Unusual Similes
One thing is for certain about the use of metaphor in this book. It features a pervasive use of truly unexpected and imaginative similes. A simile typically compares things that are alike in a fundamental way, but the general usage throughout often snubs its nose at convention in favor of the kind of comparison that should be accompanied by a cartoony sound effect:
“Rain was coming down hard like a typewriter on Deeba’s umbrella.”
Fantasy
The effect of this tendency toward the unexpected metaphorical comparison would be eventually become disconcerting in a novel within another genre. Within the fantasy milieu of this novel, the cumulative effect is merely to seem organically integrated:
“As I was saying. At first, it was just a dirty cloud. Nasty but brainless as a stump. But then something happened.”
Umbrellas Again
A description of an umbrella not moving paradoxically provides one of the more memorable metaphorical images in the book. In fact, it may cause some to recall a somewhat similar description of ships hanging in the sky a way similar to how bricks don’t found in a Douglas Adams book:
“It was an umbrella.
For a long time it hung like some odd fruit below the windowsill, while the rain increased, until the watching friends began to tell themselves that they had imagined the motion, that there had been an umbrella hooked on the ledge for hours.”
The Sun
Even the sun is subject to an imaginative metaphorical comparison. A disc like the gleaming star showering earth with golden light is perfect fodder for any number of comparison and it is difficult to come up with one that is rather unique. The author does manage it. Of course, it does require just a little cheat:
“The sun had a hole in it.
It hung over the city, not like a disk, or a coin, or a ball, but like a donut.”
Worshiping the Ceramic God
Even the lowly toilet gets treated to a helping of imagination in this tale. Although the ceramic bowl has been portrayed as a god to be worshipped by those kneeling in prayer many times, this particular metaphor is a bit grander:
“In front of them, rising like a deserted little temple from the undergrowth, below a dangling mass of creepers, was the toilet.”
