Trudi Canavan: Voice of the Gods
From Age of the Five trilogy. Earlier books are Priestess of the White and Last of the Wilds.
The first that comes to mind while reading is that if you absolutely want to make two religions, don't - I repeat do not - make them identical in all but names. It makes you seem lazy, not ingenious. The similarities between the Circlians and the Pentadrians annoyed me most of the books. In retrospect it was a really good idea on the author's point of view. It made a lot less explaining required in the end. On the other hand, at least I caught on her grand scheme in the beginning of the book, so the ending wasn't all that surprising. I'm sure that I'm not alone in this.
I also think that one of Canavan's problems is the amount of characters she creates. She had five gods on each side, each supposedly important to the plot, the Whites (that's five more) and the head honchos of the Pentadrians (+5 characters) and then the Wilds and the random characters... Only the protagonist, Mirar and Emerahl got any "screen time"! Chaia had a few lines in the whole story and otherwise was just your generic babe magnet (and even that was told, not shown, to the readers, which is almost unbelievable nowadays -.-) and Huan snarled at the protagonist a couple of times but otherwise her rage and selfishness were left unattended. The other three gods are just names hanging around. Nothing is told of them, they don't seem to do anything or have much interest in humans, even though it is deliberately said that they are just as involved in the whole godly affair as Chaia and Huan. I think that Canavan should have just created religions with two gods. It would have saved her the trouble of creating three extra gods per religion (which would obviously make no difference since she barely created them even now) and the readers the embarrassment of reading of religions with five gods where only two of the gods are active.
On the other hand, it might have been deliberate to leave the Wilds' past and real names and ages unknown. They are supposed to be old as Heaven and secretive and mysterious. It would be difficult to appear that if your whole life story was posted on the local newspaper. However, I'm still not sure whether I can actually believe that. Considering how many threads Black Magician trilogy left untied in the end, I wouldn't be too surprised if it was just her style. At least it gives a lot of fodder for fanfiction if you like that. I would be on cloud nine if she published an anthology of short stories where she ties the last threads and perhaps tells more of the characters.
With so many characters comes a rare possibility to discard even the important side characters and not haul them around and make transparent excuses for them to follow the heroine like a kicked puppy. In my opinion it makes the world more convincing and gives it an extra shine. When there's no unplausible loyal sidekick, it feels like the people actually exist also when the heroine isn't talking to them. Canavan walks on a thin thread of forgetting minor characters and having them popping up all the time and she does it with style. Even though she obviously has more characters than she cared to breathe life into, she handles the selected few she did well.
Another unusual thing in Voice of the Gods is that Canavan actually gives the "villainous" side a more eleborate reason than being inherently evil. In too many fantasy books the hero's side might have a few corrupt kings, politicians or mercenaries, but otherwise they are good, whereas on the other side everyone is simply an evil and soulless monster. Both the Circlians and the Pentadrians are shown to have their own desires and hopes, delusions and beliefs. It's scary in its realism. Nothing makes war such an unbearable thought as seeing your enemy as humane. When you look at it, the Circlians and Pentadrians are both equally obsessed with their gods and neither side can be seen as less fanatic than the other. Both sides are given equally depe motives and not just a desire to make everyone else's life miserable. I think that the books blurb should include a text: "Everything may not have a reason, but everyone definitely does." Too bad I wasn't writing the blurb...
Canavan gets bonus points for never excusing Chaia for being a womanizing, cruel and shallow tyrant. She never claims him to have had a difficult childhood, bad experiences with a past love or anything. Chaia never denies Mirar's accuses of detsroying the lives of the young women he slept with. He even says he helps Auraya only because he thinks she's pretty and happens to have caught his fancy at the moment. Okay, he also mentions of being tired of eternal life, but I think that isn't his main reason.
Canavan gets a huge minus for making Juran - the intelligent, natural born leader hero Juran - needing a god to give him a step by step guide on how to live without gods. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that. I can't see it fitting with Juran's personality and character. On the other hand, it gets effectively across how weird it is for people who have always relied on gods to suddenly live without any invisible mean of support or source of moral code.
It's difficult to say whether Canavan is pro-religion or anti-religion in this trilogy. Sometimes she clearly critisizes religious zealots and sometimes she seems to look up to them. She also adds Maker - a belief that one god created the world - into the mix, which makes her stance even more shifty. The whole trilogy could be a comment on why the world religions today are monotheistic, opposed to large pantheons of for example Greek gods. The Pentadrian gods and the Circlian gods with their inside fighting and scheming and consorting with mortals could easily be connected to the Greek gods whereas the Maker has a lot in common with Christian god. By making the Maker to survive while the other religions perish, Canavan could be makig her point of view clear. On the other hand, the trilogy could be just fiction and not a drawn-out argument why polytheistic religions will collapse in their own impossibility.
Yes, I know, I should have written this last April when I read the book and not almost half a year later. -.-' I made notes however and wrote this based on them, so I'm really sorry if I got some details wrong. It's just my memory failing - I'm not really that stupid! Really. ^^
The first that comes to mind while reading is that if you absolutely want to make two religions, don't - I repeat do not - make them identical in all but names. It makes you seem lazy, not ingenious. The similarities between the Circlians and the Pentadrians annoyed me most of the books. In retrospect it was a really good idea on the author's point of view. It made a lot less explaining required in the end. On the other hand, at least I caught on her grand scheme in the beginning of the book, so the ending wasn't all that surprising. I'm sure that I'm not alone in this.
I also think that one of Canavan's problems is the amount of characters she creates. She had five gods on each side, each supposedly important to the plot, the Whites (that's five more) and the head honchos of the Pentadrians (+5 characters) and then the Wilds and the random characters... Only the protagonist, Mirar and Emerahl got any "screen time"! Chaia had a few lines in the whole story and otherwise was just your generic babe magnet (and even that was told, not shown, to the readers, which is almost unbelievable nowadays -.-) and Huan snarled at the protagonist a couple of times but otherwise her rage and selfishness were left unattended. The other three gods are just names hanging around. Nothing is told of them, they don't seem to do anything or have much interest in humans, even though it is deliberately said that they are just as involved in the whole godly affair as Chaia and Huan. I think that Canavan should have just created religions with two gods. It would have saved her the trouble of creating three extra gods per religion (which would obviously make no difference since she barely created them even now) and the readers the embarrassment of reading of religions with five gods where only two of the gods are active.
On the other hand, it might have been deliberate to leave the Wilds' past and real names and ages unknown. They are supposed to be old as Heaven and secretive and mysterious. It would be difficult to appear that if your whole life story was posted on the local newspaper. However, I'm still not sure whether I can actually believe that. Considering how many threads Black Magician trilogy left untied in the end, I wouldn't be too surprised if it was just her style. At least it gives a lot of fodder for fanfiction if you like that. I would be on cloud nine if she published an anthology of short stories where she ties the last threads and perhaps tells more of the characters.
With so many characters comes a rare possibility to discard even the important side characters and not haul them around and make transparent excuses for them to follow the heroine like a kicked puppy. In my opinion it makes the world more convincing and gives it an extra shine. When there's no unplausible loyal sidekick, it feels like the people actually exist also when the heroine isn't talking to them. Canavan walks on a thin thread of forgetting minor characters and having them popping up all the time and she does it with style. Even though she obviously has more characters than she cared to breathe life into, she handles the selected few she did well.
Another unusual thing in Voice of the Gods is that Canavan actually gives the "villainous" side a more eleborate reason than being inherently evil. In too many fantasy books the hero's side might have a few corrupt kings, politicians or mercenaries, but otherwise they are good, whereas on the other side everyone is simply an evil and soulless monster. Both the Circlians and the Pentadrians are shown to have their own desires and hopes, delusions and beliefs. It's scary in its realism. Nothing makes war such an unbearable thought as seeing your enemy as humane. When you look at it, the Circlians and Pentadrians are both equally obsessed with their gods and neither side can be seen as less fanatic than the other. Both sides are given equally depe motives and not just a desire to make everyone else's life miserable. I think that the books blurb should include a text: "Everything may not have a reason, but everyone definitely does." Too bad I wasn't writing the blurb...
Canavan gets bonus points for never excusing Chaia for being a womanizing, cruel and shallow tyrant. She never claims him to have had a difficult childhood, bad experiences with a past love or anything. Chaia never denies Mirar's accuses of detsroying the lives of the young women he slept with. He even says he helps Auraya only because he thinks she's pretty and happens to have caught his fancy at the moment. Okay, he also mentions of being tired of eternal life, but I think that isn't his main reason.
Canavan gets a huge minus for making Juran - the intelligent, natural born leader hero Juran - needing a god to give him a step by step guide on how to live without gods. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that. I can't see it fitting with Juran's personality and character. On the other hand, it gets effectively across how weird it is for people who have always relied on gods to suddenly live without any invisible mean of support or source of moral code.
It's difficult to say whether Canavan is pro-religion or anti-religion in this trilogy. Sometimes she clearly critisizes religious zealots and sometimes she seems to look up to them. She also adds Maker - a belief that one god created the world - into the mix, which makes her stance even more shifty. The whole trilogy could be a comment on why the world religions today are monotheistic, opposed to large pantheons of for example Greek gods. The Pentadrian gods and the Circlian gods with their inside fighting and scheming and consorting with mortals could easily be connected to the Greek gods whereas the Maker has a lot in common with Christian god. By making the Maker to survive while the other religions perish, Canavan could be makig her point of view clear. On the other hand, the trilogy could be just fiction and not a drawn-out argument why polytheistic religions will collapse in their own impossibility.
Yes, I know, I should have written this last April when I read the book and not almost half a year later. -.-' I made notes however and wrote this based on them, so I'm really sorry if I got some details wrong. It's just my memory failing - I'm not really that stupid! Really. ^^