while I agree that it was anticlimactic, it's more than a 3/5 in my personal ranking system. I definitely thought it was stellar.
But I know what you mean about that phenomenon where providing the explanation undercuts it. It's actually the reason I never liked conspiracy theory books or television shows, because the puzzle is always fascinating and the resolution is always either boring or nonsense. (There are exceptions -- Orphan Black was so well acted and written that I didn't care that the conspiracy eventually just got silly. But for the most part, from Foucault's Pendulum to Snow Crash to Alias to Crying of Lot 49, the more convoluted the narrative's puzzle, the sillier or nonsensical the resolution.) The Stone Sky worked for me because it wasn't that convoluted a puzzle.
interestingly I wasn't sure that the trilogy had clear answers. Like, definitely I felt that the trilogy was against any kind of appeasement, but it also didn't particularly like the alternate solutions that had been proposed.
In general I've really been enjoying stories (pro and fan) that wrestle with the reality that the shitty actions of people in the past put people in the present (both people in power and people who are being hurt) into really unsolvable puzzles, and the best you can do is... Well. Try to fail in the best possible way.
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momijizukamori and
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Date: 2019-01-28 06:01 pm (UTC)But I know what you mean about that phenomenon where providing the explanation undercuts it. It's actually the reason I never liked conspiracy theory books or television shows, because the puzzle is always fascinating and the resolution is always either boring or nonsense. (There are exceptions -- Orphan Black was so well acted and written that I didn't care that the conspiracy eventually just got silly. But for the most part, from Foucault's Pendulum to Snow Crash to Alias to Crying of Lot 49, the more convoluted the narrative's puzzle, the sillier or nonsensical the resolution.) The Stone Sky worked for me because it wasn't that convoluted a puzzle.
interestingly I wasn't sure that the trilogy had clear answers. Like, definitely I felt that the trilogy was against any kind of appeasement, but it also didn't particularly like the alternate solutions that had been proposed.
In general I've really been enjoying stories (pro and fan) that wrestle with the reality that the shitty actions of people in the past put people in the present (both people in power and people who are being hurt) into really unsolvable puzzles, and the best you can do is... Well. Try to fail in the best possible way.