goodverbsonly's reviews
528 reviews

I have never in my life encountered a less likable set of characters.

the problem with me listening to audiobooks is that i OFTEN forget to listen!!! do i know what happened? no! do i love eli vanto ! yes! did i listen to this for the sole purpose of having some background so i can read alliances! 100%!!!

EDIT 1/20/20: I do think this book definitively suffers from too broad a scope, especially in audio format. it covers too much time and attempts to bring too much together in a short amount of pages to ever be truly successful. Also audio performances make me cringe like nothing else in the world, and I wish people would STOP. on the other hand, the performer does an EXCELLENT and deliciously evil Palpatine.

technically, i still have the appendix to read but after reading his “letter to an asshole” at the end, and also due to the fact that it’s about game theory, i need a clear mind going into it:

1. great! a solid philosophical background about what makes an asshole an asshole, and why we don’t like them. very interesting, clear and accessible
2. aj...might just be an asshole himself...definitely has a picture of an asshole in his mind and seems to want to clear himself of moral responsibility for not dealing with them, while also clearing himself of being one and being a “fully cooperative person” who is...not real
3. might be wrong or splitting hairs in the nitty gritty of the definitions when i think an application of kant actually makes his theory both simple and interesting!!!!
4. in some places he is downright condescending!!!! in his writing and his view of people who aren’t like...philosophers, who want to try to change assholes, etc.

I a) stand by my position that sc is the strangest of the books even as I understand fully what this books is about and b) WHAT is this book about.

I only mean that, putting the badly aged race/religion politics and how very English it is aside for just a moment, and also how I have absolutely no interest in discussing Lewis' view on Faith vs Works, the last six or so chapters of the book are like, the only substantial part of it. This is a book about the end of the world. This is a book about death. And a book about hope. CS Lewis decided he was going to tell you the best he could what he hoped was true when you died. But it's like. It's a lot.

At the end of the day, this book doesn't age the way lww did, and it's so clearly Christian that it's hard to escape that aspect of it. I think that could be grating for people. The distinction between Aslan and Tash always confused me when I was younger, and now I am rather suspicious of what was meant, without it being any clearer than it was at first. Emeth is still the only character who matters to me in the grand scheme of the book weirdly, but a few months ago I saw people trying to talk about Works, and I mean it that I don't have it in me to discuss it in full but I will say:

At the end of the day I see the issue as it is laid out as: through True Faith you will do good works, AND works are an important aspect of your faith. You cannot have one without the other, and it does not matter, at the end of the day, what you call your faith, or your God. There is only one true God, and you will recognize Him, and He will recognize you, if you want. And that's what I've taken away from this book for the last 10 years. CS Lewis was just like. So Close to being Catholic. At least in this.

Patrick Stewart did, unfortunately, say "Turnus" instead of Tumnus...how does that happen.

This is by far the strangest and most courtly of the seven but perhaps Jack can Chill Out about schools and whatnot

Every time I read it, Puddleglum becomes more and more important to me as a character who is steadfast in his faith, in spite of the fact that he is mostly sure Aslan wants him to die.

Did I enjoy this book? Yea, of course I love Obi-Wan, I love wanting to fistfight Qui-Gon, resident dumbass of the Jedi, but like, can we talk about Anakin:

Real Aveross who came to the temple at the age of 5 refuses to assimilate. The Council makes certain exceptions for him, because they believe that it’s in his best interest and because they are a religious order founded on compassion. Qui-Gon believes that these exceptions led to Rael’s loss of his Padawan, AND that the leniency they treated him with in regards to the role he played in her death was WRONG. What does the Council take from this? What side of the argument did Yoda fall on?( I actually don’t know, and it is important, because I believe that Yoda did like Aveross and Anakin but he doesn’t like Qui-Gon very much at all.) Aveross is so distraught from the death of Nim that he throws himself into his next assignment, and loses sight of his mandate and what’s best, and causes, in part, the catastrophe at the end of the novel.

He is a clear Anakin parallel, but the questions I asked, which are, what does everyone learn, are...left hanging. Why do we even ask these questions if we don’t know what Qui-Gon learned, except that the chosen one is someone who exists, and is someone who is coming soon (and is Anakin, I can’t believe they let Claudia Gray put the Prophesy in print. It is undeniably about Anakin imo. The one about Shmi is less hard-and-fast, but clear enough that I’ve decided it’s about Shmi). What did Obi-Wan learn, except that he is still young (true, this is, in a lot of ways, a coming of age story for Obi-Wan and an adult story about Qui-Gon: a chance to reassess the things he’s believed up until now, to reevaluate what he believed was important) and had a lot to learn. What does the Council learn? I don’t know. What do they learn about Compassion, about how they will treat someone they don’t know yet. Nothing? A lot? It’s a mystery.

Are we even meant to see Anakin in Rael? That’s something I don’t know. Anakin might have trouble assimilating and letting go, but we see it manifest differently — in how hard he tries to, and how hard it is for him anyway. Where Rael accentuates his differences because he was older, Anakin who was even older when he came to the Temple, chafes against the Jedi who treat him like an outsider, who don’t trust him. What does Anakin do when he loses Ahsoka (a question I don’t even know fits in the schema of this book...but something we might have some perspective into come 2020...; also is this death more parallel to Padme or Shmi’s?) To be fair, Nim’s death is certainly more about Qui-Gon’s insecurities about his apprenticeship with Obi-Wan than anything else

Also, Qui-Gon displays a startling lack of compassion. I think there’s this idea that he would have been a better master for Anakin than Obi-Wan, that Obi-Wan was too young, and the death of his master, AND that his master tried to replace him with Anakin, was too fresh for him to be a good master to anyone, let alone a troubled, recently freed 10 yo who he was almost replaced with, but I’m just here to say, if Obi-Wan, who was at least half as rebellious and insecure as Anakin, had trouble with Qui-Gon’s vagueness, inconsistency with the way he applied rules, and inability to show that he cared about Obi-Wan (especially this one because sometimes Anakin is STUPID and doesn’t realize that Obi-Wan is insanely devoted to him out of love not duty and Obi-Wan actually could hardly make this clearer), then I have no idea how Anakin would have felt.

It’s good, it’s fun, it’s Star Wars, it’s completely detached from the Clone Wars somehow, and Padme’s teeny appearance in the EPILOGUE was like a GUT PUNCH but like...what did this book add to the canon.

Oh except for some vagueness about Dooku. Yeah, I forgot to add that this does work best if you listen to Jedi Lost first.