As the Empirium Trilogy ended up being pretty middling for me on the whole, I'm not sure how much I'll remember it as time goes on.
But for the rest ofAs the Empirium Trilogy ended up being pretty middling for me on the whole, I'm not sure how much I'll remember it as time goes on.
But for the rest of my life, I will never ever forget Eliana going back in time, approaching Odo Laroche and straight up telling him, "I'm Rielle's as-of-yet unborn daughter. I've time-traveled back 1,000 years to save the world. Can you take me to her?" And he responds like, "Great, right this way." NO FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS.
In my review of Furyborn, I ended it by writing, "I can only see the series improving as it goes on." Egg on my face.
Merged review:
As the Empirium Trilogy ended up being pretty middling for me on the whole, I'm not sure how much I'll remember it as time goes on.
But for the rest of my life, I will never ever forget Eliana going back in time, approaching Odo Laroche and straight up telling him, "I'm Rielle's as-of-yet unborn daughter. I've time-traveled back 1,000 years to save the world. Can you take me to her?" And he responds like, "Great, right this way." NO FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS.
In my review of Furyborn, I ended it by writing, "I can only see the series improving as it goes on." Egg on my face....more
Just like the shape of the country that ""inspired"" this ""fantasy world""... it's a boot.
[image]
This duology is so bad.
Much as I disliked This ViciJust like the shape of the country that ""inspired"" this ""fantasy world""... it's a boot.
[image]
This duology is so bad.
Much as I disliked This Vicious Grace, it at least had a semblance of a story; mostly because it copied its beats from the 2000 X-Men movie.
This Cursed Light is lost. Never does it find its way, and it goes nowhere.
It has nothing new to say about love, faith, responsibility, or sacrifice.
It has no contribution to make to fantasy, the genre of imagination.
Listen, if Wrath of Khan could convince us to accept the death of a character as universally as beloved as Spock—because to love him is to understand truly that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one—This Cursed Light trying to pull the same stunt with that much weight with as petulant and self-serving a character as Alessa is beyond unearned.
Just because Dante loves her doesn't mean the audience should be compelled to.
In the climax, when all it took to save every living soul was for her to die, I was like, "fucken werk". [image]
And I knew it wouldn't last. The duology isn't mature enough to tackle death, nor consequences of any kind. Rather, these are books where Happily Ever After is secured with a kiss.
Almost could be considered a retelling of Sleeping Ugly, just with an extra dose of T. Kingfisher's brand of magic Almost could be considered a retelling of Sleeping Ugly, just with an extra dose of T. Kingfisher's brand of magic ...more
Definitive cozy fantasy. It takes a work already so nostalgic and comforting for so many, Anne of Green Gables, and retells it as a fairytale.
Like AnnDefinitive cozy fantasy. It takes a work already so nostalgic and comforting for so many, Anne of Green Gables, and retells it as a fairytale.
Like Anne, our heroine Grace is a freckled, grandiloquent 12-year-old orphan, embarking on what she hopes will be a new turn in her life. She enters an enchanted forest on Prince Edward Island, seeking out the witch. You know the one; the one with the quaint cottage, grandmotherly-looking, but one who secretly cooks children in her big, bone-filled oven.
But Grace approaches her with purpose: She has magic and wants to learn to use it. Her hope is that the witch will accept her as her apprentice.
The witch receives her with Marilla Cuthbert-like coolness and practicality. She doesn't want an apprentice, and especially not one as fanciful as Grace, but recognizes her magic ability. They strike a bargain: Grace has one year's time to attempt all the spells in the witch's grimoire. If she fails, the witch takes her magic.
Wonderful. It came off to me almost as an American retelling of Princess Mononoke, rife with old magics and nature’s power. These ancient ways are conWonderful. It came off to me almost as an American retelling of Princess Mononoke, rife with old magics and nature’s power. These ancient ways are contended with by a community of 1666 Puritans, already a frightened, superstitious bunch. They both fear the Earth’s mysteries around them and desire to conquer them. To bend them to their will.
Just as they exploit the land they stole.
It’s very Princess Mononoke meets The Crucible, The VVitch, and Midsommar. All of which (witch?) are great.
But in invoking old magic —in this case, the most ancient magic of the universe— some important aspects of the story get sidestepped.
Being a story set in early American history, Brom does include the Puritanical community of Sutton’s relationship with the indigenous Pequot people they colonized Connecticut from. Their peace is uneasy, relying wholly on the Native peoples’ conforming to colonizer customs to survive…always under threat of musket fire. Existing so close, they each have unique reactions when magic stirs up:
Sutton’s Puritans fear Satan.
Main character Abitha, daughter of an English cunning woman, has faith in the fairies and fae.
The Pequots get a bit closer to the truth of it, recognizing it as a power from the Earth, itself.
But when we have the POV of the magic, of its central force in the book, we learn that it is much older than any culture’s belief system, religion, spirituality, etc. So ancient, so cosmic that not a single human could even conceive.
My quibble is this: Being a book where the main character and her community are living off stolen land, side-by-side with the people they stole not only the land from, but are actively eradicating their traditions and way of life — the affects of which will be felt for generations on, having a POV of an all-knowing magic power proclaiming how it had been present in North America “before the humans came south from the Ice Age”, aka before Indigenous Americans were in America, is somewhat invalidating.
It’s a sentiment that groups all humans, oppressors and their oppressed, into the same category: That all are insignificant compared to the ancient power around them. All their beliefs are equally wrong… regardless of who is forcing their beliefs on whom. Regardless of whose beliefs are being eradicated. Regardless of who stole from whom…
It shuts down the conversation when the answer is, “Well, the magic was on the land before any humans were, so…”
And that’s not the best stance for a book that previously explored early America’s colonialism to take.
It’s very much a privilege thing that I can acknowledge this and still have found so much enjoyment in this book. The care put into establishing Sutton’s setting and the period accuracy of the characters’ speech was so satisfying to me. And I loved the inherent spirit to all things in Abitha’s world, adding color to what was an austere, Puritan environment.