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Riddle 3 - The main characters
Did you find the main characters credible? Carruthers undergoes considerable transformation especially in the first half of the book - did this work for you? Was Dollman - an English naval officer now working for the German navy - a suitable antagonist? Did the rather overt stereotyping of national tropes work for you?
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/self-termination-history-and-future-of-societal-collapse
I liked the initial contrast between Carruthers and Davies, the upper-class entitled twit against the entitled adventurer. Carruthers's transformation was a little too large to be believable, but it set up a decent set of actions in the second half of the book.
The notion that Dollman's Englishness was immediately spotted by the other true Englishmen, was both ridiculous and offensively racist. It's something that seriously dates the book.
An interesting part was the the various German characters were pursuing their own agendas and weren't in total harmony. I think more could have been done with that.
I enjoyed all the characters. I found them all very different from each other, but all were real seeming. Yes, it was a product of it's time. Definitely! Yet I would point out back then cultures were far more insular back then. Nations were not exporting their culture as they are now, so there may be more to that point than it looks like presently, Neil.
Davies was the only guy I thought was interesting, but just because he was a weirdo, but also competent at something in some archaic way that I couldn't wrap my head around. I just finished the book and can't remember many of the other characters really other than Carruthers.