![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
More Taltos!
I have now read the next two books in the series, and continue to love it. Things picked up considerably after Orca.
Dragon: I really loved the first half of the book (I could just cheerfully read endless pages of Vlad and his familiar/friends/business associates bickering and having philosophical discussions), though my interest tanked somewhat in the second half, once we got into the war stuff. On the one hand, I absolutely love that the battle was so pointless. Usually in high fantasy you get epic battles over world-ending stakes (much as we do in the next book, come to think of it) and I really loved that this battle was exactly as petty and pointless as most war IRL generally is. On the other hand, uh ... he really did a good job of conveying the boring and repetitive nature of being in the army, I guess? Though there was still good stuff going on. I always enjoy watching Vlad's confidence in the inhumanity of Dragaerans take a hit. Plus, of course, we got some interesting backstory including the story behind Aliera having Pathfinder. On the whole I enjoyed this book a lot, but found the second half a bit draggy.
Issola: THAT WAS SO GOOD!! ♥ ♥ ♥ I think this one's tied with Taltos for my favorite book in the series. I love that like 80% of the book was just Vlad being trapped in a room bickering with various subsets of his friends (it's pretty much entirely a "bottle episode", and it was so much fun). I absolutely adored Teldra as a character - I love how she's a type of character who is often characterized badly in this type of book (sweet, kind, a non-fighter), but got to be brave and awesome and score points with diplomacy instead of knives. And then the climax went from being "hmmm, epic battle, exciting I guess" to absolutely riveting once everything with Spellbreaker and Teldra started going down. Plus, we found out a bunch more about their world's history and the Great Weapons, as well as various characters' backstories, and the Jenoine world was entertainingly weird. This book had everything: humor, loyalty, banter, twisty mysteries, and a kickass finale. A+, would read again.
ETA: Writing-wise, I also feel like Teldra's role in this book puts on display how much it matters to have more than one female character in a series. I think that if the only major female character in the book had been a sweet, gentle priestess/diplomat who ends up getting killed off (sorta) to make a cool sword for Vlad, that would have been a bit of a problem even if I'd still enjoyed all her individual scenes, but it's hard for me to take exception to her fate in the slightest when it happened in the middle of a battle in which most of the major players were kickass women and in fact the only male participant other than Vlad got dropped with a spell early on and spent most of the fight being dead.
ETA2: I also really love the jhereg on this book's cover, particularly the iridescent wings. We have no particular canon (so far, anyway) for whether they actually look like this in the books or not, but I like this version better than the more typical gold-colored dragonlike creature on most of the other covers. It still has that dragonlike vibe, but it's so much more alien-looking, very delightfully so.
Dragon: I really loved the first half of the book (I could just cheerfully read endless pages of Vlad and his familiar/friends/business associates bickering and having philosophical discussions), though my interest tanked somewhat in the second half, once we got into the war stuff. On the one hand, I absolutely love that the battle was so pointless. Usually in high fantasy you get epic battles over world-ending stakes (much as we do in the next book, come to think of it) and I really loved that this battle was exactly as petty and pointless as most war IRL generally is. On the other hand, uh ... he really did a good job of conveying the boring and repetitive nature of being in the army, I guess? Though there was still good stuff going on. I always enjoy watching Vlad's confidence in the inhumanity of Dragaerans take a hit. Plus, of course, we got some interesting backstory including the story behind Aliera having Pathfinder. On the whole I enjoyed this book a lot, but found the second half a bit draggy.
Issola: THAT WAS SO GOOD!! ♥ ♥ ♥ I think this one's tied with Taltos for my favorite book in the series. I love that like 80% of the book was just Vlad being trapped in a room bickering with various subsets of his friends (it's pretty much entirely a "bottle episode", and it was so much fun). I absolutely adored Teldra as a character - I love how she's a type of character who is often characterized badly in this type of book (sweet, kind, a non-fighter), but got to be brave and awesome and score points with diplomacy instead of knives. And then the climax went from being "hmmm, epic battle, exciting I guess" to absolutely riveting once everything with Spellbreaker and Teldra started going down. Plus, we found out a bunch more about their world's history and the Great Weapons, as well as various characters' backstories, and the Jenoine world was entertainingly weird. This book had everything: humor, loyalty, banter, twisty mysteries, and a kickass finale. A+, would read again.
ETA: Writing-wise, I also feel like Teldra's role in this book puts on display how much it matters to have more than one female character in a series. I think that if the only major female character in the book had been a sweet, gentle priestess/diplomat who ends up getting killed off (sorta) to make a cool sword for Vlad, that would have been a bit of a problem even if I'd still enjoyed all her individual scenes, but it's hard for me to take exception to her fate in the slightest when it happened in the middle of a battle in which most of the major players were kickass women and in fact the only male participant other than Vlad got dropped with a spell early on and spent most of the fight being dead.
ETA2: I also really love the jhereg on this book's cover, particularly the iridescent wings. We have no particular canon (so far, anyway) for whether they actually look like this in the books or not, but I like this version better than the more typical gold-colored dragonlike creature on most of the other covers. It still has that dragonlike vibe, but it's so much more alien-looking, very delightfully so.
no subject
no subject
it really shows how a lot of the problematic nature of certain tropes isn't really in the trope itself, but in it being the only way you see female characters portrayed.
Yes, exactly!! I think this tends to get lost in a lot of the discourse around this kind of thing. There are some tropes that are basically unsalvageable because they're so profoundly sexist (or racist, or whatever the case may be). But in a lot of cases, the problem is in the way it's written, and if the character in question is a fully developed person in a cast of other fully developed people that also includes a lot of other women, it's fine - you can give a female character a heroic sacrifice arc, or put her in the role of supporter/helper/diplomat, and it's not a problem at all.
... I do love, once I started thinking about it, how most of the major plot-movers in this book, and in fact in many of the books in this series, are women. In fact, the only other major male character besides Vlad in this particular book - not counting Loiosh - is Morrolan, who has the whole "dashing sorcerer" thing going on and in fact gets quite a bit of low-key (and fun!) character stuff in this book (I do love him; he's one of my favorites among the supporting/recurring characters) but as far as actually doing anything, his role in this book basically amounts to:
- being chained to a wall needing rescue
- showing up to rescue Vlad shortly after Vlad (mostly) rescues himself
- being dead
Meanwhile Verra and Sethra and Aliera are out there tramping around accomplishing stuff. Even the one Jenoine we get a gender-marker for is a woman.