Reading roundup

[hamsterwoman]

Still on a reading kick, as a means of not thinking about all the other crap.

24. Cinda Williams Chima, The Warrior Heir -- This was a random YA book I picked up just because I felt like some YA fantasy, and I was actually pleasantly surprised (although, admittedly, my expectations going in were pretty low).

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

The whole issue of generations is rather muddled, anyway, by the fact that if Yama is "half as old as the Celestial City," then obviously his parents, grandparents, or both, had passed through several different incarnations before he was born.

Yeah... but, hmm, I guess what that allows one to deduce is more-or-less the point at which Sam bailed from the Celestial City -- about halfway through the history, because presumably he did it while Yama was (chronologically) young, because he and Jan knew him back then, yet he doesn't seem to have been around for when Yama came into his own and started designing all this stuff. Except... do you think there's more than one incarnation for Sam between when he left Celestial City and chapter 2? Because if not, that's just the span of one human life and-- No, that doesn't work, there's got to be more time than that, to make certain things like a bunch of new gods being born and ascending and the proliferation of all the people. So, I suppose, Sam must have been able to reincarnate successfully without the problems with the psych probe and Lords of Karma and all that a bunch of times before the new regime made difficulties for him? The timeline is incredibly confusing...

By the way, was there ever any mention of where the healthy, uninhabited bodies came from?

No... do you think it's the same place where Nirriti gets his zombies, except he doesn't stick a soul in them? 'Cos Renfrew says something about them being "not born of a man or a woman"... So, I dunno -- cloning? I guess not, since they all look different. Some kind of eggs harvested and fertilized in vitro and grown in vats? I suppose that's the only likely explanation.

But, like, it says that Yama "found [Sam] a body both sturdy and in perfect health" -- so, like, where? Just lying under a bush somewhere?

And, I guess, Masters of the Wheel could cultivate bodies of different ages, but it seems less efficient to grow a middle-aged body (like the one Yama got after his accident), 'cos then you have to do the transfer more often. And then you've got a child's body used for transfer, too, with Kali/Murga.

So, I dunno, maybe in emergency cases they harvest them rather than grow, like taking a newly dead person and using their body for transfer?

In the Murugan scene that sets up Sam's body snatching, the Lord of Karma says "It is a body loaned to you by the Great Wheel" -- so, perhaps, the middle-aged body was a body that someone like Murugan had worn and didn't want anymore, so he had returned it to the Great Wheel and it was available. And the child's body was one that wasn't quite ready yet but Yama used anyway because it was an emergency? I dunno...

The nickname should be related either to his real name or to his personality, but not both...)

Yeah... So maybe this is just an oversight on Zelazny's part, trying to make everything fit too well...

he defends Kali by saying that "despite her strength, she is not an unjust goddess."

Yeah, I have to agree... that's got to be the "love is blind" that's talking. Yama is actually just, even to his enemies -- and even merciful, like when he lets Taraka go the first time they face each other. Kali? Not so much...

it's hard to understand why all these men are trailing after her everywhere. [...] And she tortures the heck out of Yama, which makes me dislike her as a person but adore her as a part of the narrative.

Yeah... although it's not exactly like they're spoiled for choice. Parvati, who sounds kind of interesting, is off on the eastern continent somewhere, and the remaining goddesses sound awfully dull, if fairly vapid Ratri is the most pivotal one among them.

I can see Yama's attraction to Kali, actually. He thinks she's like him, even though she really isn't. Part of his idealistic charm, really. (Or, in spite of what he tells Sam when Sam is taken prisoner -- "Unfortunately, I'm a sadist" -- he is actually a masochist. Or, possibly, both.) Sam... I suppose he was different as Kalkin, and it was the fierce, wild side of her that appealed to him then. And in Brahma's case it's probably just sublimated jealousy.