Reading roundup (Clockwork Angel and Aute trilogy)
2. Cassandra Clare, A Clockwork Angel (Infernal Devices #1) -- So, I wasn't going to read this series, because I got the impression that it was steampunk, and I'm not really a fan of steampunk. But aome was really enjoying the books, so I was considering changing my mind on this account, and then she gave me the first one as a New Year's present, which decided matters definitively. And I'm glad, because the book was actually quite fun! -- more fun that the last TMI book I read (City of Glass; I haven't started on the sequel trilogy), for example. One thing to be said for CC's books is that they're compulsively readable -- I skimmed a bit, but powered through it very quickly, and wanted to keep reading from chapter to chapter. Spoilers from here! One way in which I found this book superior to the TMI ones is... well, I don't know if CC's foreshadowing is getting subtler or if I'm getting dumber less astute in my reading, but there were a couple of twists that I actually *didn't* see coming this time -- I hadn't guessed that Nate was in with Mortmain, or the Mortmain was the Magister until partway through (even though *his* way of casting suspicion on de Quincy wasn't particularly subtle), and I haven't figured out what the deal is with Will, or guessed the nature of Jem's illness until it was revealed. So, points!
As for characters: Will is very much Jace 2.0 (or DT!Draco 3.0, I guess), though at least he has a different color scheme this time (a prettier one, if you ask me), but I find him even more offputting than Jace, to be honest, probably because of the way he treats Henry and Sophie. See, I can buy that he's being a jerk to people on purpose, to conceal his deep pain/keep everyone at arm's length/what the hell ever. However, that? Still makes him a jerk, QED. His relationship with Jem does seem like it should be promising, but I actually find Jem himself fairly boring, because he is so Good and Noble, so their devotion for each other does not redeem Will for me, though I do like him best when he's showing off for Jem or fretting about him. I guess I like Tessa, or at least don't dislike her, though for the life of me I cannot fathom her attraction to Will.
As per usual for CC's books, it's the secondary characters that actually interest me more. My favorite was Jessamine, who is nicely gray and nicely complex. On the one hand, she seems the stereotypical spoiled rich bitch, but there's definitely more to her than that (reading the book while watching Buffy s2 crystallized the thought that she is sort of a Victorian Shadowhunter!Cordelia -- self-centered and shallow, but not as vacuous and useless as one might expect). My favorite aspect of her is actually the fact that, you know, girl has a good point. You always read "olden days" fantasy in which spunky tomboys chafe at the restrictions placed on women by their oppresive society (and I love this trope played straight, to be sure, see, e.g. Alanna in Song of the Lioness, Arya Stark, or Felicity Worthington in the Gemma Doyle books), but it's actually very interesting to see the reverse -- a situation/subculture where a girl is expected to fight, whether she'd like to or not, and she'd really rather wear pretty dresses and host teas. I don't think I've seen that particular aspect explored in fantasy before, and it's neat to have a character like Jessamine to at least raise the question. I hope she will continue to be ambiguous and not be turned into an antagonist or learn the error of her ways and embrace the Shadowhunter lifestyle. I also quite liked Charlotte and Henry (though I do hope he becomes more than comic relief eventually), and Axel Mortmain (who is surprised? XP), and was sad when Thomas died. Oh, and Magnus, of course, is always a pleasure to see, and this book was no exception -- I just wish there'd been more of him.
I gather the worldbuilding is not very... thorough (even the afterword admits she changed some things in London's geography, for starters), but, whatever. The automatons were adequately creepy, though I refuse to believe that nobody had come up with the idea of using literal Shadowhunter blood to open the gates of the Institute before now. The thing that bugged me a bit was trying to understand how Tessa's power worked. It seemed that when she first changed, her mind was "transported" to the moment of death of the person she was changing into (though I'm not sure how/why this would be the case; for example, would it still work the same way if the object she was using as focus had not been on the person in question when they died?). Or is it the moment when the object stopped being the possession of the person in question, which may happen when they died or may happen in some other way? But Tessa also seems able to either move along the person's timeline or at least keep the thought of imminent death at bay, e.g. when she turns into the murdered girl to make her hands small enough to slip her ties when she tries to escape from the Dark Sisters. And what about the thing with Camilla? That seemed to be less getting in touch with past memories and more channeling of the actual Camilla, real-time. I suppose it could work slightly differently with the undead/someone who is still alive (in some sense, anyway -- still capable of generating new thoughts, say), but it felt more like an inconsistency in the worldbuilding to me.
So, anyway, fun read, I'll be picking up the next book when I see it, and am currently more inclined to read that than, say CoFA.
3. Anastasia Parfenova, Tantsuyuschaya s Aute
4. Anastasia Parfenova, Raspletayushie Snovideniya
5. Anastasia Parfenova, Obrekayuschie na Zhizn' -- When I started reading the first book, my (very favorable) impression was: it's as if Dragaera and Bujold's Shards of Honor had a baby and raised it in Amber. The resemblance (some intentional, I think, like the LMB stuff, others quite possibly coincidental) mostly faded after the first book, and was more a feature than a bug in the first, but it was both interesting how much it echoed other things I like and yet I also felt that the book was much, much more than just a series of linked homages (the way, say, Eragon was, to pick a glaring and non-flattering example). spoilers for all three books from here! The similarities to Shards are really quite striking (and apparently I'm not the only one to have made that connection):
[Spoilers for Shards of Honor. K, don't read! :)] The most obvious is the proposal scene, both in the suddenness and especialy in that the lady being proposed to asks the "since when?" question and receives a similar answer. The circumstances are different, Anteya and Cordelia are *quite* different characters (though Arrek was reminding me of Aral well before the scene). And of course there's the basic Enemy Mine setup where they start out as enemies but have to collaborate to survive and grow to respect each other. Eicharron in general seems quite Barrayaran (except for being technologically super-advanced instead of backwards), with the noble houses, emphasis on Honor and duty, and all that Vor stuff. The conflict between personal honor and duty is mentioned, and Arrek even has a first wife who committed suicide because of something he did. Arrek does seem a lot less damaged than Aral, but, well, possibly that's by virtue of being out of the line of inheritance, or not having General Piotr as a father, or Ges Vorrutyer for a boyfriend -- all of those could be significant factors. It's also interesting that the massacre and the bloody moniker are on Anteya's shoulders in this version of the romance -- although Arrek is still implicated in the death of a lot of people by the choice of opening the portals to Olivul's army, which ultimately led to the Epidemic and the death of Anteya's first husband. And, of course, the second part of the book is sort of Barrayar reversed -- it's Anteya's planet (or whatever) they go to and get enmeshed in the politics of (except Arrek mostly stays out of them). But there's still a civil war of sorts, and Anteya becomes Regent as a result. It's very interesting to view the two books side by side, is what I'm saying, basically. There are other things, too, like uterine replicators, and the way arrs make me think of Cetagandans a fair bit.
While I'm at it, I might as well talk about the Dragaera echoes I saw, too -- not plot, just bits of world-building in this case. There's the Elves-genetically-engineered-from-humans thing (though the el-in are, of course, much more different from humans than Dragaerans are), and the sentient weapons that used to be people thing (though realized quite differently, and without the soul-sucking aspect). The difference between Charodejstvo (which sounds a lot like sorcery -- powerful and fast, slinging a lot of energy around) and Zaklinatel'stvo (which sounds a lot like witchcraft -- requires preparation, can be fixed in an object to be used by someone else). And Arrek's watchtower thing with the portals on Eicharron reminded me quite a lot of Verra's Window in Castle Black. Oh, and there's reincarnation, too.
And some parts of the style reminded me of Amber hellrides. (But in general I had the sense occasionally that I was reading phrases translated from English, not just the sci-fi jargon, but some other stuff, too. But then again, I don't read in Russian much, so possibly that's just my mind playing tricks on me.)
But the worldbuilding of these books goes way, way beyond that, of course. The el-in are really a very interesting species -- quite alien, yet believably able to interact with humans since changeability and adaptation is what they do. Even Anteya's tendency to occasionally think like a human rather than an el-in could be explained by her five-year separation from El and the time she spent among humans, studying them -- and thus changing to be like them. The changeability is a very handy tool, since Anteya and the others can change themselves to behave in whatever fashion is needful (within certain parameters, of course) -- so, technically, there can be no such thing as OOC, but I never felt like this flexibility was abused -- the narrative still felt coherent, and so did the el-in characters. Or, another example -- when Anteya quite clearly forbids herself from thinking about what her mother and Viiala are planning when they implant a new gem in her forehead, while their intentions are quite clear to the reader -- Anteya doesn't come across as an idiot because it makes sense that el-in would learn not to wonder too deeply about things they understand it would be better for them not to know. But it doesn't come across as cop-out-y either. The habit of Anteya talking through things with herself or other people as an expositionary device worked less smoothly for me, but, points for trying. Anyway, I found el-in psychology and biology really fascinating, especially the revelation that an el-in child taken outside of El-onn would turn into an amorphous cloud, and Anteya periodically wondering things like, "Hmm, maybe I should get angry."
The el-in were especially cool, but I quite like the arrs/darais, also, and the citizens of Olivul started growing on me (to my surprise, since Anteya plain hates them in the first book) come book 2, when Sergey wins them over in preparation for the war, and then in book 3, when we actually get to meet them individually. I never became particularly attached to the individual Olivul characters, but I liked them en masse, their battle-readiness regardless of age, and their easy habit of admitting as individuals/citizens things like their living ships and the Amethyst Collibri and so on. The Wild Worlds seem quite promising, too, although less original than the other creations. In general, I don't like it when sci-fi and fantasy are mixed; this multiverse worked for me on the whole, but the Wild Worlds felt a bit too purely fantasy to be as interesting as the rest, I guess.
The worldbuilding is very cool, but the first and best thing I liked about the trilogy was Arrek. I mean: stoic grey-eyed warrior-healer-mage-aristocrat Magnificent Bastard with a partially self-inflicted dark past and occasional flashes of boyish charm -- he basically checks off like 90% of the leading man tropes I find attractive. With a set of attributes like that, he wouldn't even have had to be well written for me to love him, but I do think he was. I thought his flaws were both believably flaws and the sorts of flaws a personality and past like that would result in.
Other characters I liked to various degrees included: Anteya's father the dragon and auntie Vi, with her continuous attempts to flirt with Arrek and general Tyrell outlook on life. Zimnij, who, well, let's just say I really enjoyed his incessant bickering with Anteya and the standoff/tug-o'-war with Arrek in the end. Sergey the hypercompetent warrior-turned-sword. Tai, the young healer from Laesse, who I was hoping would stick around more. L'Ris, Anteya's voluble riani, who, ditto. Oh, and the demon Smotryaschij, whose courtship of Temino I quite enjoyed.
There were two fairly major characters who didn't work for me almost at all, for similar reasons -- Anteya's stepfather Raniel-Atero (though he became slightly more interesting upon the discovery that he was the Dark King's clone (or possibly vice versa), and Nefrit. The way it showed up for me is that both of them were described too glowingly and with not enough humour. K correctly pointed out that it might be because Anteya views them as teachers, and thus with greater respect. I'd thought it was just Anteya's crush on Nefrit (she does share quite a few similarities with Arrek :P), and after seeing her reaction to the Dark King, hey, maybe that's true for Raniel-Atero, too. But, anyway, Nefrit felt more like an idea / archetype, the superego there to bring Other-Anteya's rampaging id under control -- she never felt like a full-fledged character to me.
Anteya herself is an interesting case. She starts out being pretty alien, and she's so changeable, and she spends the bulk of books 2 and 3 not really being herself, being the Keeper, that it wasn't easy for me to get to know her as a character. And when she's herself, she is so full of self-loathing and self-doubt, which is not a lot of fun. But she really came through to me as a character in the end, in the last chapter of the last book, when she comes to the realization that she's been doing everything she can to avoid making any more decisions, and that's why she lets herself be manipulated into all sorts of things, but ultimately does make a very important one, as hard as it is. It was especially interesting to see her after the Keeper consciousness leaves her, because I don't think I've ever seen that done in fantasy -- we get a fair bit of apotheosis, but never the opposite, that I've seen, and it's such a fascinating effect to explore, setting down the mantle of near-godhood after many years and trying to find yourself again -- I think the book did that very well.
The first book was my favorite of the three, partly maybe because of the newness of the world, and the way the reader has to discover a lot of the rules for himself before we get to the infodumps, and partly because I guess I just like the Arrek-and-Anteya dealing with impossible situations storyline -- the part where they fight their way out of the underworld in book 3 was another favorite, so there's a definite pattern. And, of course, book 1 has the whole Enemy Mine thing going, which I love. I found the pacing less engrossing in books 2 and 3 -- the stuff before and in Laesse was pleasant but slow, with too much talk of archetypes that brought things to a halt, and book 3 definitely had a lot of powerful emotional stuff going on, but it felt overly drawn out. Although the plot of book 3 alternating between heartbreaking and hilarious, as summarized by ikel89:
Anteya: IMMA DIE DRRAMATICALLY, in a dignified fashion
Oikumena: LOLNOPE
Also, the habit of interspering the text with poems and songs in the second two books didn't work for me pretty much at all, with the possible exception of the last song. Like, I could see what Parfenova was trying to do with that, and it seems to be a Russian (genre?) thing, because Lukyanenko does this a lot, too, in the Watch books, but personally I find it to be distracting and detracting from the story. Ah well.
So: loved the first book and Arrek -- it's been a while since I so wholeheartedly enjoyed a new-to-me author and character. And it becomes especially impressing when considering the author was apparently 18 when she wrote it, whoa! Definitely liked the other two books, still, and totally respect some of the things they do very well, but would have probably liked them more if they consisted purely of Arrek + Anteya roadtrips. Hey, I never claimed to be highbrow, OK. Currently I'm trying to determine whether to read the prequel right away or take a break, as I think I might be hitting the diminishing returns stage with Parfenova. Who knows what I'll actually decide...
As for characters: Will is very much Jace 2.0 (or DT!Draco 3.0, I guess), though at least he has a different color scheme this time (a prettier one, if you ask me), but I find him even more offputting than Jace, to be honest, probably because of the way he treats Henry and Sophie. See, I can buy that he's being a jerk to people on purpose, to conceal his deep pain/keep everyone at arm's length/what the hell ever. However, that? Still makes him a jerk, QED. His relationship with Jem does seem like it should be promising, but I actually find Jem himself fairly boring, because he is so Good and Noble, so their devotion for each other does not redeem Will for me, though I do like him best when he's showing off for Jem or fretting about him. I guess I like Tessa, or at least don't dislike her, though for the life of me I cannot fathom her attraction to Will.
As per usual for CC's books, it's the secondary characters that actually interest me more. My favorite was Jessamine, who is nicely gray and nicely complex. On the one hand, she seems the stereotypical spoiled rich bitch, but there's definitely more to her than that (reading the book while watching Buffy s2 crystallized the thought that she is sort of a Victorian Shadowhunter!Cordelia -- self-centered and shallow, but not as vacuous and useless as one might expect). My favorite aspect of her is actually the fact that, you know, girl has a good point. You always read "olden days" fantasy in which spunky tomboys chafe at the restrictions placed on women by their oppresive society (and I love this trope played straight, to be sure, see, e.g. Alanna in Song of the Lioness, Arya Stark, or Felicity Worthington in the Gemma Doyle books), but it's actually very interesting to see the reverse -- a situation/subculture where a girl is expected to fight, whether she'd like to or not, and she'd really rather wear pretty dresses and host teas. I don't think I've seen that particular aspect explored in fantasy before, and it's neat to have a character like Jessamine to at least raise the question. I hope she will continue to be ambiguous and not be turned into an antagonist or learn the error of her ways and embrace the Shadowhunter lifestyle. I also quite liked Charlotte and Henry (though I do hope he becomes more than comic relief eventually), and Axel Mortmain (who is surprised? XP), and was sad when Thomas died. Oh, and Magnus, of course, is always a pleasure to see, and this book was no exception -- I just wish there'd been more of him.
I gather the worldbuilding is not very... thorough (even the afterword admits she changed some things in London's geography, for starters), but, whatever. The automatons were adequately creepy, though I refuse to believe that nobody had come up with the idea of using literal Shadowhunter blood to open the gates of the Institute before now. The thing that bugged me a bit was trying to understand how Tessa's power worked. It seemed that when she first changed, her mind was "transported" to the moment of death of the person she was changing into (though I'm not sure how/why this would be the case; for example, would it still work the same way if the object she was using as focus had not been on the person in question when they died?). Or is it the moment when the object stopped being the possession of the person in question, which may happen when they died or may happen in some other way? But Tessa also seems able to either move along the person's timeline or at least keep the thought of imminent death at bay, e.g. when she turns into the murdered girl to make her hands small enough to slip her ties when she tries to escape from the Dark Sisters. And what about the thing with Camilla? That seemed to be less getting in touch with past memories and more channeling of the actual Camilla, real-time. I suppose it could work slightly differently with the undead/someone who is still alive (in some sense, anyway -- still capable of generating new thoughts, say), but it felt more like an inconsistency in the worldbuilding to me.
So, anyway, fun read, I'll be picking up the next book when I see it, and am currently more inclined to read that than, say CoFA.
3. Anastasia Parfenova, Tantsuyuschaya s Aute
4. Anastasia Parfenova, Raspletayushie Snovideniya
5. Anastasia Parfenova, Obrekayuschie na Zhizn' -- When I started reading the first book, my (very favorable) impression was: it's as if Dragaera and Bujold's Shards of Honor had a baby and raised it in Amber. The resemblance (some intentional, I think, like the LMB stuff, others quite possibly coincidental) mostly faded after the first book, and was more a feature than a bug in the first, but it was both interesting how much it echoed other things I like and yet I also felt that the book was much, much more than just a series of linked homages (the way, say, Eragon was, to pick a glaring and non-flattering example). spoilers for all three books from here! The similarities to Shards are really quite striking (and apparently I'm not the only one to have made that connection):
[Spoilers for Shards of Honor. K, don't read! :)] The most obvious is the proposal scene, both in the suddenness and especialy in that the lady being proposed to asks the "since when?" question and receives a similar answer. The circumstances are different, Anteya and Cordelia are *quite* different characters (though Arrek was reminding me of Aral well before the scene). And of course there's the basic Enemy Mine setup where they start out as enemies but have to collaborate to survive and grow to respect each other. Eicharron in general seems quite Barrayaran (except for being technologically super-advanced instead of backwards), with the noble houses, emphasis on Honor and duty, and all that Vor stuff. The conflict between personal honor and duty is mentioned, and Arrek even has a first wife who committed suicide because of something he did. Arrek does seem a lot less damaged than Aral, but, well, possibly that's by virtue of being out of the line of inheritance, or not having General Piotr as a father, or Ges Vorrutyer for a boyfriend -- all of those could be significant factors. It's also interesting that the massacre and the bloody moniker are on Anteya's shoulders in this version of the romance -- although Arrek is still implicated in the death of a lot of people by the choice of opening the portals to Olivul's army, which ultimately led to the Epidemic and the death of Anteya's first husband. And, of course, the second part of the book is sort of Barrayar reversed -- it's Anteya's planet (or whatever) they go to and get enmeshed in the politics of (except Arrek mostly stays out of them). But there's still a civil war of sorts, and Anteya becomes Regent as a result. It's very interesting to view the two books side by side, is what I'm saying, basically. There are other things, too, like uterine replicators, and the way arrs make me think of Cetagandans a fair bit.
While I'm at it, I might as well talk about the Dragaera echoes I saw, too -- not plot, just bits of world-building in this case. There's the Elves-genetically-engineered-from-humans thing (though the el-in are, of course, much more different from humans than Dragaerans are), and the sentient weapons that used to be people thing (though realized quite differently, and without the soul-sucking aspect). The difference between Charodejstvo (which sounds a lot like sorcery -- powerful and fast, slinging a lot of energy around) and Zaklinatel'stvo (which sounds a lot like witchcraft -- requires preparation, can be fixed in an object to be used by someone else). And Arrek's watchtower thing with the portals on Eicharron reminded me quite a lot of Verra's Window in Castle Black. Oh, and there's reincarnation, too.
And some parts of the style reminded me of Amber hellrides. (But in general I had the sense occasionally that I was reading phrases translated from English, not just the sci-fi jargon, but some other stuff, too. But then again, I don't read in Russian much, so possibly that's just my mind playing tricks on me.)
But the worldbuilding of these books goes way, way beyond that, of course. The el-in are really a very interesting species -- quite alien, yet believably able to interact with humans since changeability and adaptation is what they do. Even Anteya's tendency to occasionally think like a human rather than an el-in could be explained by her five-year separation from El and the time she spent among humans, studying them -- and thus changing to be like them. The changeability is a very handy tool, since Anteya and the others can change themselves to behave in whatever fashion is needful (within certain parameters, of course) -- so, technically, there can be no such thing as OOC, but I never felt like this flexibility was abused -- the narrative still felt coherent, and so did the el-in characters. Or, another example -- when Anteya quite clearly forbids herself from thinking about what her mother and Viiala are planning when they implant a new gem in her forehead, while their intentions are quite clear to the reader -- Anteya doesn't come across as an idiot because it makes sense that el-in would learn not to wonder too deeply about things they understand it would be better for them not to know. But it doesn't come across as cop-out-y either. The habit of Anteya talking through things with herself or other people as an expositionary device worked less smoothly for me, but, points for trying. Anyway, I found el-in psychology and biology really fascinating, especially the revelation that an el-in child taken outside of El-onn would turn into an amorphous cloud, and Anteya periodically wondering things like, "Hmm, maybe I should get angry."
The el-in were especially cool, but I quite like the arrs/darais, also, and the citizens of Olivul started growing on me (to my surprise, since Anteya plain hates them in the first book) come book 2, when Sergey wins them over in preparation for the war, and then in book 3, when we actually get to meet them individually. I never became particularly attached to the individual Olivul characters, but I liked them en masse, their battle-readiness regardless of age, and their easy habit of admitting as individuals/citizens things like their living ships and the Amethyst Collibri and so on. The Wild Worlds seem quite promising, too, although less original than the other creations. In general, I don't like it when sci-fi and fantasy are mixed; this multiverse worked for me on the whole, but the Wild Worlds felt a bit too purely fantasy to be as interesting as the rest, I guess.
The worldbuilding is very cool, but the first and best thing I liked about the trilogy was Arrek. I mean: stoic grey-eyed warrior-healer-mage-aristocrat Magnificent Bastard with a partially self-inflicted dark past and occasional flashes of boyish charm -- he basically checks off like 90% of the leading man tropes I find attractive. With a set of attributes like that, he wouldn't even have had to be well written for me to love him, but I do think he was. I thought his flaws were both believably flaws and the sorts of flaws a personality and past like that would result in.
Other characters I liked to various degrees included: Anteya's father the dragon and auntie Vi, with her continuous attempts to flirt with Arrek and general Tyrell outlook on life. Zimnij, who, well, let's just say I really enjoyed his incessant bickering with Anteya and the standoff/tug-o'-war with Arrek in the end. Sergey the hypercompetent warrior-turned-sword. Tai, the young healer from Laesse, who I was hoping would stick around more. L'Ris, Anteya's voluble riani, who, ditto. Oh, and the demon Smotryaschij, whose courtship of Temino I quite enjoyed.
There were two fairly major characters who didn't work for me almost at all, for similar reasons -- Anteya's stepfather Raniel-Atero (though he became slightly more interesting upon the discovery that he was the Dark King's clone (or possibly vice versa), and Nefrit. The way it showed up for me is that both of them were described too glowingly and with not enough humour. K correctly pointed out that it might be because Anteya views them as teachers, and thus with greater respect. I'd thought it was just Anteya's crush on Nefrit (she does share quite a few similarities with Arrek :P), and after seeing her reaction to the Dark King, hey, maybe that's true for Raniel-Atero, too. But, anyway, Nefrit felt more like an idea / archetype, the superego there to bring Other-Anteya's rampaging id under control -- she never felt like a full-fledged character to me.
Anteya herself is an interesting case. She starts out being pretty alien, and she's so changeable, and she spends the bulk of books 2 and 3 not really being herself, being the Keeper, that it wasn't easy for me to get to know her as a character. And when she's herself, she is so full of self-loathing and self-doubt, which is not a lot of fun. But she really came through to me as a character in the end, in the last chapter of the last book, when she comes to the realization that she's been doing everything she can to avoid making any more decisions, and that's why she lets herself be manipulated into all sorts of things, but ultimately does make a very important one, as hard as it is. It was especially interesting to see her after the Keeper consciousness leaves her, because I don't think I've ever seen that done in fantasy -- we get a fair bit of apotheosis, but never the opposite, that I've seen, and it's such a fascinating effect to explore, setting down the mantle of near-godhood after many years and trying to find yourself again -- I think the book did that very well.
The first book was my favorite of the three, partly maybe because of the newness of the world, and the way the reader has to discover a lot of the rules for himself before we get to the infodumps, and partly because I guess I just like the Arrek-and-Anteya dealing with impossible situations storyline -- the part where they fight their way out of the underworld in book 3 was another favorite, so there's a definite pattern. And, of course, book 1 has the whole Enemy Mine thing going, which I love. I found the pacing less engrossing in books 2 and 3 -- the stuff before and in Laesse was pleasant but slow, with too much talk of archetypes that brought things to a halt, and book 3 definitely had a lot of powerful emotional stuff going on, but it felt overly drawn out. Although the plot of book 3 alternating between heartbreaking and hilarious, as summarized by ikel89:
Anteya: IMMA DIE DRRAMATICALLY, in a dignified fashion
Oikumena: LOLNOPE
Also, the habit of interspering the text with poems and songs in the second two books didn't work for me pretty much at all, with the possible exception of the last song. Like, I could see what Parfenova was trying to do with that, and it seems to be a Russian (genre?) thing, because Lukyanenko does this a lot, too, in the Watch books, but personally I find it to be distracting and detracting from the story. Ah well.
So: loved the first book and Arrek -- it's been a while since I so wholeheartedly enjoyed a new-to-me author and character. And it becomes especially impressing when considering the author was apparently 18 when she wrote it, whoa! Definitely liked the other two books, still, and totally respect some of the things they do very well, but would have probably liked them more if they consisted purely of Arrek + Anteya roadtrips. Hey, I never claimed to be highbrow, OK. Currently I'm trying to determine whether to read the prequel right away or take a break, as I think I might be hitting the diminishing returns stage with Parfenova. Who knows what I'll actually decide...