On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 9:18 PM, Stacey Harris <stacey.harris@slu.edu> wrote: S P O I L E R S for Port of Shadows S P O I L E R S S P O I L E R S for Port of Shadows S P O I L E R S
Wow. FInished it a few hours ago. Wow.
Okay, I shoulda seen it coming. I was asking myself all along, who/what IS this Mysterious Rain? I can't make head or tails out of it. Shoulda twigged, but > didn't. Just as well, that made it all the more staggering when Laissa greeted her with "Koneko!" and my rudimentary Japanese kicked in to translate that as "Kitten". Wow, all making sense!
That said.
Nice bilingual bonus! I never would catch that. Since none of the back story matches up with Whisper's notes, I wonder what's true. Maybe cleared up by Pitiless Rain?
Yeah, narrative voice is off from the old-style BC books. I thought I caught a whiff of the type of narrative voice from Instrumentalities that I don't much care for (too much mysterious stuff referred to mysteriously); but I'm not clear on that.
Definitely not to be read before "The White Rose"! But I think it might not be a bad thing to have it read then; gives a background explanation for Lady. In > fact...
The feel of ancient sorceries coming to the fore again is nice--a little bit more of what we saw in "Silver Spike". Wish there there descriptions of them. But > even without them it lays the foundation for the Kina and the like, of Really Powerful Stuff having happened in what is now pre-history, as no records have been found of those times (making Travellers' Rest all the more important!). And now we > know why: Sorcerious types go to great lengths to purge those records, even in living memories.
It is a nice tie-in to the world-building. It gives the history more depth. Deep History, if you will. This is a theme Glen visits a lot in his fantasy novels: The Swordbearer, The Tower of Fear, the Dread Empire series. The Star Fishers's SF series visits this theme a lot, too.