I am always curious about translation things like that, and I have read several books in English where I wondered how the German translation handled the formal vs. informal address (not enough to look it up though.)
E.g. the Temeraire series has a similar problem, and iirc in later books it turned out that world history wasn't the same at all - with the exception of England and France, pretty much, because that was the original premise. In this book, I don't know what the best way to handle it would have been. As soon as you admit that of course world history would be completely different that opens up an entire new can of questions, you have to be very careful how you handle things like the war etc. I suspect that it didn't bother readers who early on accepted the premise that this takes place in the Napoleonic wars.
I'm not sure about half the length but I feel like you could definitely have cut a couple hundred pages.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2023-01-25 08:37 pm (UTC)E.g. the Temeraire series has a similar problem, and iirc in later books it turned out that world history wasn't the same at all - with the exception of England and France, pretty much, because that was the original premise.
In this book, I don't know what the best way to handle it would have been. As soon as you admit that of course world history would be completely different that opens up an entire new can of questions, you have to be very careful how you handle things like the war etc. I suspect that it didn't bother readers who early on accepted the premise that this takes place in the Napoleonic wars.
I'm not sure about half the length but I feel like you could definitely have cut a couple hundred pages.