A review by mos_basik
The Last Legends of Earth by A.A. Attanasio
3.0
Complex. Disjointed, in a way. I didn't realize it when I began, but this is the fourth book by Attanasio in a tetrad devoted to the four cardinal dimensions that rule our lives - height, depth, width, time. In retrospect, it makes sense for the one about time to be disjointed. That's not a bad thing, of course.
Distant. As with any book that covers a span of seven thousand years, there are plenty of characters that are introduced, make their effects felt, and disappear - a handful of characters remain constant and well-known to the reader.
Epic gods - reminded me of nothing so much as of the Valar vs. Melkor in [a:Tolkien|656983|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1329870573p2/656983.jpg]'s [b:The Silmarillion|3306190|The Silmarillion The Epic History of the Elves in The Lord of the Rings|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1210732062s/3306190.jpg|4733799]. The continuing struggle of the great machine intelligences against torture and conversion by the zōtl... the two forms of fire, one bright as the sun and one unrelenting darkness. Genetrix, omnipresent and life-giving - and Gai, the creator.
It was meant to be read straight through, forging ahead like tank bruting through jungle. I don't know how many times this happened: a detail is mentioned offhandedly about a topic that had been described before as if the detail is obvious and you should know it - making you think, "Oh, I missed something. I'll go back and check." But when you go back to the original description, that detail is nowhere to be found. You didn't miss anything; that new detail is just being given to you by the author in a different order than usual. Eventually you get used to it and you stop looking back whenever you find details. A second read would probably give you a much clearer idea of what's going on.
It was hard to get into, certainly. Storywise, I was lost for a good first quarter of the book. Writing was enjoyable enough that I kept going for the sake of the descriptions, so I eventually caught onto the story. Then I couldn't put it down.
So many twists. There were a lot of ways I could have seen it ending.
Distant. As with any book that covers a span of seven thousand years, there are plenty of characters that are introduced, make their effects felt, and disappear - a handful of characters remain constant and well-known to the reader.
Epic gods - reminded me of nothing so much as of the Valar vs. Melkor in [a:Tolkien|656983|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1329870573p2/656983.jpg]'s [b:The Silmarillion|3306190|The Silmarillion The Epic History of the Elves in The Lord of the Rings|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1210732062s/3306190.jpg|4733799]. The continuing struggle of the great machine intelligences against torture and conversion by the zōtl... the two forms of fire, one bright as the sun and one unrelenting darkness. Genetrix, omnipresent and life-giving - and Gai, the creator.
It was meant to be read straight through, forging ahead like tank bruting through jungle. I don't know how many times this happened: a detail is mentioned offhandedly about a topic that had been described before as if the detail is obvious and you should know it - making you think, "Oh, I missed something. I'll go back and check." But when you go back to the original description, that detail is nowhere to be found. You didn't miss anything; that new detail is just being given to you by the author in a different order than usual. Eventually you get used to it and you stop looking back whenever you find details. A second read would probably give you a much clearer idea of what's going on.
It was hard to get into, certainly. Storywise, I was lost for a good first quarter of the book. Writing was enjoyable enough that I kept going for the sake of the descriptions, so I eventually caught onto the story. Then I couldn't put it down.
So many twists. There were a lot of ways I could have seen it ending.