The ending situation is neither entirely satisfactory nor entirely stable, so there may be room for more books, although I wouldn't count on it. One of my other favorite series, Cherryh's Foreigner series, started as a standalone novel, expanded to a three book series, is now up to 21 books. One can hope.
This series seems to have 2 elements that I don’t understand why readers like it so much. 1. Magic. Lots of magic. What’s wrong with normal human rules? 2. An Armageddon type feel, with the reader feeling like one of the survivors. Why are we attracted to Armageddon?
Ok. A boarding school. What about the boarding schools created to assimilate or annihilate native peoples? That’s actually a real tale that needs to be told and would satisfy some of the same elements while teaching empathy toward other humans.
Also, with my prior comment - Evan ….you review the book in an interesting and readable way. Just to clarify. My comment isn’t to criticize you in any way.
Hi, thanks for the review; I'm enjoying your particular narrative-dissection lens!
I have to disagree with your first (and main) critique: you write "Unfortunately, to be able to wrap up the central moral conflict in one book, she simplifies it from how it's been presented earlier. ..." As you note, this isn't simplification-by-forgetting or other authorial negligence (probably!) , it's simplification-for-plot resolution. Any path for resolving the more fundamental ethic questions (that I can think of, at least...) mess around with the tidiness of the finale. At the very least; they'd force it into overlength.
You can argue that this is precisely the author's job - to solve this, and tidily - but I strongly disagree. Fiction's job may be to raise and elaborate the issues of life, but it isn't to solve them. In fact, IMhO fictional solutions by their essential arena will (almost?) never translate to IRL. And when they do, it's either because they're simple, or in weirdly specific (and often fantastical*) scenarios.
And this issue is (imo?) a trend across fiction. For example one of the classics of "SciFi&F-with-deep-philosophy" is Dune, which explicitly engages with fundamental questions (eg heroism, societal viability, ecology, "god emperors" who rule immorally for moral goals...) - without answering any of them.
Yeah, we can argue about this, but I've never seen a coherent explanation of Dune's answers. And worse, there's a lot of "Hwi's was personified Good, so attracted to Leto II's basic Goodness" etc etc. I doubt Herbert believed all these simplistic conceptual interrelationships actually transfer to IRL solutions. But they make good fiction, (and arguably even deepen the philosophical implications of the questions raised).
* (hmm. maybe that's why the genre is so good for raising the issues... I mean this seriously.)
P.S. Have I successfully blocked my e-mail address from showing? I'm finding substack's interface unintuitive, and that's a priority for me.
The ending situation is neither entirely satisfactory nor entirely stable, so there may be room for more books, although I wouldn't count on it. One of my other favorite series, Cherryh's Foreigner series, started as a standalone novel, expanded to a three book series, is now up to 21 books. One can hope.
This series seems to have 2 elements that I don’t understand why readers like it so much. 1. Magic. Lots of magic. What’s wrong with normal human rules? 2. An Armageddon type feel, with the reader feeling like one of the survivors. Why are we attracted to Armageddon?
Ok. A boarding school. What about the boarding schools created to assimilate or annihilate native peoples? That’s actually a real tale that needs to be told and would satisfy some of the same elements while teaching empathy toward other humans.
Also, with my prior comment - Evan ….you review the book in an interesting and readable way. Just to clarify. My comment isn’t to criticize you in any way.
Hi, thanks for the review; I'm enjoying your particular narrative-dissection lens!
I have to disagree with your first (and main) critique: you write "Unfortunately, to be able to wrap up the central moral conflict in one book, she simplifies it from how it's been presented earlier. ..." As you note, this isn't simplification-by-forgetting or other authorial negligence (probably!) , it's simplification-for-plot resolution. Any path for resolving the more fundamental ethic questions (that I can think of, at least...) mess around with the tidiness of the finale. At the very least; they'd force it into overlength.
You can argue that this is precisely the author's job - to solve this, and tidily - but I strongly disagree. Fiction's job may be to raise and elaborate the issues of life, but it isn't to solve them. In fact, IMhO fictional solutions by their essential arena will (almost?) never translate to IRL. And when they do, it's either because they're simple, or in weirdly specific (and often fantastical*) scenarios.
And this issue is (imo?) a trend across fiction. For example one of the classics of "SciFi&F-with-deep-philosophy" is Dune, which explicitly engages with fundamental questions (eg heroism, societal viability, ecology, "god emperors" who rule immorally for moral goals...) - without answering any of them.
Yeah, we can argue about this, but I've never seen a coherent explanation of Dune's answers. And worse, there's a lot of "Hwi's was personified Good, so attracted to Leto II's basic Goodness" etc etc. I doubt Herbert believed all these simplistic conceptual interrelationships actually transfer to IRL solutions. But they make good fiction, (and arguably even deepen the philosophical implications of the questions raised).
* (hmm. maybe that's why the genre is so good for raising the issues... I mean this seriously.)
P.S. Have I successfully blocked my e-mail address from showing? I'm finding substack's interface unintuitive, and that's a priority for me.