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Oct. 12th, 2012 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsPretty much everything I could possibly say about The Language of Power is spoilery, except for the general sense of agony at having to settle in for the long, long wait because there is NO MORE yet. AHHHHH.
So here's my spoilery initial reaction, largely as cut-and-pasted from a comment I leftnextian.
I spent a significant portion the book going "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DEMONS?" I feel like Rowan has not actually faced this problem properly yet. But I do really, really love the idea of EMPOWERING THE TOWNS to enact their own resistance. I also kind of love how it looks for all intents and purposes like she is going to pull the "male intellectual companion --> deep betrayal!" thing and then turns it straight around on its head. Everything with Will is suitably complex and fantastic. And oh, man, the scene with the dragons! WHAT A BRILLIANT SET PIECE. I do really love how a lot of the technology is neither obvious nor intuitive, which would be the easy way to go about it, because of course it's evolved and changed from what we use -- and from the descriptions you can't look immediately at the dragons in Book 1 and say "ROBOTS!"
I also love how clearly you can see how much development Rowan has gone through from the first book; first-book Rowan would be aghast at all the times Rowan casually pulls her ring off her finger to hide her identity, accepts that an extremely hedged truth is not the same thing as a lie and does not require instant bannination, and deals with a distressing moral situation by going, "well, it's complicated!"
Also . . . people, tell me, is it wrong to ship Rowan and Will? My mind says maybe yes, and also that's not what the books are about at all, but my heart, like unto the entire village of Donner, says GET IT GIRL.
Spoilery speculation/commiseration party in the comments? GO GO GO.
So here's my spoilery initial reaction, largely as cut-and-pasted from a comment I left
nextian.I spent a significant portion the book going "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DEMONS?" I feel like Rowan has not actually faced this problem properly yet. But I do really, really love the idea of EMPOWERING THE TOWNS to enact their own resistance. I also kind of love how it looks for all intents and purposes like she is going to pull the "male intellectual companion --> deep betrayal!" thing and then turns it straight around on its head. Everything with Will is suitably complex and fantastic. And oh, man, the scene with the dragons! WHAT A BRILLIANT SET PIECE. I do really love how a lot of the technology is neither obvious nor intuitive, which would be the easy way to go about it, because of course it's evolved and changed from what we use -- and from the descriptions you can't look immediately at the dragons in Book 1 and say "ROBOTS!"
I also love how clearly you can see how much development Rowan has gone through from the first book; first-book Rowan would be aghast at all the times Rowan casually pulls her ring off her finger to hide her identity, accepts that an extremely hedged truth is not the same thing as a lie and does not require instant bannination, and deals with a distressing moral situation by going, "well, it's complicated!"
Also . . . people, tell me, is it wrong to ship Rowan and Will? My mind says maybe yes, and also that's not what the books are about at all, but my heart, like unto the entire village of Donner, says GET IT GIRL.
Spoilery speculation/commiseration party in the comments? GO GO GO.
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Date: 2012-10-13 02:32 am (UTC)I think the demons have just been put aside for the moment, which is frustrating but not incomprehensible.
My ship is kind of Rowan/SCIENCE, also my backbrain is convinced he's still a baby, but he's not actually so I'm not going to say you're WRONG.
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Date: 2012-10-13 02:48 am (UTC)I feel like the demon thing emphatically has to be faced in a subsequent book, and I really, really want a proper conversation with Bel about it. Perhaps that is the book that she realized she had to write between this and what-will-be-book six? I live in hope! (I mean I also live in hope of ANYTHING.)
ROWAN/SCIENCE is still my ship above all but fortunately Science is A-OK with polyamory.
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Date: 2012-10-13 04:58 pm (UTC)And now, a joke Chad likes to tell (and has since before we got together):
A physicist, a biologist, and a chemist are talking about relationships and marriage. The chemist says that marriage is a bond and bonds aren't meant to be broken, so monogamy is the way to go. The biologist says it's all about genetic diversity so you should sleep with as many people as you can. The physicist says the optimum configuration is to have a spouse and a lover and to have them both know about the other.
The others say, what, why would you want that?!
That way, when I'm not with one of them, they'll think I'm with the other. And then I could go into the lab and get some work done.
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Date: 2012-10-14 07:00 am (UTC)what a gr8 way to put it, they banhammer folks that don't answer up
it's three in the morning
rowan/bel 4 lyfe
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Date: 2012-10-16 08:28 pm (UTC)Rowan/Bel bffs forever! I reallu like them as best important friends but I don't tend to think of them as sexy friends.
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Date: 2012-10-16 08:29 pm (UTC)also: lololol