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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
Can we speak about my pet peeves? Like: breaks in logic, inconsistencies etc.?
Spoiler territory:
Now, when too-clever-for-her-own-good Berenice sets the mechs up for traveling to that quintessece seaport, she lures them with the argument: save your kin-machines and they fall for that even though they ask several times, what's in that journey for them. So, how can they even do that, no longer being in posession of the pendant. And even if they were, why not pick any other group of fellow machines, instead of this particular one? Feh.
I swear, if Anastasia escapes yet another Stemwinder or any other machine, I'm personally jumping in and murder her. How come, (after the first time), those super-duper machines don't just reach out and smash her? Actually, this goes for several other encounters, too. The description of the machines abilities doesn't allow for a single human escape. Or else.
Prose: can we just cut the use of the word "alchemical"? It's in this book like 8490231348012 times.
Characters: the above mentioned Berenice has -in the first and second volume- some rather inventive and colorful swearing to do. While that was fun, it's overdone here. MIA: my fave secondary character, Hugo.
Also MIA: an ending. Even more MIA: the interesting bits of philosophy of vol. I + II (Descartes/Spinoza) could very well have been applied to Daniel here, but weren't. In fact, I'm now going back to the first book and give it one more star - it absolutely deserves that.
Spoiler territory:
Now, when too-clever-for-her-own-good Berenice sets the mechs up for traveling to that quintessece seaport, she lures them with the argument: save your kin-machines and they fall for that even though they ask several times, what's in that journey for them. So, how can they even do that, no longer being in posession of the pendant. And even if they were, why not pick any other group of fellow machines, instead of this particular one? Feh.
I swear, if Anastasia escapes yet another Stemwinder or any other machine, I'm personally jumping in and murder her. How come, (after the first time), those super-duper machines don't just reach out and smash her? Actually, this goes for several other encounters, too. The description of the machines abilities doesn't allow for a single human escape. Or else.
Prose: can we just cut the use of the word "alchemical"? It's in this book like 8490231348012 times.
Characters: the above mentioned Berenice has -in the first and second volume- some rather inventive and colorful swearing to do. While that was fun, it's overdone here. MIA: my fave secondary character, Hugo.
Also MIA: an ending. Even more MIA: the interesting bits of philosophy of vol. I + II (Descartes/Spinoza) could very well have been applied to Daniel here, but weren't. In fact, I'm now going back to the first book and give it one more star - it absolutely deserves that.
I liked this one more than the second one, though I did miss Hugo. I agree with most of the negative reviews that macguffins abound and the ending was much too tidy, but there's just something about the writing and the world and the characters that makes me really not care about that. I love Berenice, I love watching her spectacular fuck-ups. I liked seeing things from Anastasia's perspective. I definitely have some biological bias because all the descriptions in this series of human beings with pineal glass implanted in their brains, with their free will stripped away and the pain of geasa on their faces, really made me feel sick. Even knowing that the clakkers have consciousness, are people, I couldn't muster the same sort of empathy for them. Hopefully our future robot overlords will forgive my fleshy brain for such things.
I am very glad that certain characters came to realize the horrors of their ways, although I do wish Berenice had survived rather than Anastasia. And I am very glad that Longchamps survived to knit another day, although he was out of commission for this whole book. The denouement felt a little disappointing to me, probably because I was expecting more to come of the setting, based on earlier conversation. It is still significant to the action, just not in the way I was hoping. I guess it was just really messy and slap dash, which absolutely makes sense for the kind of war they were fighting, but part of me wanted something a little elegant there at the end. Daniel né Jax remains an incredibly compelling character, and I would like to see a short story or two about where he ends up in the next decades and centuries.