Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - The Ascent to Godhood

And here we are, the last novella in the Tensorate series. And the conclusion of another successfully completed "read-aloud before bed" series for my partner and myself.

The Ascent to Godhood opens with the Protector's death. As always with the fall of a leader, some rejoice and some mourn. In a tavern deep in the countryside, the leader of the Machinists and the Protector's greatest enemy, Lady Han, is drowning her feelings in drink. When she is approached by a young rebel interested in joining the cause, Lady Han finds herself telling the story of how she first met the Protector, before she was the Protector, back when she was just Hekate, and Lady Han was just a faceless dancing girl.

I really enjoyed getting the back story on Hekate, her rise to becoming the tyrannical Protector we've been introduced to in these last few novellas. I have always loved a well done (villain) origin story, so I appreciated getting that here at the end. I also overall liked the narrative style (though my partner did not - he said it took him out of the story too much), but I do have to say that it wasn't as much fun as the dossier/journal style of the previous novella. Also, I found it a bit strange how varied the different styles of writing for each of the four novellas were. Perhaps if I had read them more spaced out, it may not have been as big of a deal, but all together in one tome like this, it felt a little disjointed. Regardless, this was a really short final installation, so love or hate the style, it didn't last long.

A lot of the themes from the previous novellas were not revisited here, which I think might be why I was so hesitant about how this would wrap things up. However, due to the nature of Lady Han's relationship with and knowledge of the Protector, we did get an interesting sort of paralleling or parody of progress in the perspective, in the way that change is seen/told differently by different people, depending on who benefits and who doesn’t. I thought it was a worthwhile message, to consider that even if things could (always) be better, it's still worth looking back to compare with how they used to be (and see how far we've come) as well. But other than that, none of the previous topics like gender and identity, governmental overreach and experimentation, treatment of foreign and marginalized peoples, etc. (nor any of the characters from earlier novellas, really) are revisited/re-addressed here in this conclusion to the saga.

So, to reiterate, I was nervous, reading this, about how (and if) it would be able to wrap up the full saga/story. It felt to me like the first three novellas were more or less furthering the same characters and story, but this one was so different and removed from the rest of the world that had been built. And while there were definitely some hanging characters/points that I would have loved to see more conclusive "this is where we leave them" details for, I'll admit to being impressed (and corrected) in that the final chapter (which was all of a single page), Yang managed to bring all the major plot threads to a legitimate and fairly satisfying conclusion. As with all novellas, due to their length, there are many specifics that are left up to the imagination of the reader to fill in, but the overall "reveal," if you will, was gratifying.

Overall, I have to say that I (and really we, I'll speak for my partner here as well) were lukewarm on the series as a whole. But, we did enjoy our time reading it, especially the world-building, the speculation (that the author gave lots of space to the reader to explore), and (for me) the writing and big picture ending.

“How do you compare a dream and reality? They don't exist in the same world and don't follow the same rules.”

“…small people like me are the first to be broken on the spearpoints of history and discarded by the powerful.”

“Was it brilliance? Was it madness? Well, both of them are states of mind, aren't they? It depends on who's telling the story. What is called madness in one mouth is called brilliant in another. The mad who succeed and win love - or at least little hatred - are remembered as simply brilliant.”

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bex_knighthunterbooks's review

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Such a good finale to the series! The way the story was told as a bar conversation worked really well for me and I actually really loved having the focus be the deep character moments while the main action was in the background. At its core this story was one of Sapphic villains in a lovers to enemy arc, which was just so much fun.

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