Orthe Group Read - March - Ancient Light by Mary Gentle

This is the somewhat divisive sequel to Golden Witchbreed. I certainly had a strong reaction when I read it, and I think it will be an interesting book to discuss.

Ten years after having served as Earth's first envoy to Orthe, which is struggling to survive after a planetwide holocaust millennia ago, Lynne de Lisle Christie returns there as an advisor to PanOceania, one of Earth's giant multinational companies, which is seeking to discover the technological secrets of the Goldens, the ruling race that had destroyed itself while almost obliterating Orthe. Christie seeks to help the native people, some of whom have been her friends, some her enemies, but all closely bound in her memories and loyalties. Instigated by the last of the Golden, a madwoman seeking domination, war between the poor and starving hiyeks of the Desert Coast and the land-loving telestres of the north is aggravated by smuggled high-tech weapons. Christie, while holding a dreadful secret from the Orthe's past, attempts to mediate.

Since this one has quite a twisty plot, I'd like to hold off discussion of the later parts of the book until everyone has a chance to finish- feel free to post, but please keep reactions behind spoiler tags until maybe around the middle of the month.

I'm diving straight in, and several things have caught me right off the bat:

• I feel like this is the first time I've been able to picture the Ortheans - I don't recall there being such specific description of their features at the start of Golden Witchbreed (maybe I just skimmed over it?)
  
• I'm a bit confused by the fact that Lynne seems to have partial memory loss. There are some throwaway comments suggesting what may have caused it, but I would think she might have reflected on it as she landed back on-planet in the first chapter, rather than tripping over it. Again, I feel like I missed something ;)
  
• ...and I'm already a little tired of the 'too old for this' and 'bloody kids' schtick. This is no doubt entirely down to the fact that Lynne is the same age I am now and I can't imagine looking down on a 30-year-old like that. Molly's condescension is annoying, but she's an experienced adult and she holds rank - get over yourself Lynne!

...I'm sure it will all settle down; the writing and the setting remain instantly addictive.

I've just read the first chapter. In response to imyril's comments:

I think there were quite detailed descriptions of the Ortheans - certainly the details given at the start of Ancient light seemed familiar - but maybe they were dribbled in gradually rather than stated up front.

I think I noticed Christie telling herself that she was 4 years younger than Molly is now when she (Christie) came to Orthe. So she was 26 then. Even if the events of Golden witchbreed lasted a couple of earth years, and adding in the 10 year gap between books, that doesn't allow for a big enough age gap to justify the "bloody kids" comments IMO! (Or is my maths way off?)

The memory loss is weird. I look forward to seeing where that goes.

>3 Sakerfalcon: yep, that was my maths on the age gap too. And I don't think Molly is particularly immature or inexperienced - wrongheaded and determined, and I'm assuming this novel is going to take the line of Corporate = Evil from everything so far - but none of that makes her a kid. Just at odds with Christie :)

I found the confrontation between Christie and Blaize interesting too. Still mulling over that one in terms of my response. I think I have sympathy with both sides, but can't decide if they're also both unreasonable ;)

>3 Sakerfalcon: Yes, I believe Christie outright states near the beginning of Golden Witchbreed that she's 26 as well. But hey, 36 is practically ancient for a protagonist in this YA-skewed genre ;)

I think the memory loss gets explained later, but I can't remember. (Sorry!)

>5 sandstone78: yep. That's why she identifies more closely with 51-year-old Douggie. And even Cassirur Almadhera refers to Molly as an ashiren! Sheesh.

I'm now a good halfway through, and yes, the memory gaps - and why Christie isn't really aware she has them - are partially addressed; I'm doing a little connecting the dots, which I don't mind; we're at least clear by this point that Christie didn't know she had the gaps, which makes me happier with how it was handled initially - it's always a bit weird reading a first person narrative when you know more than the narrator!

As last time, enjoying this more and more as it gathers pace. I don't think it's any coincidence that my enjoyment parallels the increased presence of the Ortheans in the narrative (rather than the Company). It's been hard to like the human characters in both books, altho Doug Clifford is a good sort.

Getting to the point where some interesting questions are being raised; I suspect I'll be zooming through the second half this week.

One of the things that struck me about the last book was the number of powerful and interesting women: besides Christie herself, we had Ruric, Suthafiori, Theluk, SuBannasen, the Andrethe, the barbarian woman, eventually Maric and Rodion.

And yet, despite how it seems, by the end of the last book, Theluk, SuBannasen, and the Andrethe were dead, and Ruric was exactly what surface prejudice supposed her to be- an immoral traitor with no conscience who dragged the innocent Rodion down with her. And then, nearly right off the bat in this book we find out Suthafiori, Ruric, and Rodion are all dead as well.

Did Gentle want to start off with a clean slate? Somehow Hal and Blaize are alive, though possibly stricken with manpain changed. In-book search seems to indicate that neither Maric nor the barbarian woman appear at all.

Sure, there are new female characters, but the lack of continuity and the way so many are summarily killed off-screen makes me feel that none of them really matter.

Yes, I am aware that Ruric isn't dead, but the point still stands.

>7 sandstone78: up to a point, both books struck me with this - where other authors would traditionally insert male characters (the High King, the Commander, the Court, etc), Gentle almost always chose women. I also found it interesting in Golden Witchbreed that until we find out about Ruric and with the exception of SuBannasen, the morally ambiguous characters (Hal, Blaize, the Hexenmeister) and the traitors were all men. It felt like a deliberate choice, and I admired it.

I'm going to leap to Ruric's defence on being immoral and lacking conscience. She would argue that it's her conscience that drove her - it's simply that she believes the ends justify the means. Suthafiori disagreed, as we are encouraged to, but much of Ancient Light backs her - (most of) the Hundred Thousand aren't happy with the offworlder presence, and with good reason. Arguably, Ruric has been upheld by history - although it's hard to go past taking money from Kel Harantish.

Regards female mortality, I know where you're coming from, but I think at least some of the deaths have meaning within the narrative (except Rodion, who seems to have been killed purely to make Blaize available, which irritates me. Couldn't they just have fallen out?).

True, I can also see alternate ways to achieve the political situation in the Hundred Thousand (especially considering there is a T'an Suthai Telestre re-elected by mid-book, so it really is just to trip the offworlders up in the early book), but I think there's also a point being made that life on low-tech worlds is precarious - often cut short by sickness or wounds (echoed by the arguments that PanOceania can help relieve the poverty of the Coast) - and there's a crucial subtext - the Orthean relationship with death. That relationship is such a fundamental theme throughout Ancient Light that I think it is another deliberate choice to kick off with deaths - and specifically ones that will affect Christie - rather than, say, reducing Suthafiori's status by having her lose the intervening election.

...ahem, all of which is a defence of Gentle's choices I suppose, but still makes those characters important only in so far as they affect Christie. So yes, you have a good point :)

...and given the number of prominent male characters in Ancient Light - Doug, Blaize, Hal, Nelum Santhil, Sethri-Safere, Pathrey Shanataru - it's even easier to feel the tables have turned. The new female characters are all morally ambiguous or antagonistic or both, and far less likeable - although still in most of the traditionally male positions (Company Representative, Company Security Chief, Harantish Emperor, Hexenmeister) outside of the Hundred Thousand.

It's an interesting development, and I'll admit it only bothers me when I step back and put my critical glasses on - it's not interfering with my enjoyment of the book as I read with the possible exception of Calil Bel-Rioch, who seemed to go from ambiguous and interesting to bonkers lunatic in between visits to Kel Harantish. I'm never a fan of bonkers lunatic antagonists.

But fair to say that yes, with critical glasses on, Orthe is not an entirely feminist text after a promising beginning. It does still feel gender-neutral though, to me at least. I don't feel that any of the characters are being defined by their gender or marginalised because of it. But I sometimes miss Fedex arrows :)

On an unrelated note, triggered by @sakerfalcon 's comment on her thread that she's enjoying the glimpses of the Desert Coast cultures, it made me realise I'm quite frustrated by how little we've got to see of Kel Harantish. The 'degenerate Witchbreed spawn' remain far too mysterious for my liking. It feels like they're really interesting from what little we do see, but we see so very little they're just bogeymen.

Of course I'm not finished yet, so this may yet change. I... doubt it, somehow.

Blimey. Okay, I can see why this was a whole lot less popular than Golden Witchbreed.

It's certainly put a damper on my evening! I was about a half-step ahead of the plot, so in the end not utterly surprised, but... it's not exactly a satisfying ending, is it?

Err, I won't say more until you guys get to the end though. I'll be very interested to hear your responses.

I'm going straight into the short story.

I find myself wanting a midquel/sidequel like Joan D. Vinge's World's End for this series, but can't decide if I want one about Christie or about Ruric more.

>10 imyril: Yeah.

That last scene with the light coming over the hill is absolutely seared into my memory. I went around in something of a fog for a day or two after, I'm pretty sure.

See how I wondered when the short story could possibly take place, though? I am betting, upon reflection, that it must be in the ten year gap between Golden Witchbreed and Ancient Light...

>8 imyril: >9 imyril: I feel too that it's a deliberate choice killing off said characters- and, honestly, I find it believable for the reasons you mentioned as well as, from a meta standpoint, a brutally effective one at showing the reader that this is not really going to be a happy "everyone reunites and takes on the threat together" book.

However... where I am so far, I can't help but feel that this isn't quite the sequel Gentle had in mind while writing Golden Witchbreed. Throughout the first book, I got a sense that Gentle was laying groundwork for the story she really wanted to tell. Certainly some elements were foreshadowed "Have you considered Kasabaarde?" indeed! but so were other things, eg the barbarian woman telling Christie to have Earth contact her people directly, that I don't think actually happen.

It feels like it was going to be a story more like The Left Hand of Darkness with the envoy caught between different government groups, underpinned by the duel between the Hexenmeister and the Emperor-in-Exile, possibly with the same ending, possibly not. That ending of Golden Witchbreed even does feel like it's going to lead into an "everyone reunites and takes on the threat together" book.

One of the things that I've been thinking about since reading Abi Nussbaum's review (which I will link now- you understand my reluctance to do so before, it being impossible to discuss Ancient Light without discussing its ending) is that I feel that Gentle is very strongly resisting the "Wouldn't you like to visit/live here?" coziness and idealization of the baroque low-technological setting that some SFF novels have, for better or worse- and that, to an extent, she did so in the first book as well, not only with how grueling travel is and the constant reminders Christie's allergies and other discomfort, but also with the reversals and twists always coming right after Christie gets comfortable, the more comfortable the bigger the betrayal. Maybe that's a sign that this was what she intended all along.

I'm not sure it's possible to tell how deliberately Gentle put women in so many important positions because they were women, nor how consciously she removed them for the same reason- as with The Left Hand of Darkness, I tend to feel that gender is a secondary theme at best in the Orthe books. Still, I think I would consider it a feminist work because both books are really about the tangled, complex relationship between Christie and Ruric when you boil them down, as much as The Left Hand of Darkness was about Ai and Estraven.

I agree with you about Ruric, by the way. As you saw with the ending, she was in fact completely right that Earth was bad, bad news. I'll hold off on more until I've met up with her again in this novel. I can't but find it somewhat tragic how she tried to hold back the flood, knowing she was doomed to fail, and agree that the only way she could have done so was to ruin the trust in Earth by spoiling the reputation of the envoy- first by letting the church convict her as Witchbreed in the trial in Corbek, then framing her in an attack on the Andrethe (or the Andrethe's murder- I wasn't sure what I was supposed to think when Christie asked Ruric about that, certainly I would believe Ruric capable of that).

Another thing I realized after the fact is that Ruric's influence was probably behind the rest of the people from Earth other than Christie not getting their travel permits...

>11 sandstone78: I've started the short story and I still can't tell when it's set ;) Here's hoping it becomes clearer soon. That said, the one thing that instantly stands out is - oh look! It's another story that is preoccupied with death and grief!

You're right, while Christie thinks about the barbarian woman and there's a lot of talk about land up north, the barbarians don't feature at all.

...and I hadn't thought about Ruric's influence on the travel permits. Yes, of course.

*cough* regards Abi Nussbaum, I note with amusement her segue between her review of Golden Witchbreed to that of Ancient Light:

though (Golden Witchbreed) is a very fine novel, there were too many hints of the novel it might have been for me to enjoy it without regret. Happily, Gentle went on to write that novel in Ancient Light.

Cheerful lady, Abi ;)

However, her review makes me think a couple things

- as earlier, that I remain frustrated with the view of Kel Harantish. I struggle to believe in bogeymen, and while the novel makes reference to life being tough in Kel Harantish, we don't get the same evidence of it that we do for the hiyeks, so it is easier to dismiss.

- that she and I have slightly different views of Cory Mendez. If Corazon had established de facto leadership of the planet, she surely wouldn't blow up the Citadel of Tathcaer (that never made sense to me; I'd assumed the Harantish did it, but by the end it seemed to be on Cory's plate) and would surely have been (even) more aggressive. I had a certain amount of unwilling sympathy for her, although obviously she gets everything wrong - she needed to either (literally) stick to her guns, or not get them out, rather than trying to walk some fine line of 'necessary intervention' that she was in no position to judge.

- that she and I have different views of the relationship between Christie and Ruric, which she argues is under-written. I can't help but think that she either read a different book or (and I think this is more likely, given her comment on Orthean attitudes to homosexuality) that she simply doesn't imagine same-sex relationships - she just took the friendship at face value.

- ...but I agree with her regarding the Falkyr relationship, and regards Christie's emotional state at the end and the way she seems to almost discard Blaize, now she recognises how central Ruric is to her life. That seemed wildly unfair given how long she'd spent pining for him, regardless of whether he'd been calling it out all along.

- Also, I still haven't forgiven Gentle for Rodion. Which is amusing largely because I didn't particularly like Rodion - I much preferred Maric.

- ...and finally, that yes, I needed to be reminded these books were written in the 80s. It all makes so. much. more. sense. in that context. Weapons of mass destruction are bad and wrong kids, and using them will end badly.

Um. Ok, have now read the (very) short story - yes, I think it's set in the 10-year gap, although it opens with a sufficiently confusing line (there were Earth settlements here before the Insurrection) to not chime with anything we know.

However, it's clearly set in inner Kasabaarde, so that must be in the gap.

Once again Gentle plays with the themes of death and grief, and with the idea of how seductive Orthe is.

I'll be honest - I don't have an opinion on it, because I'm mostly disappointed that it is tangential. It doesn't reflect any off-Orthe fact we have from Christie, so I found it quite hard to slot into the framework.

>12 imyril: I'll reply in more depth when I finish re-reading. I will admit that a large part of the reason I finally decided to pick these back up was her offhand mention- and subsequent dismissal- of Christie being in love with Ruric, which I had managed not to remember at all.

This readthrough of Golden Witchbreed, I wonder how I ever could have missed it. Gentle barely stops short of hanging a blinking neon sign that says "soulmates!" above their heads. The power of preconception, I guess.

I finished this last week and am still trying to come up with a coherent response to it. Here are some random thoughts and questions that I've had.

I wasn't surprised by the ending; given the divided reviews I guessed it would be something like that. It was still pretty stunning though.
>12 imyril: Yes, it is a very 80s book in that respect! I devoured all those YA nuclear disaster books that were published then!

I was disappointed that so many of the characters from Golden witchbreed had died or just disappeared in the 10 years between books especially Rodion and I agree that it seemed to have happened only to make Blaise available to Christie.

So many women in positions of power and authority, yet most of them handled it so badly. Many of their failures can be excused by the impossible nature of the situation, but Pramila's actions are unjustifiable IMO. I wanted to shake her! She really does fit the silly little girl throwing the world away for love stereotype, quite literally in this case.

I was so glad to see Ruric back! Yes, she and Christie were clearly soulmates in GW, and even more so in this book. To my mind, the events of AL vindicate her actions in GW

The whole novel made me think about issues of intervention by outsiders in local affairs, and how such actions rarely turn out well. Given that the Company initiated the disaster, what responsibility did they have to try and resolve the conflict they'd caused? Was there any action they could have taken that would not have made things worse? I keep asking myself these questions, and seeing comparable examples in our own world on the news each day. I wonder if Gentle wrote this before or after she took her degree in War Studies.

I did feel that the book was a bit longer than it needed to be, although I'm not sure where I'd cut it.

I enjoyed seeing more of the Southern Continent and its different cultures; Gentle's ability to evoke a world is superb.

Just how much of the witchbreed genetic makeup remains in the Harantish, I wonder? Or how much of it is Christie seeing via the power of suggestion?

Overall this was a very, very good read; it was a pleasure to have a reason to revisit Golden Witchbreed, and I'm glad to have completed the journey with Ancient Light.

>15 Sakerfalcon: I was having a think about those in positions of power, and that made me think (which I didn't earlier): Gentle is British, and was writing in Thatcher's Britain. A strong female leader, who was never afraid to rattle sabres and who went to war over foreign soil to protect her national and commercial interests.

Just a thought, and not one I will explore further given I don't want to stray into real-world politics and I don't know Gentle's views anyway! But it struck me as possibly relevant, given other parallels on 80s nuclear fears and so on.

I've been a bit uncomfortable with the switch from the alternate-timeline-unfallen British Empire to PanOceana, and I think I've figured out one reason why. In this book, Gentle has switched the Earthly authority away from the British Empire to Pan-Oceana, in effect giving us a bit of a discrimiflippy "people of color as colonizers" setup- I remember seeing a critical review of Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen not too long ago for the very same thing, the evil, exploitative offworld authorities there being mostly people of color.

In effect, we end up with Christie, a good citizen of the British Empire (and possibly Doug is British too? can't remember), heroically trying to save the native Ortheans from the exploitative, colonizing people of color from South/East/Southeast Asia. It may be a constraint of the alternate future Gentle set up in the first book, but I feel it was definitely a choice that ends up distancing a white Western reader like myself from feeling complicity with the Company and the weight of history when I'm reading (with a side of "colonialism isn't the outgrowth of a particular society in a particular way, it's universal, inescapable human nature").

Right now, I'm feeling that this gives the story an uncomfortable whiff of the "white savior" complex, at least in Christie's own mind. Outworlders on both sides, fighting over Orthe, with Orthe's political authority killed and dissolved off-screen in a most unsatisfying way- as we discussed Rodion being killed off to make Blaize available, I feel like Suthafiori was killed off and the takshiriye dissolved and Haltern aged/marginalized to take the story to the Coast and also make the "white savior" role available for scrutiny and possible deconstruction.

Honestly, I don't find any of these contrivances completely out of the bounds of believability, but I need more to make me feel like it happened in an organic way rather than in a "cold equations" sort of author-manipulative way.

I'm still fairly early on, though, so my feelings might change as I read on. I want to see how much of a role the Ortheans themselves play in things. Really, I think what I most wish from this book is that Ruric was our POV rather than Christie, because she- and the other Ortheans- are really the ones with the most at stake here.

>17 sandstone78: discrimiflippy

Good point. A bit like the gender-flipping (hey! women can be in charge too!), I suspect Gentle had good intentions (look! in the future it's not all about the US and Europe!) but it backfires because of how events then unfold. I don't think PanOceania is evil because it is driven by people of colour, it is evil because it is a multicorporate - but as we get no positive representation of people of colour, that's an own goal.

>"colonialism isn't the outgrowth of a particular society in a particular way, it's universal, inescapable human nature"

...I guess this bothered me less, in so far as there's ample evidence (historically and archaeologically, but also in terms of modern economics) that colonial behaviour (if we read this as exploitation by a dominant group) is horribly common regardless of race or geography and quite hard to avoid. The selfish gene and all that. Yes there are exceptions so it's not inescapable - but if you add a modern commercial context (although this is obviously authorial choice! Being scifi, Gentle could have chosen otherwise!)...

And I found I did sympathise with Molly Rachel and even Cory. I didn't like what they did, but I understood how they got to it and recognised their context (have I spent too much time in a chaotic, unethical industry trying to manage outcomes? Err, probably). The thing I liked about Ancient Light was that it puts grown-ups in difficult positions and demands they respond as adults (as opposed to heroic fantasy, that traditionally often features a teenage saviour sweeping the board with good intentions and some funky back-up).

Arguably, Christie is the one who can't face up to reality with her idealistic insistence that she can play the system to improve the outcome, and her refusal to accept that working for the Company makes her complicit (that early scene when she manipulates access to the Witchbreed artefacts in the telestre!)

>white savior

Yes, absolutely - in Christie's mind at least. I liked that Blaize calls her on this from the start, and actually I don't recall that any Orthean ever buys into it. I think the complex is underlined in the final act when she decides that obviously she should be the next Hexenmeister, regardless of how many 'apprentices' may be at the Brown Tower, although ultimately it's obviously not what Gentle had in mind. So yes, it's definitely more than a whiff, and it's all about deconstruction. You can't be both complicit and heroic?

>I need more to make me feel like it happened in an organic way rather than in a "cold equations" sort of author-manipulative way

I can't argue with you here either. The corporate context may well have all been in the background all the time, but Golden Witchbreed is so focused on the immediate situation that anything beyond the horizon (let alone outside orbit) is irrelevant. But it is a carefully stacked house of cards, not least the fragile balance on the Southern Continent and nobody ever considering - in millennia - that there is land north of the Hundred Thousand that isn't as rich as the telestres but is a hell of a lot better than the desert! And that's before you get to Pramila and her choices...

>POV

I would have been delighted if the short story had finally given us Orthe from an Orthean POV. Utterly delighted.

>18 imyril: "You can't be both complicit and heroic?"

Yes, very much so I think- that's the theme that most ties this to the first book, with Ruric's actions there. But Ruric's is willing to alienate herself from her people in a way I think Christie isn't willing to alienate herself from Earth (at least at first). I don't think Christie can project consequences as well either.

I too think the unflattering discrimiflippiness is unintentional in probably both cases- I think it usually is, unless one is writing Save the Pearls.

I agree that the best part of this novel is watching people have to adult! Golden Witchbreed, honestly, did go for the Christie saving things with good intentions a bit (though we did get her being utterly powerless in Melkathi at the end to balance out)- I think that was one of the problems Abi Nussbaum pointed out in her review.

I like the "what happens when the corporations move in and everything else is underfunded" aspect quite a bit, and Christie's complicity even- but that's where the authorial hand showing is so irritating (as familiar as Doug and Christie are with each other, for example, I really wish he'd had a brief mention in the first book, or been one of the people from the Earth team there...)

I really wish the short story, if not an Orthean POV, had at least shown us Christie's life between books offworld... At this point, I still don't know why she didn't go back to the Service, because it seems like that would have been so much more in character- Orthe obviously is a backwater post that eg Doug doesn't want, surely she could have used some of that de Lisle family influence to get herself posted back there?

I still don't know why she didn't go back to the Service, because it seems like that would have been so much more in character- Orthe obviously is a backwater post that eg Doug doesn't want, surely she could have used some of that de Lisle family influence to get herself posted back there?

I wondered this too. The Company's ethos and aims seemed so opposed to Lynne's values as regards Orthe that it was hard for me to believe that it was the vehicle she chose by which to return. (Even bearing in mind her plan to try and minimise the damage they would cause.) There were those references to "Max" every now and then; are we supposed to assume that he was the reason she didn't make a more immediate return to Orthe? Otherwise I didn't see much point to those hints of a great lost love back on Earth.

>20 Sakerfalcon: I vaguely think there was a paragraph somewhere about what kept her away - although it was obviously so detailed and memorable that I can't recall any of it ;)

There were, uh, reasons. And then Max. And then Max died while Christie was off doing stuff.

...none of which helped me understand why she left the Service and joined a Company. In terms of authorial hand, this and the inconvenient memory loss are right up there (and while it did eventually get more or less explained, it still feels messy in terms of how it's handled - that issue of your readers not only knowing more than your narrator but to the extent of them having to deduce the problem, because the narrator doesn't know she has one!)

Okay, final thoughts... I found the ending didn't hit me so hard this time. Huh. "Why didn't I ask you to go into exile with me?" though... Siiigh, Ruric.

This is such a frustrating book, because I admire a lot of what it's doing:

1. The Witchbreed memories were wonderfully chilling- that first one in the telestre with the bowl, the one Christie and Calil share. Shivers.

2. I like the way that there are so many shades of gray, and that it undermines not only the easy way Christie becomes part of Orthe, but also shows how simplistic Ruric's plan was- this book makes it look naive. It makes you think "What could we have done?" (though perhaps not as much as it could have, see my nitpicking complaints below.) It makes me want to read more "ongoing contact" stories with nuance.

3. Ruric. Definitely one of the most interesting characters I've met in literature. Her fatal flaw, in both books, of caring too much about the Hundred Thousand... not being able to really get a wider view of Orthe. I don't think she ever really became the Hexenmeister, any more than Christie did- she was merely Ruric with more knowledge.

4. The horrible setup with the ancient light just barely held back by failing technology, the horrible final twist that no, Calil doesn't have a way to cause more ancient light, she's just setting free what's there.

5. The last couple of chapters until the ending. I know that eg Abi Nussbaum felt like it was too caught up in Christie's reactions, but for me, that's what made it work, and really sums up Christie's character: her selfishness, her inability to commit to one thing or the other, the way that she has never really had authority, responsibility, accountability by virtue of being an outsider.

(How much of this has been her choice, and how much just the position she found herself in? Eg, when she was the Company representative, she remained isolated and giving orders instead of trying to draw from the resources of the Company hierarchy, superiors and the other teams.)

But the execution falls short for me:

1. As mentioned before, how did the weapon smuggling even work? I'm willing to buy that it did, but I need more than "Pramila did it"- something like that would require collaboration of many different people at many different places. (I don't think you can have "we are horribly understaffed and only have like ten people because we need to show results for budget" and the implied? "there is no way we can track down who did this!", those things just can't coexist.)

It was no secret that the hiyeks had such technology, it was rumored for probably an in-story elapsed time of months before we saw it, and nobody went looking, or tried to stop it?

2. Speaking of PanOceania, PanOceania is horrible at keeping track of their employees. I can understand Christie managing to escape, given her previous knowledge and the fact that she hired out Orthean mercenaries, but she also had a position as a somewhat independent contractor with some autonomy. Pramila was part of a team, and yet nobody seemed to notice when she went off alone and joined an Orthean army? I don't think she was even reported missing before she turned up- okay, I can buy that chaotic situation, poor communications quality, but still, someone should have noticed.

3. For goodness' sake, if there was technology capable of jamming communications, why did that not ever come up when everyone was like "Oh no! The hiyeks have communication technology!"- surely Mendez knew this technology existed? Why was that not an option to destabilize their army? (It wasn't even an "if only we'd thought of it!" option!)

4. What happened to the Tower's so-called defenses, a definite presence in scenes there before? It's stood for ten thousand years, surely against previous attack attempts, and yet construction machines(?) are enough to destroy it? Was it just that the city was abandoned by everyone including the Hexenmeister, and they needed to be manually operated?

Other thoughts:

1. I was never really convinced that ten years had passed for Christie- somewhat in the beginning, but from roughly the point where Christie "mastered" her memories it didn't feel like she had any more life experience than she had at the end of Golden Witchbreed. We never find out much of anything at all that happened to her off Orthe- there are coy mentions, which work to varying degrees, but I really wanted a full flashback or something.

It's a pet peeve of mine, when I'm told that a character has X years of experience in Y situations, but we never see that character drawing comparisons, having flashbacks, reminiscing, thinking of people they knew then. I wanted more about Max, about her years of government service, about what exactly she did on Earth.

2. Not a question, but Pramila just didn't really work for me. I can buy her actions, but she never really moved past someone holding up a neon sign saying "I'm a foil for Christie!" (Douggie and Mendez moved beyond this, a little, but none of them were ever so well drawn as Ruric, Hal, and Blaize to me.)

3. Why did the Hexenmeister lie to Christie about the nature of her memories? Honestly, what purpose did that serve? It triggered Calil's actions, but I just can't see the logic behind it. The Hexenmeister couldn't have really thought Christie would bring the Company down on the Tower for its technology, she knew Christie too well. So why?

4. What actually caused Christie's weird amnesia? It wasn't there at all in the last act of Golden Witchbreed, so some kind of delayed reaction, or was it really the problems caused by hypnotape after all? Why were her Tower memories almost completely absent from the narrative after she'd "mastered" them, and what did that even really mean? I was mollified a bit at the way the role of the Hexenmeister came back in at the very end, where Christie deluded herself into believing she was suitable for the position, but from an in-world perspective this setup didn't really make sense to me.

5. How was Calil able to induce past-memories, and possibly related, what was the deal with the Wells and Wellkeepers? They seemed to have some knowledge of how to operate Witchbreed technology, and the Well-water and being marked for the Goddess seemed to have some involvement with the past memories too.

The ashirenin in the last vision, in Chapter 39 specifically says that ke has drunk from the Wells of the Goddess' wisdom- it seems to me that maybe the Wells are Witchbreed-era technology, and they possibly play a role in transmission or activation of the past-memories? (Are they part of the telestres and religion Kerys Founder set up specifically to suppress the Witchbreed technology?)

6. I too would have liked to have seen more of Kel Harantish. We really didn't get much beyond Calil and Panthrey (which, how unreliable was Panthrey?) at all. Calil was another somewhat flat character.

7. This is a story with epic scope- there is a lot going on in several different places at any given time. To Gentle's credit, the timeline seems very solid to me, I didn't spot any inconsistencies. But at the same time, I think not giving us a view onto these other places (eg the hiyeks, Kel Harantish) is also a weakness, as it makes events there feel less organic and more contrived because we only see the end results a lot of the time instead of things building up.

8. The more military focused parts were definitely the weakest parts for me. I found my attention wandering, and it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on. (Did Mendez blow up the Citadel? I never really saw what pointed to that as a possibility, it felt like the hiyeks' attack to me.)

9. Okay. How exactly did the Golden Empire fall? In Golden Witchbreed, it was an infertility virus. Here it seems that a. Zilkezra set free a "virus"(?) that destroys chiruzeth, or b. Santhendor'lin Sandru created and loosed the ancient light, destroying his own city in a horrible ritual, or c. the Golden attacked several sites with ancient light, which the Tower held back? How localized are the effects? How much of the destruction will be the force of loosing the weather that the Tower has held back and how much the ancient light itself? Can anything survive?

Hope to read the short story tonight, then thoughts on that later!

>18 imyril: I see Christie wanting to be Hexenmeister in a different way- it's a fundamentally self-destructive act, coming from her grief, and also a selfish one, as much or more than a savior complex- though yes, I think that's there too. She wants Ruric to forgive her for what she's done, she wants to bring Ruric back from the dead, she wants to catch up to Ruric, who was always one step ahead of her. It's obsession with Ruric by that point, she's so overwhelmed with grief and shock and horrible realization of missed opportunity that she's completely caught up in that to the exclusion of anything else.