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amaranthine_dragon's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. I was expecting a simple fantasy anthology and instead I cried and was challenged by stories of beauty and hope in the midst of utter darkness. It reads like classic fantasy written in a semi-modern vernacular (it reads faster and easier than most classic fantasy). The characters are classic as well and the worldbuilding is really good for such short stories. Some of the stories are stronger than others, but I think it also depends on what you need to hear when you read it.
elusivity's review
4.0
Interconnected novelettes set in the far future (22 million years away) where humanity is dying upon a darkening Earth.
This is not so much SF as weird-tale/horror with some science-ish trappings. As I read them, I cannot stop critiquing their likelihood and logic. For one thing, these stories are set millions of years before the world would end. A million years is a long time, guys! The entire length of human civilization is not a 10th that at present, and the events of even one thousand years away seem unfathomably distant. On an individual level, we can barely care about what will happen in a couple of decades. And yet these people are all miserable and deflated, bewailing their doom and behaving as though imminent destruction is just around the corner. Were I faced with the knowledge that humanity will end in 7 million years... I'll be living my life just as carefree as if there is no prophecy, thanks much.
And how little do these societies seem to change! although they jump aeons between each story. And, how little humans seem to change--physically, biologically--through out the aeons, despite their landscape and daily existence having changed drastically. OK, the 3rd story mentions multiple iterations of Mankind throughout the years, so there's that. But for all these different iterations, they seem to act and think much like previous versions. Always patriarchal, always and constantly consulting ancient books for lost knowledge, and full of the same rituals and moralities.
And, what even constitutes human anyway? Stories like these always make me think of Planet of the Apes. What, for example, would everything look like from the Silent Ones' perspective? Or the abhumans', who are cast aside or eliminated just because they have adapted to survive in the new darkness, intelligent, and yet designated as evil and cruel?
But then I slap myself upside the head, remind myself of the Dying Earth and Cthulhu and a host of similar stories, and returned to the stories themselves.
---
The Manichean nature of these forces bother me. An eternal evil aligned against mankind. Why? Because. A wild surmise: bc darkness hates the light, and death hates life? These dainty women with their hair tendrils.. fingernail scraping on chalkboard.
The second story is an iteration of mad Antigone, determined to bring her dead brother's body back to Thebes for a proper burial. I've never understood her insistence, and I do not understand the stubbornness of this chick either.
In the third story, an iteration of Aeneas bearing his aged father away from the destruction of Troy, one of these namelessly evil creatures tells the hero they intend to torture and degenerate humanity slowly, and will torment even its ghosts for eternity. Why? Just because. Feh.
---
It is entirely possible that, while I appreciate his writing capabilities very much, Wright and I have a fundamental disagreement of sensibilities.
---
For the last story, humans throughout the ages are resurrected some 15 billions years into the future, in the death throes or creation of the universe itself. They are on a ship falling at lightspeed toward the zero point, the Big Bang, with time breaking down and becoming so uncertain that quantum physic rules expand from micro-effects to macro. A lyrical imagining based on very hard science of how the end/beginning of the universe may look to our puny perspective.
This story I like the best, for it explains many hidden assumptions built into the previous 3 stories; provided a variety of vastly different perspectives and speech patterns that interacted with one another; and is the last mystery left to be solved, ever. Very fun set-up.
Of course, the ultimate resolution is way mushier, as these stories always are, and with religious overtones. However, it does a good job of pulling all the Night Land lore together and resolve everything very neatly, even perfectly.
For this story alone, I shall add .5 STAR to the rating. 3.5 STARS, rounded up to 4.
This is not so much SF as weird-tale/horror with some science-ish trappings. As I read them, I cannot stop critiquing their likelihood and logic. For one thing, these stories are set millions of years before the world would end. A million years is a long time, guys! The entire length of human civilization is not a 10th that at present, and the events of even one thousand years away seem unfathomably distant. On an individual level, we can barely care about what will happen in a couple of decades. And yet these people are all miserable and deflated, bewailing their doom and behaving as though imminent destruction is just around the corner. Were I faced with the knowledge that humanity will end in 7 million years... I'll be living my life just as carefree as if there is no prophecy, thanks much.
And how little do these societies seem to change! although they jump aeons between each story. And, how little humans seem to change--physically, biologically--through out the aeons, despite their landscape and daily existence having changed drastically. OK, the 3rd story mentions multiple iterations of Mankind throughout the years, so there's that. But for all these different iterations, they seem to act and think much like previous versions. Always patriarchal, always and constantly consulting ancient books for lost knowledge, and full of the same rituals and moralities.
And, what even constitutes human anyway? Stories like these always make me think of Planet of the Apes. What, for example, would everything look like from the Silent Ones' perspective? Or the abhumans', who are cast aside or eliminated just because they have adapted to survive in the new darkness, intelligent, and yet designated as evil and cruel?
But then I slap myself upside the head, remind myself of the Dying Earth and Cthulhu and a host of similar stories, and returned to the stories themselves.
---
The Manichean nature of these forces bother me. An eternal evil aligned against mankind. Why? Because. A wild surmise: bc darkness hates the light, and death hates life? These dainty women with their hair tendrils.. fingernail scraping on chalkboard.
The second story is an iteration of mad Antigone, determined to bring her dead brother's body back to Thebes for a proper burial. I've never understood her insistence, and I do not understand the stubbornness of this chick either.
In the third story, an iteration of Aeneas bearing his aged father away from the destruction of Troy, one of these namelessly evil creatures tells the hero they intend to torture and degenerate humanity slowly, and will torment even its ghosts for eternity. Why? Just because. Feh.
---
It is entirely possible that, while I appreciate his writing capabilities very much, Wright and I have a fundamental disagreement of sensibilities.
---
For the last story, humans throughout the ages are resurrected some 15 billions years into the future, in the death throes or creation of the universe itself. They are on a ship falling at lightspeed toward the zero point, the Big Bang, with time breaking down and becoming so uncertain that quantum physic rules expand from micro-effects to macro. A lyrical imagining based on very hard science of how the end/beginning of the universe may look to our puny perspective.
This story I like the best, for it explains many hidden assumptions built into the previous 3 stories; provided a variety of vastly different perspectives and speech patterns that interacted with one another; and is the last mystery left to be solved, ever. Very fun set-up.
Of course, the ultimate resolution is way mushier, as these stories always are, and with religious overtones
Spoiler
although with a twist and maybe sly dig, bc the forces of evil inserted a fake Biblical figure to fool the protagonists into believing in their original sin.. but it's more of a dig at orthodox religion than with the godhood itselfSpoiler
the pair of lovers in the original Hodgson book; reincarnation; all lovers reunite at the end of time, etc. The men are different incarnations of a single human spirit throughout the ages, each longing for his one true love, because that spirit persistently longs after his one true love (though why should marriage as social convention persist through out MILLIONS OF YEARS is a mystery to me), and through all the iteration of longing for her throughout the ages he is the seed that will remake the same world all over again. But with the Master Word he links instead with the spirit that loves and wishes good for humans, and the universe will now begin anew with the evil shut away in silenceFor this story alone, I shall add .5 STAR to the rating. 3.5 STARS, rounded up to 4.
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