I think I said once before in a fit of frustration that I wished the book had started earlier, with Yeine back home before she got the news. I think you put your finger on it: in an odd way Yeine's plot is so defined by external forces it's difficult to get a bead on who she is. We don't truly get downtime with her and no one but her, it feels like, though I think the author does make an effort to round her out and give her agency. It's just that everything revealed is in direct response or thematically revealing/accentuating a plot element or other character, and it's a little too obvious. Even her independent sexual choices lead right into learning what Nahadoth thinks about it. We didn't get to see who she was at home, and I mean that both in the physical sense and in the emotional sense. Seeing how someone reacts in extreme/alien circumstances has a lot less impact if we don't see them at a resting state.
The book was frustrating to me because it had so many elements I LOVE but didn't quite gel for me emotionally. It just left me feeling frustrated over and over again.
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Date: 8 May 2014 03:45 am (UTC)The book was frustrating to me because it had so many elements I LOVE but didn't quite gel for me emotionally. It just left me feeling frustrated over and over again.