juushika

"Beautiful, rich shape" is exactly right. It's an obscure thing to reference, but a number of years ago rushthatspeaks made this post about rereading George R.R. Martin and about seeing the shape of stories:

But M. John Harrison has also taught me something, namely that while I love it beyond reason when people write things aimed at a primarily structural reader such as myself, it's just as possible to lose your audience of other kinds of readers when you're doing that as it is if you're writing primarily for, say, kinesthetics. I know this because when I talk about M. John Harrison, and when I read essays that other critics write about his stuff, those critics, and the people I talk with on panels, and the friends I talk to about books over lunch (except a couple who are also structural readers), well, we are pretty much literally not talking about the same books. And when I say we aren't talking about the same books, I mean that the plots are not the same. Characters do not act for the same reasons. Different stuff mattered. We both read the same text, but. It's that big a gap. I feel a little weird about which side of that gap I'm on, too, because I'm the lucky one: I have never read an M. John Harrison novel which did not have an ecstatically happy ending. Granted I haven't read all of them. But, for me, he is one of the great masters of the eucatastrophe, and when I say that to people, they say well what about xyz event which happened which was really bleak, and I'll say yes, that happened, certainly, but it doesn't matter because the weight of the book comes down on this other thing over here which invalidates that because of the thread leading back to... and by this time I am gesturing with my hands in midair trying to show the shape of an imaginary glass object which represents my visualization of the book, and saying helplessly that I know it has to be intentional on his part or he wouldn't have used the metaphor about waves and wings on p. 217.

Which isn't the type of reader I am, really; I tend to see that sort of shaping in a structural, technical, even tropey way. But it pops into my head all the time as a way of conceptualizing a work, and as a reminder that the structural and technical elements create something. That isn't quite what's going on here with the Elemental Logic series but it also sort of is: the shape of the books & series entire is larger and more meaningful than the technical elements which sometimes stumble and which I generally find easier to pinpoint.

Anyway, it was just an overlap of word choice that resonated with me! I saw recurring recommendations for this series in the specific circle of readers I follow, but it was largely yours that spurned me to actually pick up the thing, so thank you for that.