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corilannamSo like I said, I finished Crown of Shadows -- in fact, I finished it three or four times, just to be sure I caught everything (note: I probably didn't).
So overall, I must say that the slashy goodness of these books has not been exaggerated in the least by those pushing them (and you know who you are). I really can't imagine how I missed these books before. The third book, in particular, had a slash-squee moment every other page, at least when Damien and Gerald were there. Their dynamic hits a number of my hot buttons, and the gradual development of trust and caring between them is all the sweeter for how slowly it happened. They change each other in ways they never would have wanted to be changed, but they're glad for it and for each other.
And okay, when they completed the soul bond? Yeah, I had a moment there. *g*
I don't know what the prevailing fannish view on the ending is, but I'm hoping that at least some of the stories waiting for me in the yuletide archive are alternate endings/fix-its because man, the book ending left me in a serious state of discontentment.
Now I was fully prepared for Gerald to die -- in fact, given the set-up of his redemption arc, I didn't think there was any way the author was going to let him live. So as they're climbing up Shaitan, I'm already sniffling a little, all prepared for the big dramatic Sacrifice o' Redemptive Altruism. This is my kink, which I discovered as a wee little fangirl the first time I saw Return of the Jedi.
And then... not so much with the dying. Which, hey, also fine by me. He gave up his undead life, and now he gets a second chance from God or Iezu!Mommy or whoever to live the way he should have the first time around. I like second chances. They often lead to passionate sex between the heroes, at least in my head.
But then it starts to lose me. They have to go back and find these vitally important books lest mankind ... well, I sort of glossed over that part, since it mostly seemed like a plot device to get Gerald back into the keep to confront Andrys, and nobody really seemed to care about it afterward. Okay, so Gerald has to confront Andrys, since they spent all that time building up how much Andrys hates Gerald and wants him to die. I think, perhaps, that I would have even been okay with Andrys killing him, if it had been handled properly.
As written, however, I have a few problems with how it went down.
So Damien just walks out and lets Gerald, who is now fae-less and physically weak, stand alone against the guy with a crossbow who wants to kill him? Um, excuse me? I don't think this would have happened even back before theyfell in love became friends. Oh, sure, he "looks for an opening" to take out Andrys as he's leaving, but then he just leaves. Just leaves. *boggles*
At first I felt like this was a cheap attempt on the part of the author to set up fake tension as to which man was going to come out alive -- which works about as well as when they do the clever editing and camerawork on The Amazing Race so that you supposedly don't know which team is racing up to the mat second to last. Dude, we know Gerald was, like, an hour and a half behind at the last Roadblock. Give it up.
Then I kept going and realized that Damien couldn't be in the room because then they couldn't have the oh-so-clever reveal that Gerald wasn't really dead. Or was dead but now is alive again. Or something.
Along those same lines, I feel deeply cheated that, in order to create the aforementioned fake tension about which Tarrant was going to walk out, the author did not show us the moment when Damien felt Gerald die. It was such a big deal that they cemented this link between them that could only be broken when one of them died. It was such a big deal that Damien could see through Gerald's eyes, feel what he felt.
And yet feeling him die? Apparently not such a big deal. How powerful could that have been -- Damien praying for Gerald's soul, praying for him to get a chance to come back to God, only to feel Gerald cut down just as the link between them goes dark?
When I got to Damien's conversation with not!Gerald, I started thinking that hey, maybe if he didn't really die, that's why Damien didn't feel it. But then Damien told not!Gerald that he did, in fact, feel it, which kind of blew that theory. Of course, he also said that he saw Andrys kill Gerald, which is untrue, unless he saw it through Gerald's eyes and the author just chose not to share that with the reader. Or unless it was all just illusion anyway. My head hurts.
And hey, let's just get to not!Gerald, while I'm in the neighborhood. Now, I'm not entirely sure I understand not!Gerald. Is he Gerald reborn? Is he Gerald transformed? Is he Gerald under some sort of permanent glamour? I get that he sacrificed his life and identity in order to Work whatever he Worked, though I find it dubious that Andrys agreed to it as not!Gerald suggests. Andrys was insane with hatred and fear; if he were capable of that level of rational thought, Damien would have talked him out of killing Gerald in the first place.
Technical details aside, I'm not sure I can adequately describe how much I hate this ending. First of all, it takes a huge amount away from the beauty of Gerald's sacrifice on Shaitan. That he was allowed to live after that, especially to live as a human being again, was an incredible gift, the answer to Damien's fervent prayer that Gerald be given time to come back to God and save his soul. It was a massive act of spiritual redemption, the culmination of his long journey with Damien, and now the beginning of a new journey toward the reclamation of his humanity.
But I could understand if the author felt like Gerald still had to answer for what he did to Andrys. I would have handled their confrontation completely differently, but okay. It's tragic and depressing that he loses his chance at a new life, but one could argue that it's just. In a way, surrendering himself to Andrys's judgement and need for vengeance could possibly be seen as a form of redemption as well.
Then the author undercuts the redemption arc again by essentially having Gerald cheat death once more. This isn't redemption. This isn't a gift, this is another trick, an illogical one at that, and it's been making me cranky all day.
And that's before I consider the state the author leaves poor Damien in! He's left with nothing at the end. He has no power, no friends, no life. He can't go back to the priesthood. He probably can't even go back to his home in Ganji very easily, given the danger of the journey and the fact that he can't Work anymore. He sacrificed everything for his partnership with Gerald, he grieved for Gerald, and now he finds out that Gerald is alive, but he can never see him again? I suppose the author meant that last scene to be comforting to him, but it seemed more like salt in his wounds.
These two men could not stay apart from each other for three whole books, no matter how hard they tried. Over and over they refused to leave each other, and not!Gerald even risks his precarious new lease on life in order to tell Damien what happened to him. And then Damien just watches him walk away, the Prophet of Damien's Church, to risk his newfound humanity alone and without guidance. By the end of the books, Damien gave up his station within the Church essentially to be priest to this one man, and now he just lets him go? There's nothing left for them to do in this new world? They don't need each other anymore, the only two people in the world who know what happened and why? We spent three (very long) books watching this relationship build, watching this deep loyalty develop, and then--?
Argh. So very unsatisfying.
It's like the author wanted a dark and gritty ending, but didn't quite have the guts to commit to it properly, so we ended up with something that makes sense only if you squint your eyes and drink heavily.
Anyway.
My griping aside, I loved this trilogy and these characters. I loved the world and how real and detailed it was, and how well the author handled the science and magic aspects of it with its own rules that actually made sense (right up until the whole thing got ruined at the end, but oh well). I loved Gerald and Damien, the building of their relationship, and how powerfully they complemented each other. I loved Hesseth and Jenseny and Karrill and the Patriarch (though I wasn't sorry to see Ciani go). I wish we could have met the Matriarch, too. I loved the snark (oh, how I loved the snark!) I loved the soul bond, because for crying out loud, how often do we actually get one of those in canon?
And as much as I dislike the ending, I have to admit it left several excellent jumping-off points for fanfiction. I trust you all have taken proper advantage of that, and now I can finally go read it. I desperately crave slash now!
That was a bit more babbling than I intended. Oops. But now I can finally go and devour all the lovely stories by the lovely people. And then hope to heaven that I don't need to write one, too.
So overall, I must say that the slashy goodness of these books has not been exaggerated in the least by those pushing them (and you know who you are). I really can't imagine how I missed these books before. The third book, in particular, had a slash-squee moment every other page, at least when Damien and Gerald were there. Their dynamic hits a number of my hot buttons, and the gradual development of trust and caring between them is all the sweeter for how slowly it happened. They change each other in ways they never would have wanted to be changed, but they're glad for it and for each other.
And okay, when they completed the soul bond? Yeah, I had a moment there. *g*
I don't know what the prevailing fannish view on the ending is, but I'm hoping that at least some of the stories waiting for me in the yuletide archive are alternate endings/fix-its because man, the book ending left me in a serious state of discontentment.
Now I was fully prepared for Gerald to die -- in fact, given the set-up of his redemption arc, I didn't think there was any way the author was going to let him live. So as they're climbing up Shaitan, I'm already sniffling a little, all prepared for the big dramatic Sacrifice o' Redemptive Altruism. This is my kink, which I discovered as a wee little fangirl the first time I saw Return of the Jedi.
And then... not so much with the dying. Which, hey, also fine by me. He gave up his undead life, and now he gets a second chance from God or Iezu!Mommy or whoever to live the way he should have the first time around. I like second chances. They often lead to passionate sex between the heroes, at least in my head.
But then it starts to lose me. They have to go back and find these vitally important books lest mankind ... well, I sort of glossed over that part, since it mostly seemed like a plot device to get Gerald back into the keep to confront Andrys, and nobody really seemed to care about it afterward. Okay, so Gerald has to confront Andrys, since they spent all that time building up how much Andrys hates Gerald and wants him to die. I think, perhaps, that I would have even been okay with Andrys killing him, if it had been handled properly.
As written, however, I have a few problems with how it went down.
So Damien just walks out and lets Gerald, who is now fae-less and physically weak, stand alone against the guy with a crossbow who wants to kill him? Um, excuse me? I don't think this would have happened even back before they
At first I felt like this was a cheap attempt on the part of the author to set up fake tension as to which man was going to come out alive -- which works about as well as when they do the clever editing and camerawork on The Amazing Race so that you supposedly don't know which team is racing up to the mat second to last. Dude, we know Gerald was, like, an hour and a half behind at the last Roadblock. Give it up.
Then I kept going and realized that Damien couldn't be in the room because then they couldn't have the oh-so-clever reveal that Gerald wasn't really dead. Or was dead but now is alive again. Or something.
Along those same lines, I feel deeply cheated that, in order to create the aforementioned fake tension about which Tarrant was going to walk out, the author did not show us the moment when Damien felt Gerald die. It was such a big deal that they cemented this link between them that could only be broken when one of them died. It was such a big deal that Damien could see through Gerald's eyes, feel what he felt.
And yet feeling him die? Apparently not such a big deal. How powerful could that have been -- Damien praying for Gerald's soul, praying for him to get a chance to come back to God, only to feel Gerald cut down just as the link between them goes dark?
When I got to Damien's conversation with not!Gerald, I started thinking that hey, maybe if he didn't really die, that's why Damien didn't feel it. But then Damien told not!Gerald that he did, in fact, feel it, which kind of blew that theory. Of course, he also said that he saw Andrys kill Gerald, which is untrue, unless he saw it through Gerald's eyes and the author just chose not to share that with the reader. Or unless it was all just illusion anyway. My head hurts.
And hey, let's just get to not!Gerald, while I'm in the neighborhood. Now, I'm not entirely sure I understand not!Gerald. Is he Gerald reborn? Is he Gerald transformed? Is he Gerald under some sort of permanent glamour? I get that he sacrificed his life and identity in order to Work whatever he Worked, though I find it dubious that Andrys agreed to it as not!Gerald suggests. Andrys was insane with hatred and fear; if he were capable of that level of rational thought, Damien would have talked him out of killing Gerald in the first place.
Technical details aside, I'm not sure I can adequately describe how much I hate this ending. First of all, it takes a huge amount away from the beauty of Gerald's sacrifice on Shaitan. That he was allowed to live after that, especially to live as a human being again, was an incredible gift, the answer to Damien's fervent prayer that Gerald be given time to come back to God and save his soul. It was a massive act of spiritual redemption, the culmination of his long journey with Damien, and now the beginning of a new journey toward the reclamation of his humanity.
But I could understand if the author felt like Gerald still had to answer for what he did to Andrys. I would have handled their confrontation completely differently, but okay. It's tragic and depressing that he loses his chance at a new life, but one could argue that it's just. In a way, surrendering himself to Andrys's judgement and need for vengeance could possibly be seen as a form of redemption as well.
Then the author undercuts the redemption arc again by essentially having Gerald cheat death once more. This isn't redemption. This isn't a gift, this is another trick, an illogical one at that, and it's been making me cranky all day.
And that's before I consider the state the author leaves poor Damien in! He's left with nothing at the end. He has no power, no friends, no life. He can't go back to the priesthood. He probably can't even go back to his home in Ganji very easily, given the danger of the journey and the fact that he can't Work anymore. He sacrificed everything for his partnership with Gerald, he grieved for Gerald, and now he finds out that Gerald is alive, but he can never see him again? I suppose the author meant that last scene to be comforting to him, but it seemed more like salt in his wounds.
These two men could not stay apart from each other for three whole books, no matter how hard they tried. Over and over they refused to leave each other, and not!Gerald even risks his precarious new lease on life in order to tell Damien what happened to him. And then Damien just watches him walk away, the Prophet of Damien's Church, to risk his newfound humanity alone and without guidance. By the end of the books, Damien gave up his station within the Church essentially to be priest to this one man, and now he just lets him go? There's nothing left for them to do in this new world? They don't need each other anymore, the only two people in the world who know what happened and why? We spent three (very long) books watching this relationship build, watching this deep loyalty develop, and then--?
Argh. So very unsatisfying.
It's like the author wanted a dark and gritty ending, but didn't quite have the guts to commit to it properly, so we ended up with something that makes sense only if you squint your eyes and drink heavily.
Anyway.
My griping aside, I loved this trilogy and these characters. I loved the world and how real and detailed it was, and how well the author handled the science and magic aspects of it with its own rules that actually made sense (right up until the whole thing got ruined at the end, but oh well). I loved Gerald and Damien, the building of their relationship, and how powerfully they complemented each other. I loved Hesseth and Jenseny and Karrill and the Patriarch (though I wasn't sorry to see Ciani go). I wish we could have met the Matriarch, too. I loved the snark (oh, how I loved the snark!) I loved the soul bond, because for crying out loud, how often do we actually get one of those in canon?
And as much as I dislike the ending, I have to admit it left several excellent jumping-off points for fanfiction. I trust you all have taken proper advantage of that, and now I can finally go read it. I desperately crave slash now!
That was a bit more babbling than I intended. Oops. But now I can finally go and devour all the lovely stories by the lovely people. And then hope to heaven that I don't need to write one, too.
