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Title: Godslayer
Author: Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Epic fantasy (part 2 of 2)
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: Lord of the Rings/Silmarillion, if Melkor was actually a tragic figure.
Thoughts: In most genres, you have a pretty good idea of how things are going to end. Not exactly, of course, but if it's a romance, it's going to end with the main couple happily together. A mystery will get solved. (A noir mystery will be solved, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory and the detective will be left alone and cynical once more. In the rain.)
This book, I spent the entire thing wondering whether or not I was reading a tragedy.
Which is remarkably effective in getting me invested--not knowing whether things would be ok in the end kept me riveted. The chief god of light is a controlling dick. In his own defense, the "evil" dark god has done some terrible things. Neither of these characters actually appear much--this book, like Lord of the Rings is about the pawns on the battlefield. It doesn't slavishly copy Tolkein in character or plot, but there are a lot of parallels. Substitute races for the elves and trolls, a humble bearer of an object that can destroy the dark god, a romance between the disinherited rightful human king and the elf-lord's daughter, immortal servants of the dark god who used to be human but betrayed their origins. But so much of the conflict depends on the conviction by good people that other people are evil and therefore anything they do is indefensible. The forces of light truly want to reunite the world. But the forces of "darkness" are those who have been shunned, often through no fault of their own, and have no place in the light's world--the mad, the ugly, the trolls, the people betrayed by their own kin.
And so over and over again, the various characters meet, and the "good" guys are blinded by their own piety and virtue and so cannot hear or understand what the "bad" guys are trying to say. It could all so easily be ended without tragedy if only people could talk to one another. But will someone listen?
I will not give away the ending, although I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. I feel as though some groundwork is laid that I'm not entirely sure I understand the implications of.
But it's a lovely book that explores the ramifications of some of the questions Tolkein fans have debated (are orcs automatically evil? What about orc babies? Are factories really that bad?), without ever actually becoming a parody of any kind. More a meditation on the nature of good and evil, with no easy answers.
Author: Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Epic fantasy (part 2 of 2)
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: Lord of the Rings/Silmarillion, if Melkor was actually a tragic figure.
Thoughts: In most genres, you have a pretty good idea of how things are going to end. Not exactly, of course, but if it's a romance, it's going to end with the main couple happily together. A mystery will get solved. (A noir mystery will be solved, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory and the detective will be left alone and cynical once more. In the rain.)
This book, I spent the entire thing wondering whether or not I was reading a tragedy.
Which is remarkably effective in getting me invested--not knowing whether things would be ok in the end kept me riveted. The chief god of light is a controlling dick. In his own defense, the "evil" dark god has done some terrible things. Neither of these characters actually appear much--this book, like Lord of the Rings is about the pawns on the battlefield. It doesn't slavishly copy Tolkein in character or plot, but there are a lot of parallels. Substitute races for the elves and trolls, a humble bearer of an object that can destroy the dark god, a romance between the disinherited rightful human king and the elf-lord's daughter, immortal servants of the dark god who used to be human but betrayed their origins. But so much of the conflict depends on the conviction by good people that other people are evil and therefore anything they do is indefensible. The forces of light truly want to reunite the world. But the forces of "darkness" are those who have been shunned, often through no fault of their own, and have no place in the light's world--the mad, the ugly, the trolls, the people betrayed by their own kin.
And so over and over again, the various characters meet, and the "good" guys are blinded by their own piety and virtue and so cannot hear or understand what the "bad" guys are trying to say. It could all so easily be ended without tragedy if only people could talk to one another. But will someone listen?
I will not give away the ending, although I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. I feel as though some groundwork is laid that I'm not entirely sure I understand the implications of.
But it's a lovely book that explores the ramifications of some of the questions Tolkein fans have debated (are orcs automatically evil? What about orc babies? Are factories really that bad?), without ever actually becoming a parody of any kind. More a meditation on the nature of good and evil, with no easy answers.
