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Post by Kypriotha on Apr 9, 2019 6:32:08 GMT 10
Week 2 of our special TP throwbacks series and that means it's time for The Immortals! Share your thoughts, faves, squicks and more here.
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Post by devilinthedetails on Apr 10, 2019 0:17:00 GMT 10
I’ll format my post similarly to how I did my SOTL one, breaking my thoughts down by book since that seemed to work well for me last time.
Wild Magic
-To lay my cards on the table, I’m not the world’s biggest animal lover. I don’t hate animals–I love my dog and am an indulgent aunt to my siblings’ rescue dogs–but they aren’t my passion in life so a magical ability to communicate with animals probably leaves me colder as a concept than it does a lot of people. One magical talking animal like Faithful in a series is enough for me, basically. I don’t need more than that. Maybe that is part of why Daine was my least favorite Tortall heroine until Aly came along and why I don’t tend to re-read the Immortals Quartet nearly as much as I do the POTS or SOTL books.
-This book is one of my top two favorites in the series, competing with Emperor Mage for the honor of top position.
-I like the opening where we get a glimpse of Galla.
-Onua is a great character. Her strength in overcoming her history of abuse is inspiring, and I love that through her we get more insights into K’miri culture. With Thayet, Buri, and Onua, there is a nice K’miri expatriate community in the Riders. That’s got to be cool for them.
- Daine’s growing bond with Onua is well-portrayed. I think they can both understand what it feels like to driven from their homes and to be kind of lonely, relying more on connections to animals than to people. Onua also takes on a sort of mentoring role in Daine’s life that I would have enjoyed seeing delved into more throughout the series. Instead Onua fell at the wayside like a lot of the characters I had become attached to in this book as the series progressed. I would have preferred to stick with many of the awesome characters we meet in this book, but instead it feels like we are introduced to them in this book only to not really have any contact with them in the future. It just seems like a narrative waste to me made all the more disappointing by the fact that I really liked a lot of the characters that were introduced. I found the people we meet among the Riders must more interesting than talking animals so I would have preferred more focus on them than talking animals.
-Sarge is one of my favorite minor characters. His history as a former slave is just so compelling. Like Onua, I wanted to see more of him after Wild Magic. Instead he disappeared from the series. That makes me sad.
- Evin and Miri have awesome personalities and play off each other in truly amusing ways. Truly enjoyed their dynamic with Daine, and especially liked that Daine was building a friendship with a girl close to her age. When we got to know Evin and Miri, I thought the core friendship group of the series was being established. I was wrong about that. Evin and Miri pretty much vanish from Daine’s life after this book. Evin and Miri, like Onua and Sarge, seem wasted to me after this book.
-Daine’s lessons with Numair are interesting, but they aren’t really my favorite parts of the book so it was a letdown for me that the only consistent human companion character Daine has throughout the series is Numair. Numair had less appeal to me than Onua, Sarge, Evin, and Miri. I don’t dislike Numair. I just never became attached to him in any significant way.
-I find Roald and Kally absolutely adorable. One of my favorite sibling pairs that I think is often underrated. I love how eager they are to help Daine. It’s just so endearing.
-Sort of sad to hear Kally talk about her plans of knighthood when we know they will end up not coming true, though. Kally is so innocent here but we know she will be disappointed. Her blaming herself for the “pirate” attack is also so sad but believable.
-The battle against the “pirates” works for me as a climax.
-Overall, I enjoyed this book and the characters we were introduced to in it. It does a good job introducing us to a series and characters that then seem to go in quite different directions than I would have predicted, making me feel that a lot of the time spent introducing these great characters was wasted. I guess to me it boils down to: Why were so many cool characters in the Riders introduced to us if we would never again spend significant time with them or the Riders? It especially bugs me because I think two more books of Daine having adventures with the Riders would have worked better than what we got in Wolf-Speaker and The Realms of the Gods. Bottom line, it seems like a strong introduction with weak follow-through, which then taints the strong introduction retroactively.
Wolf-Speaker
-The pack of wolves Daine spends most of this book with don’t interest me nearly as much as the Riders (Onua, Sarge, Miri, and Evin) we got to meet last book. As a rule, I tend to find human characters more interesting and having more depth and room for growth than animal ones. Animals are cool but they aren’t really compelling to me in a way that human characters are.
-Maura is a good character, though. She has a nice mix of sweet with some spunkiness. Her backstory of being the daughter of a noble and a commoner is interesting as is her relationship with Yolane. This is an example of what I mean about human characters often having a depth that animal characters don’t.
-Yolane’s plot with Carthak is intriguing. I always love political plotting.
-Numair’s ability to essentially clone himself is a neat power and his use of it here could be seen as foreshadowing of Ozorne’s use of it in the next book.
-I love that we and Maura get to meet a Stormwing that challenges our assumptions about these “monsters.” A Stormwing who isn’t a monster and forges a bond with a human is a concept that does actually appeal to me. It feels more original than the talking wolf pack.
-I liked the idea of this book–Daine investigating the conspiracy with Carthak Yolane was creating in Dunlath–but I would have preferred more focus on the human element. Basically, people and their plots interest me. Wolves don’t really. Overall, I enjoyed the book significantly less than the first one, and part of it was I liked the characters we had met among the Riders so much that it was a disappointment to not see them again. A wolf pack just can’t replace them for me.
Emperor Mage
-The opening sequence with Kaddar worked well for me. It gave me a feel for the Carthaki atmosphere and endeared Kaddar to me because of his wit and irreverence buried beneath state formality.
-It is truly epic to see that Duke Gareth continues to dominate meetings and isn’t shunted to the sidelines just because he is old. Love when older characters are treated with dignity in stories, and Duke Gareth is in this book.
-Some members of the diplomatic party from Tortall make a lot of sense to me. I totally get why Gary and Duke Gareth are coming, and Lord Martin works because he probably has experience negotiating with different cultures from his time in the desert governing the Bazhir.
-Other members of the diplomatic party don’t seem like logical selections to me at all and make me wonder if Jon and Thayet actually want a war with Carthak or are just that terrible at diplomacy.
-Daine makes some sense to send for her potential to heal Ozorne’s birds but she didn’t just need new dresses to make her presentable to a Carthaki court. She needed long lessons in manners and diplomacy so as to not cause offense, and it became clear pretty quickly that she didn’t have this training.
-It is quite stupid for Numair to going back to Carthak after barely escaping being executed for treason. I think it should be obvious that the pardon Ozorne gives him isn’t worth the parchment it is written on. Duke Gareth calls attention to this by reminding Numair that they are essentially powerless to save him if paranoid Ozorne decides that Numair is conspiring against him. It’s very clear what could go wrong here so it’s not really a surprise when it does later on in the book. At least not to me. I saw the writing on the wall from the opening pages.
-The fiery-tempered Alanna is just about the worst person imaginable for Tortall to send on a diplomatic mission. Duke Gareth somewhat hilariously calls attention to her being completely out of her element here by specifically reminding her that it would be great if she didn’t throw one of her famous tantrums while on this diplomatic mission. Alanna’s response about not scraping forelocks is not going to reassure any reservations Duke Gareth or readers have about her presence here. Really what were Jon and Thayet thinking in sending her on a diplomatic mission? It boggles the mind.
-I think I’ve picked enough nits about the members of the Tortallan diplomatic party, so let’s speed things up a bit. I love the dynamic between Kaddar and Daine. Kaddar has the right mix of smug know-it-all and curious to work as a character for me, and I enjoy that they aren’t afraid to challenge one another. I would’ve preferred a Kaddar/Daine romance (even if it didn’t last) in this book to the groundwork that was laid for the Numair/Daine one.
-Speaking of Kaddar/Daine and Numair/Daine, I hated how jealous and overprotective Numair became about Kaddar spending time with Daine. It just rubbed me very much the wrong way. It was creepily possessive (especially because it turns out that Numair is interested in Daine in a romantic sense; he’s not just being a controlling father figure, which would have been icky enough for me). I also hated how the book didn’t really confront how unacceptable his behavior is. Kaddar treats it as amusing, and Daine as a relatively mild annoyance that the narrative seems to treat as almost comical. Maybe I’m weird but I don’t find creepily possessive behavior acceptable or endearing. Numair should have been called out (at the very least by the narrative) for his unacceptable behavior much more than he was especially in a work that purports to be feminist. This creepy possessiveness that they both display in this series is the biggest reason (beyond the age gap and the teacher-student relationship) why their romance doesn’t work for me in this quartet even though I’m fine with it in the POTS books.
-I love how we get to see so much of Carthak including the temples and the university. Carthak is such a vivid place to explore with such a compelling culture with everything from the food to the complex racial relationships that the great sense of setting combined with Daine’s interactions with Kaddar carry the book for me. It’s on the strength of Kaddar’s character and the appeal of Carthak that this book is able to rival the first one for my favorite in the series despite some of the major issues I have with it.
-I do love Varice as a character. She strikes me as a smart, charming woman who uses her magic in a way that brings pleasure to others and that she finds rewarding. I sympathized with her quite a bit. She seemed like an overall good person stuck living under a paranoid emperor. I thought much of the animosity Daine had for her was just jealousy because Varice was close to Numair and had been a former love interest of Numair’s. It’s a good example of how possessive Daine became of Numair in this book.
-It is believable that someone with Ozorne’s ego would think of himself as a god and insist that his subjects worship him. It also makes sense to me that the real gods in the Tortallan universe are offended by this, and the Graveyard Hag plots to overthrow him.
-The amount of destruction Daine wrought when Numair was imprisoned was terrifying. I do understand why some people in Carthak wanted her to be punished for it even though I also understand why Kaddar didn’t pursue punishing her.
-On a whole, while this book had greater flaws than the second one in the series, I also found it more engaging and sometimes enraging than Wolf-Speaker. I was bored at times during the second book, and I was never really bored during the third book. I think being bored by what should be an entertaining fantasy book is in some ways the worst thing you can be. I would rather be enraged than bored by a book. At least the book that enraged me got me to care enough to provoke a reaction beyond boredom. Therefore, I rank Emperor Mage higher than the books that preceded and followed it since both had long stretches that bored me.
The Realms of the Gods
-I liked the beginning of the book with the siege around Port Legann. It promises action, and it is cool to see King Jonathan in command of a battle. I also love the glimpses we get into Lord Imrah’s character.
-Unfortunately, after its promising beginning, the book loses me. The Realms of the Gods don’t interest me. I find the battles the mortals are fighting more interesting and wish we were there instead of trudging through the Realms of the Gods.
-There is something mythical about Daine being the child of a god and a mortal woman and having to choose whether to live as a mortal or in the Realms of the Gods. Probably should have appealed to me more since it feels like an echo of Greek mythology, but it just drags too long for me.
-Numair/Daine doesn’t work for me not just because of the age gap (which does make it more difficult for the pairing to appeal to me) but because of the fact that the relationship between the two of them always felt like it was primarily teacher-and-student to me so that gives their romance some troubling real world implications that I can’t get past apart from the possessiveness they both displayed last book. In this series, their romantic relationship just doesn’t strike me as a healthy one. I feel differently about it in POTS, where I don’t have a problem with it, though. Maybe because Daine seems older in that series and the romance is more in the background.
-This book really doesn’t have that many merits to me, so I think it ranks as my least favorite in the series. There isn’t a character as engaging as Maura in it, and there isn’t a plot as compelling as Yolane’s conspiracy with Carthak.
-An underwhelming finish to a series that I thought started strongly in Wild Magic.
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Post by Idleness on Apr 27, 2019 17:39:31 GMT 10
TIQ is probably my least favourite Tortall series. Wild Magic was the first TP book that I ever read when I was about 11 or 12 years old and I thought it was great - but once I'd read SOTL and POTS it was overtaken in the favourites stakes.
Agree Wild Magic is the strongest book in TIQ, followed by Emperor Mage. I didn't really care for Wolf Speaker or In the Realms of the Gods so much.
I did actually re-read Wild Magic recently. And the thing I noticed from this reading was this: why, if they desperately needed time for Alanna and/or the King's Own to reach Pirate's Swoop after the warning Numair got out, did they not at least attempt to call the attackers bluff and pretend to consider the terms of surrender even if just to stall for time?
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Post by devilinthedetails on Apr 28, 2019 3:45:07 GMT 10
TIQ is probably my least favourite Tortall series. Wild Magic was the first TP book that I ever read when I was about 11 or 12 years old and I thought it was great - but once I'd read SOTL and POTS it was overtaken in the favourites stakes. Agree Wild Magic is the strongest book in TIQ, followed by Emperor Mage. I didn't really care for Wolf Speaker or In the Realms of the Gods so much. I did actually re-read Wild Magic recently. And the thing I noticed from this reading was this: why, if they desperately needed time for Alanna and/or the King's Own to reach Pirate's Swoop after the warning Numair got out, did they not at least attempt to call the attackers bluff and pretend to consider the terms of surrender even if just to stall for time? I understand you thinking TIQ was great if you read it first and then having it overtaken by SOTL and POTS when you read those. My first Tortall series was SOTL, so the Immortals quartet had a tough act to follow, and I was probably harder on the Immortals quartet because I had read SOTL first. If I had read the Immortals quartet first, I might have enjoyed it more since I wouldn't have been comparing it to SOTL. You have a good point about how they could have tried to stall for time by pretending to consider the terms of surrender. Even if it didn't work, it would surely be worth a shot since there would no real harm in trying.
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Post by ladylingua on Apr 29, 2019 3:02:22 GMT 10
Oh, fun idea!
Wild Magic was my first TP book as well! I fell in love with it immediately upon seeing it's cover in my middle school library. I mean, girl surrounded by tons of animals + magic?? That was the key to my 12 year old heart for sure. I also agree that Wild Magic is the stronger of the books. I think Alanna was actually my favorite character in Wild Magic, so clearly I loved her from first read. I wonder if part of the reason I like Wild Magic best is because Daine is hanging out with more characters and I like the "full cast".
Wolf Speaker I never much cared for. I re-read it recently and enjoyed it more as an adult, but it definitely doesn't grab me. I don't honestly remember a lot of it, so I can't get detailed.
Emperor Mage is actually my second favorite. I think the Egypt-nerd in me was particularly geeked about Carthak. Also Alanna + the rest of the cast are more in this, and have interesting moments (Duke Gareth the Elder returns!).
The whole Numair-Daine sexualizing made me deeply uncomfortable though. Like middle school me got really anxious when Ozorne accused Numair of sleeping with Daine because I knew that was so wrong, it made me feel like this book was more dark and dangerous in a scary/unsafe way (so go ahead and guess how middle school me reacted to In The Realms of the Gods, haha). I think my mom was always pretty anxious of predators, and I think she had drilled into me pretty hard that an adult interested in a child was WRONG, VERY VERY WRONG, EMERGENCY LEVEL WRONG, and I definitely read Numair as an adult to Daine's child (plus the teacher/student thing), which is why I had such a strong, fearful reaction to it. I don't mean to harp on that bit, as it's been debated to death in the fandom, but yeah, being totally honest one of the main detractors of The Immortals quartet for me is Numair/Daine specifically because it feels Not Ok to me.
But overall in Emperor Mage I loved the setting, the characters (old and new, I liked Kaddar and Daine together), and the plot was gripping.
So, yeah, in The Realms of the Gods. Like Wolf Speaker, I sometimes have a hard time remembering this one, but that's mostly because when I got to the actual Numair/Daine consummation I got really anxious and skimmed the rest of the book. Also again I missed the full cast- Like devilinthedetails, I'd rather have read about the Immortals War from the mortal realm with all our friends rather than just Numair and Daine in the realm of the gods.
It's always interesting to me the stuff Pierce chooses to leave out, or to move focus from. Like in Wild Magic I definitely thought Cloud and Onua were going to be main characters (plus Buri, Thayet, Sarge, Evin, Miri, etc), but they don't get much after that book. Plus Daine has some romance that happens off-screen in this series, right? I forget when, but she mentions she lost her virginity to some guy in the time period between two of the books. I wonder whether writing that relationship (whether it was strictly friends-with-benefits or something more committed) would have softened the Numair/Daine thing for me. Like showing Daine as having mature relationships with other people might have made her seem more of an adult to me.
Overall, like everyone else this series is mostly important to me as a gateway drug to other, better Pierce series. I will always have a soft spot in my heart though for any scene with the SOTL gang as grownups.
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Post by devilinthedetails on Apr 30, 2019 23:49:48 GMT 10
ladylingua , I think the open cast as you put it of Wild Magic is a huge part of what made it an enjoyable read for me, and like you I really did appreciate the Egyptian vibe we get from Carthak. I also like getting to see more of characters like Duke Gareth and Gary. I always wished that we had gotten to see a bit more of Gary when he was grown up. Daine/Numair in Immortals definitely made me uncomfortable as well (I didn't mind their relationship in the Protector of the Small series, where there isn't that student/teacher feeling, and I can mentally age Daine to narrow the age gap a bit). I had very similar reservations to you since I definitely read Daine as still a child, and Numair quite plainly as an adult. Plus there was the power imbalance of him being her teacher. Numair also came across as quite possessive and controlling of Daine in Emperor Mage in ways I didn't appreciate and found extremely uncomfortable in a love interest (especially one considerably older than the heroine). You raise an interesting point about whether writing Daine's romance with the boy she mentioned in Realms of the Gods rather than just referring to it happening off screen would have made the Daine/Numair romance in Realms of the Gods work better. I think for me it would have because I would have gotten clearer sense of Daine as an adult with romantic experience of her own before jumping into this relationship with Numair. I'm sure we aren't meant to think that this off screen romance matured Daine, but I would have loved to have seen that play out even if only via flashbacks or something. I was also tricked into thinking that characters that we met in Wild Magic would play significant roles and was kind of disappointed when they didn't. I really liked them and wanted to see more of them.
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Post by ladylingua on May 2, 2019 6:33:00 GMT 10
Oh yeah. Like he's so Alpha Male with Kaddar for literally no reason, and when KADDAR IS AN AGE APPROPRIATE PARTNER! Plus, like, dude, y'all are leaving Carthak in like 3 days and there's no internet in Tortall yet, let Kaddar and Daine run their course, time and distance will snuff out that passion in no time you don't need to treat Daine like a toy you don't want to share. Super icky all around, even if Numair were Daine's age, but extra icky with the imbalance of power on top of the rest.
On the subject of things left out, I know Tammy has talked before about how the success of Harry Potter gave her more breathing space to create her books in the way that worked for her. Like how they made her do a bunch of stuff in SOTL she didn't originally want (add a quest, lean into the love triangle, edit heavily so the books were shorter, do a quartet, etc) because the publishing industry essentially believed that young people wouldn't read long books that focused on character development (as opposed to pure adventure), etc. Then with the success of Harry Potter, Tammy was able to say "Uh, it definitely seems like kids will read those books, so I'm going to switch things up." Which is why Kel's series has two thick books and Aly's is just two books. I wonder if perhaps The Immortals also suffered from what SOTL did, which was a publishing company dictating what they think kids will buy.
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Post by devilinthedetails on May 3, 2019 0:44:02 GMT 10
ladylingua, yeah, there is just no way for me to be comfortable with how protectively and jealously Numair guards Dane from Kaddar in Emperor Mage. It's just from every angle I look at it, Numair seems in the wrong. First, Kaddar and Daine aren't really doing anything romantically. Kaddar is showing her about the city and the university but in more of a diplomatic than romantic context, and it's not like Kaddar ever kisses her. It's possible that a romance could blossom briefly between them but Numair really has no evidence beyond his own paranoia that it has. Second, while I could maybe understand Numair's concerns about Kaddar taking advantage of Daine, ruining Daine's reputation, or hurting her with a relationship that could never become a marriage, the Protective Papa angle is destroyed by the fact that Numair is interested in Daine romantically, which, Protective Papas shouldn't be. Also, Numair comes across as too controlling for my comfort even in the context of a Protective Papa. I don't mind a Protective Papa type like Raoul who has a knack of intervening at awkward moments (when Cleon and Kel are removing clothes or when Dom is holding Kel's hand) and speaks to Kel about risks and ramifications of certain romantic decisions but ultimately leaves the choices of what to do up to her. If Numair had discussed his concerns with Daine and left the decision up to her as Raoul does with Kel, then I would see him in an appropriate Protective Papa category, but it is obvious he has romantic feelings for her. Third, even if Numair has those romantic feelings for her, he shouldn't be feeling possessive of her when they aren't even in a relationship yet (major red flag to me, not going to lie, not sure why books romanticize it so much when I find that one of the biggest turn-offs in a romantic partner) and even if they were in a relationship his behavior wouldn't have been acceptable to me since Kaddar and Daine weren't doing anything actually romantic. Fourth, you are right there is that significant age gap (that doesn't exist with Daine and Kaddar as you point out) and the teacher-student aspect of their relationship to consider. Everything about Daine/Numair in Emperor Mage is pretty much a mess to me for all these reasons. Like even one of these issues in a pairing would be a turn-off to me, nonetheless all of them. You bring up a good point about space considerations in Tammy's books. I definitely think that she could have written some things in SOTL better (such as Thom's and Alex's betrayals) with more space, and a similar thing could easily apply to the Immortals quartet. I do think Tammy's Tortallan character development is best in POTS, where she is allowed that extra space. It would have been interesting to see what Tammy could have done with extra space in SOTL and the Immortals. We might have ended up with very different series.
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