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hunters_forestSo, a good place to start is at the end.
The way I read, I'm constantly trying to figure out where the plot is going, and how it might resolve. One of the things I so liked about the Coldfire trilogy was that it was very hard for me to figure out how she could bring it to a satisfying conclusion. I like it when someone is able to really surprise me. So when I first read Crown of Shadows, I looked forward to seeing how it would end.
Well, most of us know how it ends, and my first response was to nearly throw the book across the room. It felt so...unfitting. I had the impression that Friedman had written herself into a corner, and that she had left plots dangling. I mean...Damien, just standing there? Surely he would've done something. Everything in my reading experience said that you don't simply leave a character standing there at the end, with nothing left to do and nowhere to go. Isn't that a story in itself? And Tarrant...egad, what happened with Tarrant? It was weird, and jarring for me. I felt terribly let down that this was how it would all end after everything that had happened.
In subsequent reads, it came together for me a bit. Or maybe I just learned to live with my disappointment. I can get behind Damien's mixture of joy and despair now. I can snicker at Tarrant's parting one-up on the ex-priest. I can look forward and wonder what Tarrant, in his new body, might be going off to do; what Damien might find to do with the rest of his broken life. Wondering what could possibly come after for them both has become part of the story for me.
But I still wonder...is that what she was trying to do? I mean really. What was the point of that ending?
The way I read, I'm constantly trying to figure out where the plot is going, and how it might resolve. One of the things I so liked about the Coldfire trilogy was that it was very hard for me to figure out how she could bring it to a satisfying conclusion. I like it when someone is able to really surprise me. So when I first read Crown of Shadows, I looked forward to seeing how it would end.
Well, most of us know how it ends, and my first response was to nearly throw the book across the room. It felt so...unfitting. I had the impression that Friedman had written herself into a corner, and that she had left plots dangling. I mean...Damien, just standing there? Surely he would've done something. Everything in my reading experience said that you don't simply leave a character standing there at the end, with nothing left to do and nowhere to go. Isn't that a story in itself? And Tarrant...egad, what happened with Tarrant? It was weird, and jarring for me. I felt terribly let down that this was how it would all end after everything that had happened.
In subsequent reads, it came together for me a bit. Or maybe I just learned to live with my disappointment. I can get behind Damien's mixture of joy and despair now. I can snicker at Tarrant's parting one-up on the ex-priest. I can look forward and wonder what Tarrant, in his new body, might be going off to do; what Damien might find to do with the rest of his broken life. Wondering what could possibly come after for them both has become part of the story for me.
But I still wonder...is that what she was trying to do? I mean really. What was the point of that ending?
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Date: 2005-10-24 11:40 pm (UTC)...But I was so attached to him just as a reader, after something like 2000 pages, that I was grateful to be able to avoid the heartbreak of his final death. I wouldn't be at all surprised if part of Friedman's reason for giving him that ending was the same kind of attachment multiplied by the factor of having written him and lived with him and gotten so familiar with him that it was just too painful to let him die.
You can probably hear how torn I am. I think there'd be more artistic merit, or something, more serious credibility, to killing Tarrant in order to save Erna. But I'm grateful that Friedman didn't do it, because I love him so much that I want to believe he has a chance.
I always sort of vaguely disclaim the ending when reccomending the books to people -- "The ending gets a little weird, and there are some plot twists that are kind of hard to swallow, but they're forgivable because they're for the sake of a really excellent character," that sort of thing. I'm not comfortable with it and never really have been, but I'd have been crushed by the more-technically-perfect (?) ending.