ren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
necessarian) wrote2019-08-07 09:36 am
necessarian) wrote2019-08-07 09:36 am
Entry tags:
so i finished reading the shades of magic trilogy
and here are my thoughts:
i just want to start by saying my opinion of this trilogy is overwhelmingly positive. i think, as trilogies go, it's very well-balanced (lol) and the plotting is impeccable. the characters wrestle with very real fears and insecurities, and have satisfying growth arcs. and also i love holland. for a hot second i thought alucard might be my favourite character, but i guess i was most interested in him when lila had no idea who he was, was trying to peel back those layers of performance. i'm weak for that sort of thing. and he's still my second-fave, i guess? but god, when we started getting holland's backstory. god. i care so much about holland :(
anyway, it is because i loved these books so much that i need to bitch about two things that pissed me off, and then i can go back to having some good, uncritical fun.
1) the sense that side characters just existed to die. with the exception of tieren, i guess, every single side character died. what annoys me most is that all of those deaths made perfect sense in terms of the narrative (with the exception of maybe emira's, because did rhy really need more trauma? did he?) like hastra and lenos, for example, were powerful characters but not as powerful as the antari, and it makes sense for a few people to die on a perilous voyage at sea. but when you take into account the emotional context around those characters, lenos had been built up as someone fascinating, and hastra - well, hastra did come with death flags from the moment we met him, and i was kind of surprised he survived so long - but he was so young, and he had such a full life ahead of him!! argh!!!! and like calla... i get it, she taught lila something about loss and grief... I GET IT....... but that doesn't mean i'm HAPPY about it. i feel like if there were more named/fleshed out side characters who didn't die this wouldn't annoy me so much
2) holland suffered so much and like i appreciate that getting to go back to his own world in time to die was extremely cathartic for him but i said it before and i'll say it again: more stories about abuse victims that don't end in their death!!! but i won't rant too much about this one because i'm literally writing fix-it fic as we speak to give holland the healing ending that i dearly want him to have, and also to explore a particularly untapped character dynamic and get a little more use out of a certain magic mirror. and also just to be utterly self-indulgent really! because i love holland "did nothing wrong vosijk!!!!!
ok thanks for your time! back to regular scheduled crying!
i just want to start by saying my opinion of this trilogy is overwhelmingly positive. i think, as trilogies go, it's very well-balanced (lol) and the plotting is impeccable. the characters wrestle with very real fears and insecurities, and have satisfying growth arcs. and also i love holland. for a hot second i thought alucard might be my favourite character, but i guess i was most interested in him when lila had no idea who he was, was trying to peel back those layers of performance. i'm weak for that sort of thing. and he's still my second-fave, i guess? but god, when we started getting holland's backstory. god. i care so much about holland :(
anyway, it is because i loved these books so much that i need to bitch about two things that pissed me off, and then i can go back to having some good, uncritical fun.
1) the sense that side characters just existed to die. with the exception of tieren, i guess, every single side character died. what annoys me most is that all of those deaths made perfect sense in terms of the narrative (with the exception of maybe emira's, because did rhy really need more trauma? did he?) like hastra and lenos, for example, were powerful characters but not as powerful as the antari, and it makes sense for a few people to die on a perilous voyage at sea. but when you take into account the emotional context around those characters, lenos had been built up as someone fascinating, and hastra - well, hastra did come with death flags from the moment we met him, and i was kind of surprised he survived so long - but he was so young, and he had such a full life ahead of him!! argh!!!! and like calla... i get it, she taught lila something about loss and grief... I GET IT....... but that doesn't mean i'm HAPPY about it. i feel like if there were more named/fleshed out side characters who didn't die this wouldn't annoy me so much
2) holland suffered so much and like i appreciate that getting to go back to his own world in time to die was extremely cathartic for him but i said it before and i'll say it again: more stories about abuse victims that don't end in their death!!! but i won't rant too much about this one because i'm literally writing fix-it fic as we speak to give holland the healing ending that i dearly want him to have, and also to explore a particularly untapped character dynamic and get a little more use out of a certain magic mirror. and also just to be utterly self-indulgent really! because i love holland "did nothing wrong vosijk!!!!!
ok thanks for your time! back to regular scheduled crying!