Graham McArthur wrote:AATE is the best book in a very good series. If you don't like the books, don't read them.
...begging the obvious question, how do you know whether you're going to appreciate the books or not, unless you read them in the first place?
I've already just re-read ROTE and I'm 1/3rd the way through a re-read of FR to see in the light of such fresh re-reads whether some of the issues I have with AATE are lessened in some way. To save you trawling through this entire thread, here are the issues that just I'm uneasy with (with others being uneasy about other things and yet more others being fervent supporters of the entirety of the Last Chrons):
A major move in author interest towards internalized conflict within the main protagonist (something that permeates the entire Last Chronicles - nothing wrong with this as an authorial goal, but just to me personally, it somehow alters the balance of the narrative too much away from the wide-focus epic and too much towards tight-focus psychodrama).
An apparent lack of authorial interest in fleshing out secondary characters. If I think back to the 1st or 2nd Chrons, part of my engrossed appreciation was centred on how I was led to care about Mhoram, Bannor, Foamfollower, Hile Troy, Sunder, Hollian, The First, Pitchwife, Grimmand, Brinn and many many more by the depth of their characterisation. To me this was every bit as important as the interest inspired in me by the dilemmas of the central protagonists, TC and Linden, and every bit as important as how much I was led to care about the Land itself. I don't see the same interest in secondary characters from SRD in the Last Chrons - a clear example being the two dimensional "fuzzy felt" giants" that we find in the Last Chrons. It's as if SRD is concentrating almost exclusively on depth - depth within his depiction of Linden - rather than breadth. He's got every right to do that, of course - it's entirely his creation - but as a reader, I have a personal right to my own reactions.
In close relation to this - and I'll preface this issue with the words "so far", before Worm leaps at my throat, pointing out quite rightly that the Last Chrons aren't finished yet
- so far in the Last Chrons, I'm uneasy with an apparent cavalier authorial attitude towards some of the characters. To me - and yes, it's subjective - this shows itself in the cases of sudden character disposal. Liand, Anele, Esmer and Joan all quite abruptly meet their various demises and in the case of the latter three, given SRD's acknowledged strength in portraying conflicted characters, I felt they were almost disposed of for convenience... they'd outlived their narrative usefulness in moving the plot along, so off they went. I didn't feel that the issues they presented or evidenced - or their relationships with other characters or the narrative as a whole - were properly resolved before the trapdoor opened and off the stage they dropped.
The same sort of thing applies to the sudden appearance of She Who Must Not Be Named. Up she pops all of a sudden and almost entirely unannounced from nowhere, apparently to provide a dramatic chase scene and a foil to Linden in the lost deeps. That smacked a bit of pure plot device for me - pretty much a pure"diabola ex machina" for want of a better term.
Yet again in close relation to the first point above, although of less importance to me than others who have highlighted this, to me there's an issue with pacing. Other have said words to the effect of "hugely long periods of agonised self-contemplation and indecisive navel-gazing followed by sections where too much happens all at once". I think this is valid, but again springs from SRD's move to concentrate on what has been called "psychodrama". It seems to be Linden's inner conflicts, self-flagellation and indecisiveness that he wants to home in on, to the extent that there seems to be a carelessness with or at least inattention to all other things. Again, that's entirely his authorial right.
For all the above, I'm still ambivalent about the Last Chrons - there are indeed great things in there as well and SRD has set himself a vast task in coming up with a concluding history, what with all the currently unresolved narrative threads. I do wonder sometimes if it's this vastness of task that is responsible for characters being killed off almost negligently - one less thing to resolve, perhaps?
I'm also well aware that it must have been a far harder thing to write - it's pithier, concentrates on more complex internal issues and as such, not so easily accessible. I'm just uneasy with the narrative balancing - so far
(None of which I'd have been able to opine without having read - and now re-read - the Last Chronicles).
PS By the way all, in case you don't remember, as I've just re-discovered in my re-read, the Quellvisk *do* get a quite literally one word mention in FR - from Roger while masquerading as TC. He names them as one of the denizens of the Land that are still around in Berek's time! Hardly a seamless tie-in foreshadowing their sudden post-mortem appearance and brief history in AATE, but hey, they were at least mentioned!
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Maybe if you read more, you'd understand our perspective on how other authors can deal with deep philosophical themes and still produce an entertaining read. Like Bakker. Or like Donaldson's previous two Chronicles.
