![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityI have a thing for Epic Destinies, the Egyptians are just cooler, history is totally written by the victors (but it's okay if you grow up to hate them), and this one kind of has a happy ending too (even though it ends in a massacre).
A prof I had in uni introduced me to the term "post interesting". Post Interesting is any point in the archaeological record you no longer care about. For me, this comes rather firmly at the end of the Bronze Age (with exceptions for Scottish history in general, Caesar, Trajan, and Hadrian, but none of them when they're actually in Rome). I just find the Romans so tiresome, with their excessive note taking and their extreme prejudice and their INABILITY TO PUNCTUATE THEIR SENTENCES.
That said, I have a weak spot for Cleopatra. Because who doesn't, really. She's probably one of the most misunderstood people of all time, both because people don't understand what Egypt was like at the time of her reign and because the world STILL isn't ready for her kind of monarchy. Since Rome wrote the history books, she gets the shaft ALL THE TIME.
She does not get the shaft in this book. Well, she still dies and she still loses her kingdom (I *hate* Octavian so freaking much. I do love Agrippa, though, and at least he felt bad about it afterwards), but this is the story of her life, and...well, she lived it.
It's also the story of her half-sisters, because in Egypt sometimes being a slave wasn't so bad, and if you were Cleopatra's half-sisters it meant you ran the kingdom. And because it's Epic Destiny, it's the story of Neas and Xandros and Gull again (but different, obviously).
It's that difference, I think, that was the most interesting thing for me. Because you expect a sequel that's just everybody reincarnated to be...repetitive. And this was not. At all. Even a little. (Well, sometimes, but that's usually when it was supposed to be.) In writing for Egypt, Graham really got to expand the world and spirits she'd started building in "Black Ships", and let them loose upon the cosmos in general with AWESOME results.
Parts of the book were a little bit preachy. But I mean that in the best possible way. And also, I am most assuredly a member of the choir, so I also don't care. What I mean by preachy is that this book had Important Things in it. Things like tolerance. And a dislike of racist pigs. And an idea of right and wrong, and how even if you could have done something morally questionable that might have paid off, you're all the better for not doing it.
In using the Egyptians (who were much, much smarter than most people realize), Graham was able to have conversations that really got into gender and roles and whatnot, in a way that I hadn't expected but was very, very pleased with. This was not an "empty" book. This book was FULL OF THINGS, and all the better for it.
(One of my favourite scenes in the book is where it becomes apparent just how much Agrippa Does Not Get It, because Romans are selectively short-sighted in that they forget that other people can get along just fine without them, sometimes, and that they are not, in fact, a nation of "like" people but in fact a nation of insanely diverse people, most of whom they keep jumping up and down on top of, and then enlisting into the army. And also that Agrippa is young. Which we'll see later, even more vindictively, in Octavian. Wow, off-topic.)
Also there was platonic co-sleeping. WHICH I ADORE. And grown-up decisions about relationship issues, which I also adore. AND DION LIVED. THANK GOODNESS.
I can't even talk about how much I loved Charmian, Dion and Emrys. I just...don't have enough words.
The only part of the book I didn't like, and this is probably because fandom and fandom's obsession with Warnings has spoiled me to the point where I expect to be told ahead of time, was that there was a very sudden, kind of brutal rape on page 127 that I kind of stumbled into and then had to put the book down and hyperventilate for a few minutes before I could face going on again. But there was comfort co-sleeping soon after, so I was okay.
There was also a wonderful joke about how the pyramids were not built by slaves, which I appreciated. ;)
9.5/10. And now I need to sleep, because I have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow morning, but I know I'll have excellent dreams tonight!
A prof I had in uni introduced me to the term "post interesting". Post Interesting is any point in the archaeological record you no longer care about. For me, this comes rather firmly at the end of the Bronze Age (with exceptions for Scottish history in general, Caesar, Trajan, and Hadrian, but none of them when they're actually in Rome). I just find the Romans so tiresome, with their excessive note taking and their extreme prejudice and their INABILITY TO PUNCTUATE THEIR SENTENCES.
That said, I have a weak spot for Cleopatra. Because who doesn't, really. She's probably one of the most misunderstood people of all time, both because people don't understand what Egypt was like at the time of her reign and because the world STILL isn't ready for her kind of monarchy. Since Rome wrote the history books, she gets the shaft ALL THE TIME.
She does not get the shaft in this book. Well, she still dies and she still loses her kingdom (I *hate* Octavian so freaking much. I do love Agrippa, though, and at least he felt bad about it afterwards), but this is the story of her life, and...well, she lived it.
It's also the story of her half-sisters, because in Egypt sometimes being a slave wasn't so bad, and if you were Cleopatra's half-sisters it meant you ran the kingdom. And because it's Epic Destiny, it's the story of Neas and Xandros and Gull again (but different, obviously).
It's that difference, I think, that was the most interesting thing for me. Because you expect a sequel that's just everybody reincarnated to be...repetitive. And this was not. At all. Even a little. (Well, sometimes, but that's usually when it was supposed to be.) In writing for Egypt, Graham really got to expand the world and spirits she'd started building in "Black Ships", and let them loose upon the cosmos in general with AWESOME results.
Parts of the book were a little bit preachy. But I mean that in the best possible way. And also, I am most assuredly a member of the choir, so I also don't care. What I mean by preachy is that this book had Important Things in it. Things like tolerance. And a dislike of racist pigs. And an idea of right and wrong, and how even if you could have done something morally questionable that might have paid off, you're all the better for not doing it.
In using the Egyptians (who were much, much smarter than most people realize), Graham was able to have conversations that really got into gender and roles and whatnot, in a way that I hadn't expected but was very, very pleased with. This was not an "empty" book. This book was FULL OF THINGS, and all the better for it.
(One of my favourite scenes in the book is where it becomes apparent just how much Agrippa Does Not Get It, because Romans are selectively short-sighted in that they forget that other people can get along just fine without them, sometimes, and that they are not, in fact, a nation of "like" people but in fact a nation of insanely diverse people, most of whom they keep jumping up and down on top of, and then enlisting into the army. And also that Agrippa is young. Which we'll see later, even more vindictively, in Octavian. Wow, off-topic.)
Also there was platonic co-sleeping. WHICH I ADORE. And grown-up decisions about relationship issues, which I also adore. AND DION LIVED. THANK GOODNESS.
I can't even talk about how much I loved Charmian, Dion and Emrys. I just...don't have enough words.
The only part of the book I didn't like, and this is probably because fandom and fandom's obsession with Warnings has spoiled me to the point where I expect to be told ahead of time, was that there was a very sudden, kind of brutal rape on page 127 that I kind of stumbled into and then had to put the book down and hyperventilate for a few minutes before I could face going on again. But there was comfort co-sleeping soon after, so I was okay.
There was also a wonderful joke about how the pyramids were not built by slaves, which I appreciated. ;)
9.5/10. And now I need to sleep, because I have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow morning, but I know I'll have excellent dreams tonight!
