I knew from reading in an interview (I don't remember where, sadly) that this is an intentional reference to Rosemary Sutcliff's Dolphin Ring books, so I was waiting for the scene, but it still made me clap like a seal when it happened.
I read the book for the first time when it came out and recognized the ring at once and Sutcliff was an important writer to me, especially The Eagle of the Ninth and its first couple of sequels, and I wasn't even sure what the intertextuality signified in this context, but it made me so happy.
Possibly Turner wasn't planning a sequel yet (although the way she sets up the wider political situation SO sounds like she was) or hadn't yet decided that the sequel would involve a romance between Gen and Attolia...
I would have to source it, but I remember Turner saying in interviews that she pruned a lot of wider-world, non-essential character material out of the final draft of The Thief because she thought it was going to be a standalone and then haha, whoops. I believe the emotional scaffolding of that relationship may have been one of the casualties.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2022-01-25 08:02 pm (UTC)I read the book for the first time when it came out and recognized the ring at once and Sutcliff was an important writer to me, especially The Eagle of the Ninth and its first couple of sequels, and I wasn't even sure what the intertextuality signified in this context, but it made me so happy.
Possibly Turner wasn't planning a sequel yet (although the way she sets up the wider political situation SO sounds like she was) or hadn't yet decided that the sequel would involve a romance between Gen and Attolia...
I would have to source it, but I remember Turner saying in interviews that she pruned a lot of wider-world, non-essential character material out of the final draft of The Thief because she thought it was going to be a standalone and then haha, whoops. I believe the emotional scaffolding of that relationship may have been one of the casualties.