In my case I think it was partly that I had too much time to built it up in my head: the library only had the first two books so I had to wait ages till I could read the third, and of course it's hard for any book to live up to that kind of build up. (Although I think in any case I would have been disappointed that there's less Teera & Pomma in the third book. I liked everyone in those books, but they were my favorites!)
And yes, I agree with you about the Big Death. (I don't think anyone else is reading this, but just in case: Spoilers hereafter!)
It might tide them over in the short term, and they don't seem to have the technology to manufacture guns (or whatever the weapon Raamo carried into the abyss was: IIRC it burned the woman who was carrying it somehow, as if it held some corrosive chemical, which doesn't sound very gunlike). But that doesn't mean that they're not going to start beating each other with sticks at some point in the future.
I think there's meant to be some Christ-figure symbolism in Raamo's death, but it doesn't really come together. Slipping and falling into an abyss just isn't a martyrdom in the same way as a violent death at human hands, you know? (Even if he's sort of killed by the malevolent strength of the tool-of-violence itself: "Its power still lived and took strength from the minds and Spirits behind him that had not yet denied it. A numbing indecision gripped him, making the urn seem to cling to his hands. He struggled to release it; and in the struggle, he slipped forward and plunged over the precipice.")
But then the theological underpinnings (or maybe "the underlying beliefs about human nature" expresses it better?) in Greensky are quite different from traditional Christianity: the whole experiment was an attempt to escape original sin, to show that our natures are truly good, at least in the right environment.
I go back and forth about what I think ZKS's conclusions were in that trilogy, and whether I think she was right. The books are good material for thinking with. And who could read them and not want to fly with a shuba?
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Date: 2018-02-04 06:01 pm (UTC)And yes, I agree with you about the Big Death. (I don't think anyone else is reading this, but just in case: Spoilers hereafter!)
It might tide them over in the short term, and they don't seem to have the technology to manufacture guns (or whatever the weapon Raamo carried into the abyss was: IIRC it burned the woman who was carrying it somehow, as if it held some corrosive chemical, which doesn't sound very gunlike). But that doesn't mean that they're not going to start beating each other with sticks at some point in the future.
I think there's meant to be some Christ-figure symbolism in Raamo's death, but it doesn't really come together. Slipping and falling into an abyss just isn't a martyrdom in the same way as a violent death at human hands, you know? (Even if he's sort of killed by the malevolent strength of the tool-of-violence itself: "Its power still lived and took strength from the minds and Spirits behind him that had not yet denied it. A numbing indecision gripped him, making the urn seem to cling to his hands. He struggled to release it; and in the struggle, he slipped forward and plunged over the precipice.")
But then the theological underpinnings (or maybe "the underlying beliefs about human nature" expresses it better?) in Greensky are quite different from traditional Christianity: the whole experiment was an attempt to escape original sin, to show that our natures are truly good, at least in the right environment.
I go back and forth about what I think ZKS's conclusions were in that trilogy, and whether I think she was right. The books are good material for thinking with. And who could read them and not want to fly with a shuba?