Bevis wrote:
"
quote:
Originally posted by Alistair:
You see, it's not really Mazikeen, it's someone *dressed up as* her. Or maybe as a female Phantom of The Opera.
You know, this is one of those things that annoys me completely irrationally. Sometimes i despair that anyone in the world has actually read the book 'Phantom Of The Opera'. Because if they did they'd no the only time the ghost wears a mask is at the masquerade ball. the rest of the book he's just described as having a face like a skull. It's his real face, not a white mask. It looks like a mask but isn't. No hideous scarring from whatever, no Andrew Lloyd Webber tweeness. You never really find out who the ghost is or quite why he's like why he is (although I'm pretty sure it's hinted at) and he's never even called 'the Phantom Of The Opera'. he's just the ghost.
Or, well, he's only called 'the ghost' in the translation I've got. My french is just enough for me to be able to cope when on holiday in France but not to read a book in it.
But Phantom Of The Opera is one of the best books I've read. Sort of like Gormenghast in that it's frequently described as 'gothic fiction' but isn't really. It has certain elements that link it to gothic but it isn't really like that. Way better than Frankenstein or Dracula, and both very scary and very touching.
all that being said at least Terry Pratchett seems to have read it because of the very careful parodying he does of it in 'Maskerade'. Pratchett's book is much funnier if you've read the original."
