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The Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron


AncalagonTheBlack

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It makes me mad they changed the cover style for the paperback books after book 2. The first two books had flaps on the front and back cover, and for some reason they made the books very durable. The third book did not do this, I don't have the fourth yet so I can't comment on that. I realize this is very random, but I really liked how durable those covers felt. 

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Yeah this is one where I'm all "screw around with trying to buy from UK to get NOW or realize ha ha work has you so tied down you're not going to get to this for a month" and the latter won.  But I want this book very badly, and I'm so glad to hear it's living up to promise.

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Well, I've finished it. That was a lot to process. Worthy finale, though.


Some thoughts and questions for when all you slowcoaches catch up.

MAJOR SPOILERS HERE ENTER AT YOUR PERIL

Weird setup. All the major peril happens before the final confrontation so by the time they actually face down Ash, it's more or less a foregone conclusion and the text makes that explicitly clear. It'll probably read less weird, Malazan-style, reading the series in a shorter timeframe as one thing than as a series of individual novels over time, where this entire book will be the final act. I didn't dislike it but it did make for less tension than it might have. Individuals were still in peril, so it wasn't absent, but the overall goal was by then safe. That made

sense, because it was the entire goal of the plan, and then making it a desparate last stand anyway would have felt artificial, but still... odd.

 

That said, the book as a whole was... awesome. Just relentless. Was kind of hard keeping track of who's where and doing what to who and why and who's dead and who's alive and who's gonna be mourning who, but that's been sorta true in all the books, just amped up here over what was, essentially, an 800 page battle sequence. And it kept me on my toes. I prefer needing to pay real close attention and have material for rereads than the text heavy-handedly pointing things out to me.


The one thing I was a little unhappy with was that the epilogue wasn't long enough. Cameron does an excellent thing in battle scenes of killing people totally at random, truncating perfectly good character arcs just like real life would, but because of the way he writes them and how many characters there are, he's always needed that comedown to process who's died and how it affects (1) the characters and (2) us (or at least, me). He's done it well till now, but here it was just a little too quick.

That said, it was nice to see Morgan doing the creative thing at the end.

I'm assuming I'm not the only one  thinking he's coming back to this world. I mean, I think he's said as much at some point? But this seems to make it really likely The main plot is done but there's so many hanging questions with regards to (1) the dragons, especially whether Lot can be trusted, and (2), apothesis, and what comes of it (that isn't a question that needs an answer but it seems like the text promises that they'll come, and then they don't). It probably wouldn't be done in this era/place with these characters, but it seems like there are open questions about the worlds that he was setting up to answer.


The world of the dead dragons and remnants of the original Empress reminded me heavily of the warren of dead Dragons in Malazan. And that also seemed setup for future ideas, given that it took a literal detour from the plot just to show us this.

Question: have we seen Gabriel subsume anyone in the books? The question of why him and Amicia go through apothesis and not Mort has one of two answers, for me: either it's the growth of power via personal practice and improvement leads to it whereas by subsumation doesn't, or the  theory that Dragons are what saints/apothesists (I think I made that word up) come back as dragons holds true and is caused by the blood of Lot running in Gabriel and Amicia's veins that leads to it.

Question: is Lot the father of Gabriel via the rape of Ghause? That's what's implied but doesn't seem to fit the king's reactions to Gabriel earlier in the series (plus, why the fuck would Smythe disguise himself as the king)? Unless it was that the rape happened as we thought but Gabriel was concieved at a similar time but separately, with Lot.

Question: where the fuck was Tar in all this? Have I forgotten something about what happened to her in earlier books? Seems like the alliance could really have used more of those who work against negative outcomes. Or at least those lot couldn't have expected the alliance to be successful without further help once Lot seemed to go down.

Question: is it just me, or was there the merest hint that the dead world with the poison grass that turns out to be an entire city planet is (1) the original human homeworld and (2) us, in the far future? The main thing dissuading me from this theory is I don't really like the Arthurian, and real world national and geographic, parallels if this world comes from us. I'd much prefer the implicit notion that Arthurian legend and the similarity of the worlds is a leakthrough of form between spheres. Tbh I don't think it is meant to be true, but it seems like it could be.



I'ma need to do another series reread. Once my Malazan reread is done.

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