Christie, Nabokov, The Crying of Lot 49, The Third Policeman, The Da Vinci Code) but avoids any mention of Elizabeth Peters when the similarities are so blatant.