This was a bit of fun inspired by events in a game from a long time
ago involving the writing of some histories. I dug this out while
looking for something else and thought fellow Gloranthans might enjoy
the opinions of some scholars on the so called "Dazzling History of
the House of Light". (Chief Ferris, Sardoz, and Danlo being player
characters in the game).
Foreword:
"Brethren and sisters, we're all part of one great family. Each has a
duty; each has a mission to perform. And when we pass on, it will be
reward enough if we can say to our beloved Stallion King, "I have
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith, the Sun Bells will ring"
The Dazzling History
"'The Dazzling History' is like taking a caravan trip with someone
who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's
unpleasant in a hostile way... I read it in mounting gloom,
realizing I was witnessing something historic, a history that for
decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad history."
"A million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed in a
million years to create anything as cretinous as 'The Dazzling
History.' This version of Chief Ferris's chronicle is so
breathtakingly awful in concept and execution, it wouldn't tax the
smarts of a troglodyte.... In the future, turkey cognoscenti will be
heard to say: "'Danlo,' panlo! You haven't endured pain till you've
read 'The Dazzling History.'"
"'Man is an endangered species,' announces one of the titles at the
beginning of the Elmali lump 'The Dazzling History.' And after about
20 pages of this amateurish writing, extinction doesn't seem like
such a bad idea..... It may be a bit early to make such judgments,
but 'The Dazzling History' may well turn out to be the worst book of
this century... 'The Dazzling History' .... is beyond conventional
criticism. It belongs in the elect pantheon that includes such
delights as 'The Hoarse Horse Whisperer' and 'The Interminable
Pedant':
"I imagine the chronicle on which the history is based, by House of
Light chief Ferris Sunbright, is ludicrous trash ... but I doubt it's
as incoherent, as hysterical or as flat-out gratingly loud as The
Dazzler's scholarship."
Pile-driving slabs of berserk pulp into the library, 'The Dazzling
History ' is less a of a scholarly 'Triumph of the Will' than a
Morocanth Tapestry. As it gets more loudly ludicrous, with
destruction coming in vast waves, you don't think 'piece of cake'
but 'piece of (oops).'"
"Heortling Poetry gets some leeway in the reality department,
but "The Dazzling History" doesn't even make sense on its own terms.
Compounded by a dated prose style, patched-together calligraphy and
ludicrous dialogue, "The Dazzling History" is a wholly miserable
experience...
Chief Ferris gives an embarrassing performance that begs the
question, 'What was he thinking?'"
"Here is a History that will be hailed without controversy as the
worst of its kind ever made. It could be renamed Danlo
Brokenhoof's 'Songs To Make You Dance and Jump' if that title didn't
promise more cheesy fun than the book actually delivers... The
Dazzling History is a bewildering procession of non sequiturs, held
together by the most assaultive chronological errors in the history
of history."
"The summer rubble trekking season has barely begun and already it
has recovered its first 10-ton turkey. The Dazzling History is a
sluggish, soporific dud, the dreariest big-budget Heortling Epic
since that dumb Yelornan High Priestess got a +5 Move Quietly
dictionary in Old Wyrmish."
"Irrippi Ontor is trying to lure scholars interested in "The Dazzling
History" by claiming it contains clues to the "Treasures of the House
of Light", rumours of the First Burial of Ferris worth 100,000
lunars. It ain't enough."
"'The Dazzling History' is Chief Ferris's Corflu, a soggy debacle in
which everyone involves winds up embarrassed."
"[T]the book is a ghastly, unappealing mess that lacks a single
absorbing character, engaging story line or entertaining snippet of
dialogue. Even if you were to classify it as a guilty pleasure, it
would be the kind of sullying guilt that makes people leap from
heights... 'The Dazzling History'
has a plot that is to logic what mouse tails are to bridge-
building... If the thing has the vague contours of sense in its
outline, the details of it explore new, frightening depths of the
preposterous."
"Ferris and Sardoz are certainly in high-camp mode, preposterous to a
degree that makes you wonder if they didn't have a side bet on who
could produce the most absurd melodrama... In the end, the fears
expressed by Yelmalion that "The Dazzling History" would be an Elmali
recruitment book are wildly unfounded. There isn't anything in this
overbudgeted mess to inspire a moment of traditional Sun worshipping
awe, let alone a religious conversion."
"'The Dazzling History' is a deadly pile of ancient junk that
threatens humanity the minute it enters our atmosphere -- and our
libraries. Run!... There's so much to mock in "The Dazzling History,"
it's hard to know where to start."
"The verdict: War is hell. This is worse."