I liked that the Sieh character also showed that while "Immortal Child" was generally one thing... there was darkness, cruelty and hardness there as well. Just like children are. Innocent doesn't mean without teeth.
Overall loved the series. Pretty much with you on the "I wish this had been made clearer sooner" but. BUT. I kind of liked a book wherein the protagonist didn't know everything all the time. The sense of "large things all around me that I can't see or define" events gave it a sense of reality I rather liked. So I can argue either way on that.
The whole sexuality thing? I ADORED the whole "um... you're kinda stuck on genders here, we aren't" conversations with the Three. :P
I was also very impressed by the whole series, and I agree that it had a couple of minor shortcomings that didn't really take away from how amazingly she develops the world and characters.
Also, it's so hard to write a story about people with the power of gods that still deals with normal human challenges. It was very impressive to see a story involving people with such a range of powers all playing relevant roles.
For those who haven't started the series yet, to me at least the beginning of the first book was very slow going and didn't really grab me until maybe 100 pages in, and then after that I devoured all three books.
The third one felt more similar to the second than the first, though having said that, I'm struggling to explain why. I think it's partly because the struggles of the now-restored-to-power gods is so much more of the story.
I loved the whole series, and thought she wrapped it up in a really wonderful way with this third one.
Sieh makes such an fascinating narrator - sometimes he comes across as innocent and playful, and then just as you're starting to think of him as effectively human, he'll do something jaw-droppingly horrific, reminding you that he's really anything but. He's a child-god, and children aren't always sweet and playful - sometimes they pull the wings off flies just to see what will happen, or smash their toys in a fit of temper. And his toys are human beings. It's not easy to write convincingly from a perspective that's very far from humanity, but she does it very well in this one.
Sieh would be a very challenging character to write for, at least for me, but I think Jemisin did a nice job of it. I'm just bummed that we lost some of that childishness as a result of Sieh's aging throughout the book.
I loved the worldbuilding of the first, but found the central romance predictable, and the heroine curiously non-active for all her vaunted powers. But as a first novel, it was a wower. Haven't gotten to the second yet, due to toppling TBR pile . . .
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Overall loved the series. Pretty much with you on the "I wish this had been made clearer sooner" but. BUT. I kind of liked a book wherein the protagonist didn't know everything all the time. The sense of "large things all around me that I can't see or define" events gave it a sense of reality I rather liked. So I can argue either way on that.
The whole sexuality thing? I ADORED the whole "um... you're kinda stuck on genders here, we aren't" conversations with the Three. :P
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And yes. Major props to the whole, "I laugh at your limited mortal conceptions of gender and sexuality, ha ha ha!" thing.
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Also, it's so hard to write a story about people with the power of gods that still deals with normal human challenges. It was very impressive to see a story involving people with such a range of powers all playing relevant roles.
For those who haven't started the series yet, to me at least the beginning of the first book was very slow going and didn't really grab me until maybe 100 pages in, and then after that I devoured all three books.
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Sieh makes such an fascinating narrator - sometimes he comes across as innocent and playful, and then just as you're starting to think of him as effectively human, he'll do something jaw-droppingly horrific, reminding you that he's really anything but. He's a child-god, and children aren't always sweet and playful - sometimes they pull the wings off flies just to see what will happen, or smash their toys in a fit of temper. And his toys are human beings. It's not easy to write convincingly from a perspective that's very far from humanity, but she does it very well in this one.
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I hear you. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever catch up, or if I'll be falling more and more behind for the rest of my days.
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