(no subject)
Sorry for the silence yet again - I have been settling into a house-sitting gig (a very, very cold house-sitting gig), trying to get some actual thesis work done (not very successfully), and reading the first book of the Coldfire trilogy, Black Sun Rising.
Guess which of these things I have feelings about. Go on, guess. XD
So, the setting of this book is a world settled by colonists from Earth which is actually full of magic and extremely fast evolution, which is a little weird, but overall pretty good. The general premise is that Damien Vryce, adorable badass paladin, this sorceress girl named Ciani he likes who loses her memory and talent, and her BFF Senzei/Zen have to team up to get her memory back with the Satan figure of Damien's religion and terror of the night, Gerald Tarrant.
... yes, the paladin is named Damien and Satan is Gerald. Go on, bask in it, because I sure am. It got to the point where I was legit disappointed every time someone referred to Gerald by any of his other names or titles, because come on, you could be calling him Gerald! GERALD. What a great name for Satan.
As you can imagine, Damien hates working with Gerald the way I hate dog-eared pages in books (INTENSE, ATAVISTIC LOATHING), because Gerald is an objectively horrible person guilty of numerous terrible crimes and also a bit of a drama queen; Gerald is mostly amused by the situation, but also pretty irritated that he's getting dragged along in this mess because he made a promise and he has to honor all of his promises as part of his various deals to be immortal and powerful, so there's a lot of tension between the two of them that's not helped by the fact that Ciani, lacking her memories, ends up being kinda into Gerald. (To Damien's credit, he never makes a big deal about it outside of his own head and acknowledges that he has no business being jealous, but it's still another source of tension.) Nonetheless, they manage to work together tolerably well, save each other's lives a couple of times, tentatively trust each other a little, and incidentally establish via blood-drinking a soul link that can only be severed by death so that Gerald can feed off Damien.*
Do I ship it? ARE YOU KIDDING ME, I SHIP THE FUCK OUT OF IT. This ship had me at Damien wondering how he could bind Gerald to help him and only hit more of my kinks from there on in.
Anyway, at the climax of the book Gerald takes a big and almost certainly self-sacrificing risk to get the rest of the party (at this point consisting of Damien, Ciani, and a native of the planet named Hesseth, as Zen got tragically offed) to safety and release Ciani's memories; it works, and there is much rejoicing, but also a little regret on Damien's part. Well, until Gerald shows up at the post-victory celebrations to say hi (but only to Damien, everyone else is busy partying), at which point Damien is both disappointed that Gerald didn't die and also secretly relieved because SHIPPING reasons, okay, shut up. He lets Gerald in on some stuff they've figured out since his "death," namely that the minions of the big evil sorceress they defeated are actually from some continent that no one has ever returned from, and says that he's organizing an expedition to go check it out and Gerald is invited. Gerald basically laughs in his face and is like "FUCK NO, not after the shit I've been through on this trip already, I'm going home to my nice cozy Lair of Evil." (To be fair, he did go through a lot of shit, like, I don't know, GETTING BURNED ALIVE FOR EIGHT DAYS STRAIGHT.) Damien shrugs it off and says fine, whatever, but Gerald is still invited, they exchange farewells, and Gerald fucks off back to his Lair of Evil to heal up and go back to terrorizing attractive young women (see previous footnote).
After Gerald is better, the demon who served the evil sorceress they defeated shows up at his lair to try and make nice with an offering, and Gerald is like, "Sure, after all this recuperating I could go for a nice snack." He goes after the girl the demon provided, thinking "YES FINALLY I CAN BE UNREPENTANTLY EVIL AND DEVOUR HER LIKE OH YOU HAVE TO BE SHITTING ME" - because the girl is someone he'd promised not to hurt way back at the beginning, on a whim, so if he devours her like the demon wanted he'd be fucked. And the girl is all, "Oh, it's you! You're so nice and charming and I feel so safe with you," and Gerald is like, "OH FUCK ME, just - look, just go home and don't tell anyone about this, okay, this has to be some kind of fucking joke."
The final scene of the book is Damien waiting at the docks, arguing with the captain of the ship to just wait one more hour, and after the captain stalks off, who should appear but Gerald, stalking down the road furiously and going "IF YOU EVEN BEGIN TO SAY 'I TOLD YOU SO' I WILL SINK THIS BOAT TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA AND SWIM HOME IF I HAVE TO, SO HELP ME GOD" and Damien very nobly does not say "I told you so," and then the book ends on the promise of Damien and Gerald's Road Trip (To a Land of Unknown Evil).
*Gerald can drink blood, but mainly lives off people's fear and terror. Like I said - an objectively horrible person.
Now I just need the next book to get in my hands as of yesterday, damn it.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth - read the original post here: http://hokuton-punch.dreamwidth.org/1000006.html .
Guess which of these things I have feelings about. Go on, guess. XD
So, the setting of this book is a world settled by colonists from Earth which is actually full of magic and extremely fast evolution, which is a little weird, but overall pretty good. The general premise is that Damien Vryce, adorable badass paladin, this sorceress girl named Ciani he likes who loses her memory and talent, and her BFF Senzei/Zen have to team up to get her memory back with the Satan figure of Damien's religion and terror of the night, Gerald Tarrant.
... yes, the paladin is named Damien and Satan is Gerald. Go on, bask in it, because I sure am. It got to the point where I was legit disappointed every time someone referred to Gerald by any of his other names or titles, because come on, you could be calling him Gerald! GERALD. What a great name for Satan.
As you can imagine, Damien hates working with Gerald the way I hate dog-eared pages in books (INTENSE, ATAVISTIC LOATHING), because Gerald is an objectively horrible person guilty of numerous terrible crimes and also a bit of a drama queen; Gerald is mostly amused by the situation, but also pretty irritated that he's getting dragged along in this mess because he made a promise and he has to honor all of his promises as part of his various deals to be immortal and powerful, so there's a lot of tension between the two of them that's not helped by the fact that Ciani, lacking her memories, ends up being kinda into Gerald. (To Damien's credit, he never makes a big deal about it outside of his own head and acknowledges that he has no business being jealous, but it's still another source of tension.) Nonetheless, they manage to work together tolerably well, save each other's lives a couple of times, tentatively trust each other a little, and incidentally establish via blood-drinking a soul link that can only be severed by death so that Gerald can feed off Damien.*
Do I ship it? ARE YOU KIDDING ME, I SHIP THE FUCK OUT OF IT. This ship had me at Damien wondering how he could bind Gerald to help him and only hit more of my kinks from there on in.
Anyway, at the climax of the book Gerald takes a big and almost certainly self-sacrificing risk to get the rest of the party (at this point consisting of Damien, Ciani, and a native of the planet named Hesseth, as Zen got tragically offed) to safety and release Ciani's memories; it works, and there is much rejoicing, but also a little regret on Damien's part. Well, until Gerald shows up at the post-victory celebrations to say hi (but only to Damien, everyone else is busy partying), at which point Damien is both disappointed that Gerald didn't die and also secretly relieved because SHIPPING reasons, okay, shut up. He lets Gerald in on some stuff they've figured out since his "death," namely that the minions of the big evil sorceress they defeated are actually from some continent that no one has ever returned from, and says that he's organizing an expedition to go check it out and Gerald is invited. Gerald basically laughs in his face and is like "FUCK NO, not after the shit I've been through on this trip already, I'm going home to my nice cozy Lair of Evil." (To be fair, he did go through a lot of shit, like, I don't know, GETTING BURNED ALIVE FOR EIGHT DAYS STRAIGHT.) Damien shrugs it off and says fine, whatever, but Gerald is still invited, they exchange farewells, and Gerald fucks off back to his Lair of Evil to heal up and go back to terrorizing attractive young women (see previous footnote).
After Gerald is better, the demon who served the evil sorceress they defeated shows up at his lair to try and make nice with an offering, and Gerald is like, "Sure, after all this recuperating I could go for a nice snack." He goes after the girl the demon provided, thinking "YES FINALLY I CAN BE UNREPENTANTLY EVIL AND DEVOUR HER LIKE OH YOU HAVE TO BE SHITTING ME" - because the girl is someone he'd promised not to hurt way back at the beginning, on a whim, so if he devours her like the demon wanted he'd be fucked. And the girl is all, "Oh, it's you! You're so nice and charming and I feel so safe with you," and Gerald is like, "OH FUCK ME, just - look, just go home and don't tell anyone about this, okay, this has to be some kind of fucking joke."
The final scene of the book is Damien waiting at the docks, arguing with the captain of the ship to just wait one more hour, and after the captain stalks off, who should appear but Gerald, stalking down the road furiously and going "IF YOU EVEN BEGIN TO SAY 'I TOLD YOU SO' I WILL SINK THIS BOAT TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA AND SWIM HOME IF I HAVE TO, SO HELP ME GOD" and Damien very nobly does not say "I told you so," and then the book ends on the promise of Damien and Gerald's Road Trip (To a Land of Unknown Evil).
*Gerald can drink blood, but mainly lives off people's fear and terror. Like I said - an objectively horrible person.
Now I just need the next book to get in my hands as of yesterday, damn it.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth - read the original post here: http://hokuton-punch.dreamwidth.org/1000006.html .