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Travel Light 6 - Easter Egg references
There are a number of Easter Eggs in the book pointing out to other of Naomi Mitchison's works - for example the Corn Kings of Marob feature in her novel The Corn King and the Spring Queen, written some twenty years earlier and which is highly regarded as "a lost classic" of historical fiction (I've never read it, as it's pushing 700 pages and I'm a bit daunted by that). The two books are otherwise largely unrelated but she has linked them by a kind of mythological reference. Do you like this as an authorial ploy or do you prefer books to stand alone?
Comments
I do like this as a general rule. I wouldn’t say this book was full of Easter eggs, though, compared to one of L Sprague de Camp’s historicals like The Bronze God of Rhodes, which are chock full of them.
I don't mind hidden Easter Eggs at all. In this case I wouldn't have caught any related to other works of the authors, but perhaps a reader who was better acquainted would have. For a book geared for a younger audience (and this was mentioned earlier) it did seem to contain references to things that "today's" younger readers may not be as familiar with - though the Percy Jackson books feel like they do this today as well.
Beowulf, Norse mythology, and Byzantium/Roman culture with some critiques of religions, certainly seem lesser represented in today's younger reader fiction!