A Brief Overview

One would imagine that with the several different authors who have written in the Paratime universe there would be a host of different styles of writing and versions of Kalvan, Verkan Vall, and the rest of the cast but the style and feel has remained not only consistent but unique through the various authors who have taken over. John F. Carr in particular has mastered the art of writing in the style of Piper while still maintaining his own voice and adding to the world and the way it is written. This page hopes to move away from a pure explanation of the background of paratime and into a brief examination of how the books function, what makes a paratime story a paratime story*.

*This page focuses more on the Lord Kalvan series given how much more material there is to work with compared to Piper's Paratime short stories.

Shifting Perspectives

One of the most unique and interesting aspects of the novels is their constantly shifiting focus. Rather than place the reader with the protagonist, Kalvan, and let us follow his antics the reader is allowed to spend sometime with him before being moved off to see what Styphon's House is plotting or how Verkan Vall is handling things back on Home Time Line. While Piper did this in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, Carr has made it a quintessential part of the Kalvan series. All of the novels carry this sense of a grand scope and part of the vibrancy of the world of the novels comes from the ability to give the reader a look at the broader picture by pulling them away from Kalvan and letting them see how the other pieces on the board are moving, clueing them into plots Kalvan does not yet know about before eventually pulling all of these pieces back into one another towards the end of the books. While this can make the roster of important characters exhausting at time, it goes a long way to making Otherwhen and Home Time Line feel like living, breathing places where life goes on outside of the main plot.

The Focus

Rather than focusing on descriptions of large-scale violent battles or intricate plots the series has a tendecy to highlight Kalvan's strategic mind and the importance that and a use of technology has on winning battles and securing power. Not that there aren't battles and plots there are plenty of them but they never overtake the stories. Instead, Carr and Piper focus more on their characters and how they react to situations and how they plan to get around the obistucales put in their path. This intense amount of time spent with the characters allows them to avoid ever feeling like cardboard cutouts or stock characters. The vast amount of time we spend in the heads of characters like Kalvan, Phidestros, Verkan, Soton, and Rylla keeps them from ever feeling one-dimensional and the ability to look at their inner struggles and opinions about even mundane things makes them more memorable and worth caring about when they inevitably go to risk their lives in battle.

 

John Carr Collection Homepage