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Lightreads's Reviews > Lamentation
Lamentation (Psalms of Isaak, #1)
by
by
Query: how can this book be “fresh” and “groundbreaking” when for decades people have been writing fantasy novels full of dueling penises and about 10% as many vaginas, all for sale?
If you’d asked me about this book anywhere in the first two thirds, I probably would have given it a grudging two stars for occasional world building interest. This is the start of an epic fantasy series about – well, I’m not honestly sure where it’s going, but this book is about the destruction of a library-city with an ancient weapon, and the political/military/cultural aftermath. I have been known to like this sort of thing. This version, not so much. The only actual female character in this book (who is, incidentally, a red-haired courtesan-assassin, sigh) spent the first half fucking whom who whom her father told her to, then switched partners on command, at which point her father told her to get pregnant post haste, and then she found her “freedom” by breaking with her father and constructing her entire identity around, um this is awkward, marrying the guy he had told her to and getting knocked up.
The last third of the book just rescued itself with the hint that not every vagina is for sale, and also some all-too-brief suggestions that this is actually a post-apocalyptic science-fantasy as much as a traditional epic. Visitors from the moon? Which was . . . terraformed? Science and magic blended? Tell me more.
. . . If I can be bothered enough to find the sequel. We’ll see.
Dear Tor marketing: Next time just say, “it’s a book,” and save us all the trouble, okay? Okay.
If you’d asked me about this book anywhere in the first two thirds, I probably would have given it a grudging two stars for occasional world building interest. This is the start of an epic fantasy series about – well, I’m not honestly sure where it’s going, but this book is about the destruction of a library-city with an ancient weapon, and the political/military/cultural aftermath. I have been known to like this sort of thing. This version, not so much. The only actual female character in this book (who is, incidentally, a red-haired courtesan-assassin, sigh) spent the first half fucking whom who whom her father told her to, then switched partners on command, at which point her father told her to get pregnant post haste, and then she found her “freedom” by breaking with her father and constructing her entire identity around, um this is awkward, marrying the guy he had told her to and getting knocked up.
The last third of the book just rescued itself with the hint that not every vagina is for sale, and also some all-too-brief suggestions that this is actually a post-apocalyptic science-fantasy as much as a traditional epic. Visitors from the moon? Which was . . . terraformed? Science and magic blended? Tell me more.
. . . If I can be bothered enough to find the sequel. We’ll see.
Dear Tor marketing: Next time just say, “it’s a book,” and save us all the trouble, okay? Okay.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
April 1, 2010
–
Finished Reading
April 14, 2010
– Shelved
April 15, 2010
–
0.0%
"At the one-third mark, there are no women in this book who are not sexually subjugated. All two women who have appeared, btw."
April 16, 2010
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0.0%
"Wait, why the hell would pink and blue for baby gender signifiers be used in post apocalyptic epic fantasyland? *clutches head*"
April 19, 2010
– Shelved as:
fantasy
April 19, 2010
– Shelved as:
fiction