Entry tags:
Taltos
Reread Taltos today because I was in the mood for it, after talking to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay about characters being rescued from the afterlife made me remember that's the plot of this book. I have a lot of Vlad feels now. Vlad, you are the worst at hating Dragaerans, you just are.
I feel like this book is the platonic ideal of what I want from a book of this type.
- Ancestral enemies forced to work together, reluctantly becoming friends.
- Banter and snark.
- Self-sacrifice as a core element of the plot.
- Awesome female characters (not so central in this one as in some other books in the series, but still excellent and very much not treated differently from the male characters)
- Weird, cool worldbuilding.
- Moral dilemmas.
- Three interwoven timelines that are all interesting, engaging, and related to the current plot in ways that only gradually become apparent in an "oh, THAT'S what that was all about" kind of way. (Seriously, I don't know how the structure of this book works so well. I never found myself skipping any of the sections or getting lost even with the frequent scene and time jumps.)
There are other books in the series I love - most of them, actually, except for a few in the middle - but this one is probably my enduring favorite. I mean, "enduring" given that I only read the whole series for the first time a couple of years ago.
sovay about characters being rescued from the afterlife made me remember that's the plot of this book. I have a lot of Vlad feels now. Vlad, you are the worst at hating Dragaerans, you just are.I feel like this book is the platonic ideal of what I want from a book of this type.
- Ancestral enemies forced to work together, reluctantly becoming friends.
- Banter and snark.
- Self-sacrifice as a core element of the plot.
- Awesome female characters (not so central in this one as in some other books in the series, but still excellent and very much not treated differently from the male characters)
- Weird, cool worldbuilding.
- Moral dilemmas.
- Three interwoven timelines that are all interesting, engaging, and related to the current plot in ways that only gradually become apparent in an "oh, THAT'S what that was all about" kind of way. (Seriously, I don't know how the structure of this book works so well. I never found myself skipping any of the sections or getting lost even with the frequent scene and time jumps.)
There are other books in the series I love - most of them, actually, except for a few in the middle - but this one is probably my enduring favorite. I mean, "enduring" given that I only read the whole series for the first time a couple of years ago.
no subject
I also find the three timelines really deftly done! (although I also know people who found them disorienting the first time around, and having reread it with an eye to that, I can definitely see how that can be).
I've been thinking it's time for a reread for me, too... :)
no subject
Yeah, I suppose having read the book before makes the timelines a little more comprehensible, but I don't remember being confused the first time around either, and I remember being pleased with myself on the first read for figuring out what the chapter-introducing scenes were a couple of chapters before the actual reveal (not the specific thing he was doing, but at least in general what it related to). I think in particular I noticed that I wasn't tempted to skip over any of the sections this time, even to get to my favorite parts, because everything else was so interesting too.
no subject
Oh yeah, same! Like, when I think about rereading Taltos, the scenes I'm looking forward to revisiting are all in the main timeline, but once I start reading, I'm never tempted to skip the flashbacks or the spell framing device, because it's all so good and feeds into each other so neatly! I've reread Taltos at least half a dozen times by now, and that never changes.
(and thank you, re: icon :D I'm always so happy when I have a reason to use one of my Dragaera icons :D)