Thread:Sakaros/@comment-29301-20180903145046/@comment-29301-20191102211836

I have some feedback for you.

I read it exactly one time last month, and jotted down the following things; it's just what was stuck in my mind at the time. Needless to say, it is nowhere near exhaustive of what I could say on it, but if you want more, you'll have to help me narrow it down.

Reading this story was like watching a Lord of the Rings marathon, where the irresistible force of my enjoyment of the story meets the immovable object of how it just seems endless.

I've mentioned before how difficult it's been in the course of the series, for my humble self at any rate, to keep track of the secondary characters, villainous ones in particular; but this time around the heroic side took the cake and blew it into space. We start out with the two protagonists, plus their two new sidekicks Jirdo and Zaella. Then Raven and his sister and their father and Raven's sister's Padawan and Yan and Robo-Ninja-Jeeves. A bit of a strain, but I could handle that many. But when the whole other family showed up at the manor, I just gave up on telling them all apart in the long term - Gaebrean being one of the only exceptions who I was able to keep in mind when he wasn't present in whatever scene I was reading. And I sorta remembered Chiron, most of the time.

Getting to see more of these Tapani Jedi/aristocrats and all that was plenty fascinating - you know I love intricate world-building shit like that - but I just couldn't keep them all straight in my head. So when we finally got to the showdown aboard the Kiss of Death, I'm afraid I was underwhelmed when it turned out that Sir Kobold and Lezascan were the traitors. I'd had no leftover attention to give to them or Amaani up to that point, so I just didn't feel much on their account.

Jarkun's appearance threw me for a loop. Not just because he was another hero added to the team, but that he kills the whole Jedi death squad off-screen. When they were introduced, I thought there was gonna be a bloodbath on the shipyards, and maybe the heroes wouldn't even make it aboard the Kiss of Death. This isn't really a complaint, however.

I know Alecto is Tirien's personal nemesis and all that - but Gasald, Valin Aresh, and the Council of Five are pretty clearly the biggest, baddest Big Bads of the series, so a battle royale against one of them, if anything, was overdue by this point; and despite my lack of amazement at the revelation of the traitors, it fit the bill pretty well. Given the setting, it's very appropriate to occasionally show how absolutely gnarly a wizard duel can be (more so than mere swordplay). I got a real kick out of the obscure Force powers (especially Kinetite and Tooth-Explosion) - the only exception was Gasald's doppelgangers. I get that she's set up to be more of a sorceress than a duelist, so it's the type of trick she'd use against Tirien, but I've seen it in way too many video games for it to impress me much.

Unlike with The Liberator, I would hazard to say that the sheer size of this story works against it, so that even its considerable depth ends up being stretched thin in a way by the length. I still liked it, of course. Though it was frustrating at times to have to juggle so many characters at once, you can color me impressed at how the story itself manages to juggle them all so well. All the random characters had something to do, from Jirdo to the astro droid, and none of it seemed contrived, cheap, forced, or superfluous. And I do rather much appreciate how the story ended with an actual change to the status quo.

I did enjoy reading it much more than the length of my grievances and nitpickings may suggest. But again, if you'd like my take on some aspects that I haven't touched on (of which there is no small number), just say so. And, of course, I'll be happy to read whatever's coming next.