Miroc has been saved from drought but the underlying
questions remain – where are the gods? Where did they go and why did they
abandon the world and their children within?
The city also is still under threat- Ash, Syed, Iris –
everyone is desperately preparing as much as they can for when the Shadows
return; the nearly undetectable creatures who can possess people and are trying
to bring about the end of the world.
But even this can be displaced when the Jansynians
discover something impossible – and need Ash’s magic to try and decipher. The revelations
there could shake everything they know about their society.
Ok, frustration moment in a sea of awesome… why did we go
here?
No, seriously, I
loved the world revealed to us in the first book. I loved that book. I
still love that book. That book is awesome. The world is awesome. I love the
idea of the 13 gods, an entire society built not just on the belief of those
gods, but the tangible existence of those gods, their powers and their
blessings. This is a society where praying for rain was literally a sensible form
of irrigation. And then those gods disappear – causing both the horrifying
impact of the complete devastation of having the entire world’s faith, their
entire foundation of belief, identity and how things are be completely ripped
from them. A life and reality that they not only believed, but had objective
evidence that that belief is correct. On top of that the basic foundations of
that society – the fuel and glue that makes their civilisation possible, has
similarly being ripped away
This is an amazing world. This is perfect. I could spend
100 books (psst, Barbara, write! Write more!) reading this world. Especially since
we have so much more because this excellent, amazing world has been delivered
so sparingly – only the information we need to know to advance the plot. We
have an awesome amount of information – but nothing excessive. Which means we
have a vast amount of the world left to explore. I don’t even know the names of
most of the 13 gods, let alone their roles or the creatures they sired. The
hints we’ve seen point to these races not just being random humans that look
different – but they have their own cultures, viewpoints, purposes that are
crafted to be very different from human sensibilities. There’s some excellent
world building there
So show me this – now this buried city and ancient past
and mighty magic… it’s just nearly all very very very separate from the world
that has already been revealed. But can’t we focus on what is here first? I
want to see the gods and magic and trying to keep Miroc from imploding to
seeing these different deity creatures. This story is excellent and I love it –
but I’d love it more at book 5. Let’s revel in the world before shaking it down
to its very foundations again, let’s see this world and what people believe
before we decide to shake those assumptions.
Let me play in this aw
esome before running to different
awesome. I haven’t finished this awesome, it’s not time for the next course of
awesome. I know this from the awesome we see – just the expanded ideal of the
shifters, the edict to keep changing and what it means to be a shifter who doesn’t
change alone is such a deep and layered addition.
While we have a number of supernatural creatures with all
kinds of beings (oh, aside, even these differing creatures have separate opinions
and factions rather than being one unified faction which I really like. It is
so common to have non-human beings be just one monolith. I appreciate that even
as, ironically, the story, unlike so many others, actually makes an attempt to explain
why they would be monoliths since ever species but the humans were designed to
be avatars of their god’s purpose and values. On top of that I really love the
whole exploration of what it means to humanity to be The First. How this leads
to their – including Ash’s – arrogance their assumption of being right or being
more important because they were first and not created expressly for purpose)
we also have racial diversity. So many fantasy worlds have huge diversity of
creatures while humans are very limited in their depiction – like we can only
have so much variety so humans have to become homogenous.
But Miroc is a city whose main human population are POC –
it’s also a city with a large number of visitors and refugees from outside the
city showing diverse racial makeup. The descriptions are extremely clear, completely
unambiguous and Ash is very very clearly depicted as a Man of Colour and
self-describes clearly that way.
The depiction of the show’s LGBT characters became a
little more dubious. We had Amelia and Iris who were in a relationship before
Amelia died (lesbian death, mark the bingo card). But this book we have another
shifter and Ash enters into a relationship with him – and we see it in much
more intimate detail than we did with Amelia and Iris. Including seeing the shifter…
shapehift to a woman before they have sex or are intimate. This could have been
a way to show a genderfluid being in a fantasy setting, but I’ve already made
the point about world building and the alien viewpoints. The shifters live
entirely different lives, as different creatures, different beings – becoming male
or female isn’t a comment on human gender identity so much as a comment on the
alien nature of the shifters themselves: form is irrelevant to them. This is
even made clear when Ash wonders if it’s unfair for his partner to change shape
to suit his sexuality and they make it clear that preferred form is pretty irrelevant
to them.
It’s a shame because it would honestly have been easier
to portray Ash as bisexual – rather than wander around having his partner (this
skirting names is an attempt to non-spoil) switching form every time affection
was coming. And it goes further by throwing doubt on the relationship in the
last book.
Beyond that though I have to reiterate that I do really
love this book and love the series more. My complaint is I love this series so
much that I’m frustrated we aren’t spending more time on this – explore it,
revel in it, roll in it (don’t roll in it, you’ve break your tablet). Enjoy these
awesome characters, enjoy these amazing plots, enjoy this perfect world setting
that is beyond original, compelling and fascinating and I would read a TEXT
BOOK on the theology, history and geography of this world.
