There’s a saying some old dude said once somewhere, that every story has already been told, and we are just retelling old stories in new clothing. I have no idea if that’s true. Maybe. Maybe there’s a limit to the number of stories in the human mind.
I’ve been thinking on this a lot during my current read, which is Traitor’s Blade by Sebastien de Castell–essentially a quippy rehash of Dumas’s Three Musketeers in a fantasy realm. Is it a serious, ground-breaking literary read? No, not really. But it does not to pretend to be anything other than what it is, which I like–a fun adventure read that pays tribute to something the author obviously loves. I think there is certainly room for books like this alongside the cinderblock-sized tomes of Serious Literature like War and Peace. (And honestly, if you watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon knowing it is basically 90 minutes of Ang Lee paying fan service to the Shaw Brothers’ classic kung fu films of the 20th century, it’s way better.)
What do you think, readers?
