Reading roundup
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). ( Not a perfect secondary world, but a fun read (SPOILERS) )
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). ( Not a perfect secondary world, but a fun read (SPOILERS) )
Yes, oh my god. Stretching and yawning and smoking -- with his crimson cloak and his boots the color of blood; with his death-gaze and his blind, conflicted worship of his anima-goddess Kali. That guy absolutely made the book. His passion for destruction and technology, and the confusion that attended his strange history of having been old before he was young. He was well defined, but not too closely explored, so that I always wanted more of him. And what a lovely enigma of morality, too, with a taste for slaughter and godship, and yet also an unlikely, poisonous regard for chivalry. I love your comment about the irony of Death bringing vitality to the book; I hadn't thought of it that way, but yes. Weirdly, yes, he does.
He is the only one of the gods, other than Kubera, who seems to care about other people at all in ways that are not exclusively self-serving. When he kills […] he shows clearly -- not remorse, and sadness is too vague, but a definite sense that ( ... )
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Oh, yeah, I forgot about Nirriti (partly, I think, because when I read the book, I just took "the Black One" as a title of evil rather than physical appearance, because we don't find out he's a chaplain until the end - so yeah, presumably he wears or wore black). In any case, it does seem significant that Sam's appearance, like which name he's called by, seems to be rather irrelevant.
Another thing I noticed about names is that while "Yama" and "the Red One" seem to be fairly interchangeable, "Death" is only used as a title for him by other characters, never by Zelazny himself, until the battle in chapter 6, where it is the only name Zelazny uses for him for the entire battle. I'm guessing this is because he has his Aspect on him during the battle, and so he actually is ( ... )
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Yeah, I have no idea. We know he isn't one of the First, as passenger or crew, since he's only half as old as the Celestial City... but obviously Olvegg and Sam both knew him while he was still a kid, since they apparently "called him deathgod" for his morbid ways before it became an official title. It would seem likely, then, that he was the son of one of the First, or something; why else would he be hanging around with Sam and Olvegg? Obviously Zelazny had something in mind, but he doesn't seem to have given us enough clues to figure it out...
(Incidentally, that comment about Yama's being a malicious, clever little weapon-loving snot-nosed teenager reminds me rather strongly of Snape and his own "dubious parentage," and his similar sadistic hobbies... and suddenly I'm seeing Sam, Olvegg, and Kubera as James, Sirius, and Remus... XD )
Could it have come from Earth though? I thought the mutant powers that would've made an Attribute (assuming that's ( ... )
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I also find it a bit odd that Olvegg says, "a snot-nosed brat of dubious parentage, third generation, named Yama". I'd assumed "Yama" was, like Brahma, Kali, etc., a name Yama took on when he became the deathgod. And I still assume it is. Weird, then, that Olvegg would call him by that name in trying to jog Sam's memory of him from a time before there was a deathgod. Maybe it was just Zelazny trying not to be too confusing, but it's kind of unfortunate that we don't get to find out Yama's "real" name.
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Yes! The instance of this that really stood out for me was in the battle in chapter 6, where, yeah, Zelazny calls him Death all the time which he hadn't before. There are some *really* spooky sentences as a result of that, like "Death clasped the belt of shells around his waist" and "Death sprang from the chariot". It's just creepy.
While browsing for that, I also noticed something odd/neat: When Yama faces Agni (who is now trying to be Shiva) in that battle, Agni/Shiva calls him "Dharma", which I don't think happens anywhere else in the book; "Yama-Dharma" yes, just "Dharma", I don't think so...
"You seek to turn the gift of Death against its giver? [Yama]
"Good-bye, Dharma. Your days are come to an end."If Wikipedia isn't lying to me, ( ... )
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I'm curious what Zelazny meant to indicate by not calling him Death during the last battle.
That is interesting... I guess it's because we don't really get a battle description this time. We just get, "This was the day when the Lord of Light held the field" -- and then some individual -- personal -- duels. Yama vs Taraka, Yama vs Indra. I guess Yama is not in full Aspect for most of this, because it says "His Aspect possessed him completely then" only towards the end of his fight with Indra, when he kills him. And, of course, it wouldn't do to have him as Death and not Yama after that because that's when he has his reunion with dying Kali/Brahma ( ... )
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Yeah, maybe so. 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. I mean, I don't know how old the City is, but I assume it's more than three generations, in any case. And maybe being the son of a First makes you second-generation no matter how many bodies your parent has had (so that somehow Tak, despite being, I think, much younger than Yama, is actually from an "earlier generation" than him)... but it's still strange.
The whole body-swapping premise is really, really interesting to me. I'd like to have seen it explored further. (By the way, was there ever any mention of where the healthy, uninhabited bodies came from? I can't remember, and didn't notice anything ( ... )
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Yeah, I was noticing those too. "'The time has come,' said Death," and suchlike -- but especially the examples you mention. (And even though I know he's still in red, I have trouble not seeing him in black whenever he's referred to as Death.)
While browsing for that, I also noticed something odd/neat: When Yama faces Agni (who is now trying to be Shiva) in that battle, Agni/Shiva calls him "Dharma", which I don't think happens anywhere else in the bookYes! I noticed that too! And I like the idea of it being a "poetic justice" thing. Heh. We do get one other mention of Yama as a just god, actually -- when he's talking to the monk in chapter 3, he defends Kali by saying that "despite her strength, she is not an unjust goddess." The priest answers that few people really prefer justice over mercy, and Yama says, "Well taken, but I am, as you say, a warrior ( ... )
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God, I love that image! :DDDD
that would make the most confusing movie. I... kind of wish someone would try it. XD
So, according to Wikipedia:
In 1979 it was announced that Lord of Light would be made into a 50 million dollar film. It was planned that the sets for the movie would be made permanent and become the core of a science fiction theme park to be built near Denver, Colorado. Famed comic-book artist Jack Kirby was even contracted to produce artwork for set design. However, due to legal problems the project was never completed.
Parts of the unmade film project, the script and Kirby's set designs, were subsequently acquired by the CIA as cover for an exfiltration team posing as Hollywood location scouts in Tehran in order to rescue six US diplomatic staff who escaped the Iranian hostage crisis by virtue of being outside the Embassy building at the time.That... sounds oddly fitting, I guess. But ( ... )
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I guess there must be... You know, I really don't know what happened before chapter 2, like, at all. It's weird that Sam shows up in chapter 2 and seems to be completely out of the loop about everything, has never seen a pray-o-mat, doesn't know about the Masters of Karma or the psych-probe...
Okay, I see that when he talks to Olvegg, Olvegg says it's been forty or forty-five years since he's seen him. Apparently, everything happened pretty damn suddenly, because Sam didn't know yet that the folks with Aspects and Attributes were now "officially" calling themselves gods. The psych-probe had only been in use for about twelve years, so I guess Sam could have had as many bodies as he needed before that.
Still, I don't know where Sam was or what he was doing all that time. Just quietly being a prince ( ... )
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When he's talking to Brahma (on the telephone) in ch.2, he says "I stopped attending the old Council meetings over a century ago" and "In fact, for a century and a half I went to [festivals] only to drink". So, I guess he's been estranged from Heaven for about a century? Which would suggest at least two incarnations in-between (assuming they start with, like, a 20-year-old body)
And he claims he's been gardening... to which she replies that they could've used him doing that in Heaven. I'm not really sure what to make of that...
But the fact that everything's changed in just 40 years, it's very odd... I wonder what triggered it all, to happen so quickly?
Wasn't there something about how you got a body based on your karma, or something?Yeah, Olvegg explains it to Sam in ch.2. It does seem like they recycle the old bodies (the ones given up by 60-year-olds as per the normal course) to be used for punishment. And, I ( ... )
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