Pronoun before determiner necessary? esp. 'that the'

It also, however, introduces a possible POV shift.

“The snow-capped mountains were...” Who is asserting this? It sounds like the narrator, until we find that it was a revelation to Luke. Personally I would stick with “it was a revelation to Luke that...”

 

From Oxford English, A Guide To The Language, 1986, Oxford University Press. To summarise, as I said, in the first example “that” is a conjunction which can be omitted, but in the second it is a relative pronoun functioning as the subject of the verb and is therefore mandatory.

 

I would question the author before making anything of it.
What was revealed that Luke had not known before?
Do mountains really extend themselves? Do they ever contract?
Possibly: "The snow-capped mountains were a revelation to Luke (. or ; t) The postcards he'd seen gave no indication of their true heights." That would save us from the "to" at the end.
I realize this matters less to other people: I'm of the old fuddy-duddy school whose pupils are almost as offended by dangling prepositions as by subjective pronouns used as objects. (maybe not laser-cannon offended, but I would certainly go as far as water-cannoning.)

 

Edit time-limit expired. Crap.
I suppose it wasn't that important, but I had previously failed to mention that I was confused by "were that way". At least put a comma "were that way, for the heights"
Wanted to add that, if the sentence is cast in concrete but for that single that, then it is required: you should re-insert that that.

(I cannot wait for my new spectacles! Keep having to return and edit all my typing errors.)

 

It's the narrator either way. Had it been Luke, he would say "It was a revelation to me". This is an omniscient narrator who knows what Luke is seeing, feeling and thinking, telling us about Luke's reaction to the mountains. He can start the sentence "Luke saw..." or "The mountains seemed to Luke" or "The postcards he's seen" in "It was... to Luke", it must refer to Luke's experience from an outside POV.

 

Aye, an omniscient narrator. Intentionally a smidge intrusive too, with a penchant for anthropomorphising when animating the inanimate. Ergo the mountains that extend themselves, flags that are happy to flap, and balls that like to roll with the best.

Luke's a young'un, (fwiw) he's in a stolen light aircraft (unheated) and is beginning to feel the cold as he ascends to the oxygen line. It's here (or up there) that he twigs there's a link twixt altitude and temperature.

I'm sort of okay with dangling prepositions @Oxymaroon reading and writing them. Will supply eyedrops with my story. Subjective pronouns unhelpably (real word) necessary, it's all about moderation yes?

Implemented, muchos thanks.

As for 'saw' and 'seen' — I'm also mindful not to be filtering too much. I've just screened the piece and there's only a couple of instances of them.

 

Thanks for the engaging alternatives @Seven Crowns . Not one 'that' in sight and each offering would displace anything I could muster. I fear my snapshot sentence though, it being bereft of context (and as you say, with multiple modifiers), may have misled. So I guess this is a good indicator that I should rewrite it altogether. Luke's revelation is the link between cold and altitude. He's from flatter, warmer lands where the sight of snow is more often presented on postcards from distant places. Given his situation of suddenly being a couple of miles in the sky, his thinking is along the lines of; it's cold up here, ahh, that's why mountains have snow on them.

 

Ah! T'was a revelation to this reviewer that the language was this way; for [because] the inarticulate protagonist is in an airplane, not, as previously pictured, on the ground.

 

...and this illiterate narrator not so omniscient.