|
General Battuta posted:Ah, the month is almost over! I'll never be this famous again! The last one has to be some form of soft inheritance/Lamarckism, right? I enjoyed that most of the Masquerade's atrocities were justified or driven by bad science rather than religion. It felt fresher than the usual fantasy take on things, and very 1984. I'm terrible at catching hidden storylines like the others on a first read, though. I guess it's something to look forward to on a reread, ideally when the sequel comes out  E: I thought of a question I had about the worldbuilding. Would Baru's mother think of her as a lesbian? Or, if that's unclear: was sexuality perceived in terms of identity on Taranoke before Falcrest's colonization? UnbearablyBlight fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Oct 24, 2015 |
#
¿
Oct 24, 2015 17:47
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 05:55 |
|
|
A Tin Of Beans posted:Haha, I was about to ask! I was ... admittedly caught off guard a bit by her being a traitor twice over. I mean, she said right at the start of the book, and the start of her tenure, where her loyalties lay, and yet! It's the loving title! And yet. I was so willing to buy in. Goddamn, that ending. Part of me is a bit frustrated over more tragic lesbians, oh boy, never enough of those I guess but I get why it happened that way and I did really enjoy the book. There's some really lovely prose in here. I'm looking forward to the next one for sure. I imagined Lyxaxu being pronounced as someone angrily starting to call you a liar and then sneezing in the middle of the word. Also, while I get the criticism of tragic lesbian stories on a cultural level, I don't think it holds much water on an individual one. Especially this one, where the tragic outcome was character-driven, rather than an inevitable result of their sexuality (I know that's basically what you said). E. Actually, I'm going to go on about that because I think it was quite well done. Even in an intensely homophobic society, Baru had the option to carve out a life for herself with Tain Hu. Things ended tragically because she steamrolled over her chances to be happy, or because she wouldn't have been happy with that life anyway, not because the chances weren't there. It worked for me because I never felt like tragedy was the only option for Baru, and her character was flawed in such a way that her story ending up tragic for her anyway made sense. Also there's a sequel planned, and who knows what might happen there. UnbearablyBlight fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Oct 31, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2015 18:08
|
|
|
Crashbee posted:Wasn't the point of the ending the fact that she could only live with Tain if she accepted that her relationship would be used to blackmail and manipulate her for the rest of her life? Doesn't sound like much of an option to me. There were points before that where things could have gone differently, she just would have had to change a lot of her goals and priorities. See the part I bolded here: A Tin Of Beans posted:Like, she was never really looking out for the dukes of Aurdwynn. She was always looking for her own power, and for Taranoke after that - even with the chances open to her to do things differently, I don't she ever saw those as valid options. She tried sending Tain Hu away, at least, but that didn't work. If she'd taken those other routes she wouldn't have been able to go to Falcrest/work her way into the cabal behind the Throne; or she would have, but would have had a knife over her head all the while ... I get what led her to her choices, mostly, sort of. I don't necessarily agree with those choices but it made sense. Tain Hu's death makes an awful sense. And man, Baru's scary. A Tin Of Beans posted:I'm still bummed about it, though! I can accept it logically and still, as a gay woman myself, be frustrated, you dig? These are the stories I get all the time, too! Two women get together, but whoops, it's gonna end in tragedy. I think I'm displeased on a broad level, and not at the specific story. Just because it's a good story, just because it makes sense, doesn't mean it's not also still part of that broader context. To this point, sure, I agree with you. I just tend to have a kneejerk reaction against that reaction, because so often I see it used to condemn a story on sight. Which isn't what you did at all!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2015 22:19
|
|