I’m currently reading The Duke and I and the author is constantly using the word “acerbic”. I had never heard of the word before now and had to google the definition. The word has shown up so much that I’m tempted to go through the book and count its appearances lol.
Have you noticed any authors having favorite words that they use page after page?
China Meiville has quite a few like puissance, jackknife, or pinion
Also Kim Stanley Robinson sure loves his escarpments
I almost DNFed The Scar because “puissant” was being dropped so often that it was breaking my immersion. I did end up finishing it, and it’s easily the best novel of the trilogy, but Mieville’s tendency to repeatedly abuse very specific archaic words rather than using them in moderation really diminishes their effect in the long run.
I’ve been listening to the China Meiville audiobooks and I can’t stop hearing “wan”, things that are large described as “fat”, and “chitin” everywhere, but I suppose there are a lot of insectoid characters.
It seems like “puissance” is supposed to be a sort of in-world technical term for magic power, but I’m not sure that’s ever really spelled out.