Godslayer (2005)

I adore Jacqueline Carey--she really is one of my favorites. For some reason, though, this two-book series didn't live up to her other works for me. I suppose I just wanted more from it; the story was there, but I wanted the luscious depth of character and plot and story that I've seen in her longer works (and some of her shorter ones, too!), and just didn't get it. For such relatively short books (compared to other fantasies and her own fantasies, at least), I think the story just may have been spread between too many characters.

That said... for readers who read the first book (and you definitely need to read that one first), this one is worth reading if you're at all inclined. I thought this book moved quite a bit faster and was also easier to engage with than the first in the series, so I'm glad I ended up reading it. ( )

A beautiful and heart wrenching story with some brilliant characters like Tanaros and Ushahin. This will stay in my mind for a long time. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2662044.html

I've generally been a huge fan of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books, and picked up Godslayer at a convention ages ago; and then on advice got Banewreaker to read first. They are really a very different kettle of fish. Written between the first and second Kushiel trilogies, these two books take the standard fantasy quest narrative and try to tell it from the point of view of the evil side not really being all that bad. It's a worthy attempt, and I kept reading, spotting different bits and pieces taken from Tolkien and other writers and slightly reinvented, but it didn't really grab me.

In particular, the names of some of the characters are so wrong that it's very distracting. One key figure is called Malthus, and I kept expecting him to start preaching on the problems of overpopulation; another is called Carfax, and unfortunately that name makes me think of traffic jams in Oxford before anything else. It's a real shame; Carey's ear for names in the Kushiel books seems to have been rather good, but here that talent deserted her. ( )

Forebodingly elegiacal, the tension builds over the course of the book until the ending is as much a realease for the reader as for the characters. I found particularly compelling the position of Sartoris as the "evil" shaper, with Haomane's Allies the "good" characters.

The striving of all of the individual characters, their loyalty and faith, stood in stark contrast to the absence of the other Shapers in the narrative. One has no idea what their desires or goals are, or even if they know or care about the millions of live and oceans of blood lost in their names. The only Shaper who has any connection with those battling in the Shaper's War is Satoris, which in a way makes him the perfect villain. He's present, which means that his flaws and mistakes can be seen, but not those of the his brothers and sisters.

I found Carey's writing incredibly haunting, with the inexorable drive towards the fulfillment of the prophecy really gripping. ( )

sequel to Banewreaker, the pair collected as The Sundering. there's a grandeur to it, the Godslayer forces doggedly trying to outrun both fate and time. and there's a poignancy to the characters, as magnificent in defeat as they are in ascendance. it's a Tolkeinian clash of forces with a world at stake, a larger battle between good and evil. but where it really becomes interesting is: who holds the high ground really on that moral plane? they all have honour, justification, the greater good in mind. all of them choose, or feel in good faith they have no choices. moreover, the story is told from the point of view of those who lose, at which time a world ends, and begins again. but all of them on both sides fight for what they think is right, and they have their reasons - yet they are pawns in the gods' war they can't see, and can never win. and to the extent that they come to know that, and have compassion for those they fight, they may yet change the new world birthed by the end of this struggle, by the sacrifices they make, the blood they shed. a small classic. one book, really, not two, and splitting it into two did no service to the build, or the power of its ending. ( )