Thank you, my friend. I'm working hard to heal and get through the winter. I ail want to come up to walk with you again this winter. You are always welcome here if you want to come down.
forgot *SQUOOSHES BACK*
****SPOILER WARNING--just in case****
It was a good ending and I liked it a lot--I'm not sure if I loved it. I loved that her life's work became healing the forest a lot. I liked that so many of the premises she was raised on turned out to be false and she figured her way through it. I liked that she won Sarkan and he was so open to change and that connecting to the forest was good and he allowed himself to root with her. But he started out your typical verbally abusive Rochester type, and I have trouble with the verbal abuse. He is much more flexible (flexibility being Will Lawrence's superpower), and he did SEEM to outgrow it--I'm not totally convinced though because I'm not used to such flexible people. I feel bad for Kasia remaining so alienated, though.
And I feel that things were a bit easily earned for Anieczshka--there wasn't a great cost to herself, and her powers just kept growing, which feels false-ish to me. Because a big part of the story was about rule breaking and that the limits stories impose can be wrong and broken, it grates against the narrative law that you need to set rules to limit magic in your fantasy world for believability purposes. A lot of people died, but it didn't really come at our protagonist's expense at all. So it was fun wish-fulfillment in the end, but lacked some bitter to go with the sweet to give it more depth and make what she gains in the end feel really hard won and earned--there's no sacrifice. But maybe that's the hard-knock school I live in speaking that isn't trusting pure wish-fulfillment.
Addendum: And the weird thing is it was a very tense, dark world to be immersed in (as opposed to Temeraire, which varies between oppressiveness and light-hearted feel-good-ness) to come to such an easy happy ending--maybe that's what didn't sit right with me. It's not like I don't like happy endings--I do. Hmmm.
no subject
forgot *SQUOOSHES BACK*
****SPOILER WARNING--just in case****
It was a good ending and I liked it a lot--I'm not sure if I loved it. I loved that her life's work became healing the forest a lot. I liked that so many of the premises she was raised on turned out to be false and she figured her way through it. I liked that she won Sarkan and he was so open to change and that connecting to the forest was good and he allowed himself to root with her. But he started out your typical verbally abusive Rochester type, and I have trouble with the verbal abuse. He is much more flexible (flexibility being Will Lawrence's superpower), and he did SEEM to outgrow it--I'm not totally convinced though because I'm not used to such flexible people. I feel bad for Kasia remaining so alienated, though.
And I feel that things were a bit easily earned for Anieczshka--there wasn't a great cost to herself, and her powers just kept growing, which feels false-ish to me. Because a big part of the story was about rule breaking and that the limits stories impose can be wrong and broken, it grates against the narrative law that you need to set rules to limit magic in your fantasy world for believability purposes. A lot of people died, but it didn't really come at our protagonist's expense at all. So it was fun wish-fulfillment in the end, but lacked some bitter to go with the sweet to give it more depth and make what she gains in the end feel really hard won and earned--there's no sacrifice. But maybe that's the hard-knock school I live in speaking that isn't trusting pure wish-fulfillment.
Addendum: And the weird thing is it was a very tense, dark world to be immersed in (as opposed to Temeraire, which varies between oppressiveness and light-hearted feel-good-ness) to come to such an easy happy ending--maybe that's what didn't sit right with me. It's not like I don't like happy endings--I do. Hmmm.