Kevin's Watch

OK, so last fall I read the first three novels... and just stopped. At the time, I couldn't find the other two at the library, and I suddenly found myself poor enough not to buy the other two

Anyway, I'm going through the first three again, and just yesterday I picked up the last two, so I'm good to go until the end. And, I must say, I'm really appreciating SRD's craft in this series.

The first time through, I thought it was an incredibly exciting story, albeit a dark and somewhat depressing one. This time, I'm more appreciative of the growth that Morn experiences as she learns to overcome first Angus, and then Nick, both with and without her zone implant.

Great stuff!

(Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that ZIs are soon to be a reality? Recent medical advances use electrodes embedded in the brain to "cure" depression, and other uses are certainly possible).

SRD Depressing??

As with most SRD novels, and probably the Gap in particular, he seems to write about extremes of emotion - he takes us to the edge of despair. But I've never been disappointed yet.

I think he said in the GI somewhere that a story isn't worth telling unless the characters (and the readers) are tested to their limits. Enjoy!

Rigel wrote:
(Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that ZIs are soon to be a reality? Recent medical advances use electrodes embedded in the brain to "cure" depression, and other uses are certainly possible).

I believe that treatments like that have been around for a while. In the early seventies, I think, Micheal Crichton wrote a novel, "The Terminal Man" based entirely on this practice going wrong.

I need to re-read the GAP sequence, hopefully I'll have time this summer!

Once again, SRD has shown himself to be the only author I cannot read straight through.

Every now and then, I come to a point where I just have to stop and absorb what I've read for a while. No other author has ever done this to me, although I would love to find one who did.

Spoiler

Anyway, this time it was Morn and Davies deciding to help Angus edit his priority codes out of his data core. Their bravery is just awsome

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spoiler

I can't believe they killed Vector!

Yep.

BTW, I'm done now

Edit: Sorry, duplicate post.

Rigel wrote:BTW, I'm done now

And... what did you think overall?

Overall quite enjoyable. There were parts I didn't like, of course, but almost universally that was because I didn't like what was going on (after all, they are going through hell) rather than not liking the writing.

The exception was, unfortunately, the first half of This Day All Gods Die/i]. It seemed to move extremely slowly compared to the rest of the series (especially after the rising tension of A Dark and Hungry God Arises and Chaos and Order).

I'm left wondering something, though. When the council went through Dios's writings, they found that he had frequently asked the question, "What else could I have done?" Well, I'm wondering the same thing.

Did he really have to end himself to bring down the Dragon? The Council's view of him, postmortem, seems to be that he was a hero. However, he judged himself so harshly (and considered himself so complicit with Fasner) that he never thought such an attitude would be possible.

Would the Council have felt the same if he hadn't sacrificed himself? Or would he then be seen as an ambitious schemer, obsessed with his own aggrandizement?

I think had not Dios judged himself so harshly he would have risked becoming a god like the Dragon. Humanity did not need more men like him.

Besides, Dios' only form of absolution was sacrifice; he had committed great crimes in allowing Fasner to rise to power. His complicity was simply too great for him to allow himself to be punished. I imagine that he would have forseen the Council forgetting said crimes by making him a hero, but that would not be enough for him in his mind. He redeemed himself by sacrifice. I guess it's thematically appropriate.

I think Dios saw that the only way to bring down Fasner was to take a certain series of actions. I don't think he set out to sacrifice himself as a form of redemption; I think he merely saw that getting killed was the only way to succeed, and he went ahead and did it anyway. If he could have succeeded and not have died, I feel he would have taken that path.

In this, he was like Hamako and Verement and other Donaldson characters. They didn't give up and commit a form of suicide. They merely paid the price to achieve what was needed, and what was otherwise unachievable.

Dios did believe that he had redeemed himself. But that redemption didn't come from dying, it came from succeeding in slaying the Dragon.

wayfriend wrote:Dios did believe that he had redeemed himself. But that redemption didn't come from dying, it came from succeeding in slaying the Dragon.

...and assuring that the knowledge and leverages that were Fasner's tools of power could not fall into other hands.