#Divine Cities

[satorugojjo]

cannot recommend Robert Jackson Bennetts books enough!!! I loved The Tainted Cup so much and decided to check out the Divine Cities trilogy and oh my god. The way he worldbuilds, and layers character, and is capable of such cool, strange magics is so impressive. It’s so hard to do magic based plot twists effectively without making it too complicated or too much of a gimmick, and balance it correctly with character development but he’s so good at it man.

I’d highly recommend both series (divine cities is finished but tainted cup is ongoing!) personally tainted cup was soooo unique in setting to me - the biopunk sphere isn’t actually very large so that was just extremely cool to read imo

[yourdailyjormy]

OLD ART TUESDAY

an attempt at General Turyin Mulaghesh, 13/08/2023

[sage-nebula]

Book Reviews: City of Miracles - Robert Jackson Bennett

Rating: 3/5

I wish I could say that I liked this novel more than I did. I want so much to have liked it more than I did.

City of Miracles is the last book in The Divine Cities trilogy, taking place roughly 13 years after City of Blades. This book follows the assassination of the protagonist from the first book, and follows her bodyguard as he at first opts for revenge against her assassin, and then devotes himself to protecting her adopted daughter.

The first thing I would like to say is that City of Miracles is not bad. It's a perfectly serviceable action novel. That, however, is where I think 50% of the problem lies. The strength of the first two novels (and in particular the very first novel) lay in their mystery element; we were given mysteries right at the beginning that the primary characters — and by the extension, we the reader — needed to solve. Those mysteries carried us through the plot, with each new clue we received helping to unveil a greater mystery surrounding the original mystery that felt thrilling to solve.

City of Miracles, however, does not read like that at all. There is but one mystery that main character Sigrud faces — who is the contractor behind Shara's assassination? — but that mystery gets solved extremely quickly. We learn very soon that he is one of the Divine children, out for revenge after having been tortured, and at that point we still have a little over half of the novel to go. Likewise, the true nature of Tatyana and Malwina is very obvious; once we learn that Malwina presides over the past, it makes it easy to see that Tatyana's precognition means she presides over the future, and it makes far more sense for there to be a Divinity of Time rather than a separate one for each past and future. These "mysteries" are not mysteries, and it didn't feel as if the book was really trying to treat them as such. There were no clues to discover, no characters to be suspicious of, nothing to puzzle over. It was all very straightforward.

This, combined with the series of action sequences that felt as though they were out of a movie franchise such as Die Hard, gave a very different feel and tone from the first two novels. Again, it felt more like an action novel. Which is fine, if that is what you are going for. But as someone who enjoyed the first two for the mystery element, it felt like a let down. On the one hand, I do understand that this does make sense with Sigrud as the protagonist — Sigrud has always been the Action Guy, ever since City of Stairs — but it still made me feel less engaged with the novel as a whole.

Speaking of that, the other major problem with the book is that it felt, somehow, less grounded in the reality of the world than the other two did. The books always dealt with Divinities; but the Divinities had a set history and system for how they and their miracles worked. We knew which world we were operating in, we knew the key players. Now, however, we're introducing Divine Children out of nowhere (most of whom we don't get to know and thus aren't impacted at all when they're killed — it was more of a "well this turns the tables badly" moment than any great tragedy), all of whom have different powers and quirks. At the end of the novel, these quirks are dispersed for everyone to use. Bennett, to his credit, does try to bring back some of the realism by showing how the people with the quirks are going to use them to further capitalistic endeavors, and how the government will seek to control them; but it still feels too far a departure from the grounded, interesting world he had developed before.

All of this is very negative, but again, I want to emphasize that I didn't hate this book. It had some poignant moments, and it was of course nice to see many of these characters again. (Mulaghesh, despite her brief appearances in this book, remains my favorite.) But it simply didn't have the same magnetic impact for me as the first two did. If the first book had been written like this, I would not have continued the trilogy. As it stands, this was the last book, and I feel disappointed that this is the note that we went out on.

[heavenpureheart]

[0720-coco]

[nerevar-near-and-far]

Stages of Morrowind fast travel awareness :

1. Oh god the rumors were true, there's no fast travel

2. Oh the Silt Striders

3. Huh, there's also boats and the guild guides and intervention spells

4. Where the fucking hell did intervention send me this time. Why is it Ald'ruhn when I was almost on top of Gnisis

5. Mark and Recall HELL YEAH

6. I can barely contain this spaghetti bowl of possible connections in my brain. I have a London taxi cab driver's knowledge of Vvardenfell at this point but I still always end up passing through Ald'ruhn somehow. Vivec City can cry about how important they are all they want. Ald'ruhn is Grand Central Station of this island

7. CHIM

[fawcetttweets]

A Concerned Friend

I forgot I made this one!! You guys almost didn’t get to see it :0 I wonder how many of these I’ve made and forgotten about…

Masterlist // First // Previous // Next

[cakypa120]

[hopeslastkiss]

'bad ending' solas and rook (pt.ii)

antigone by jean anouilh / the art of dragon age: the veilguard (pg.45) / how we fight for our lives by saeed jones / 'dantes inferno' by samuel michlap / 'the binding of fenrir' (1909) by mabel dorothy hardy / 'i am tired of making a religion out of my suffering' by fatima aamer bilal / 'the vision of the valley of dry bones' (1866) by gustave dore / psalm of scattered ashes by ashley mares / the lathe of heaven by ursula k. le guin / the last man on earth by wolf alice / 'the hypocrites' (unk.) by gustave dore / 'the tower' (dragon age: inquisition official art) / [source not found]

(pt.i) (pt.iii)

[kyxhiin]

req by @moonlightcycle571 !!

In one mission the justice league needed to be close-nit but widespread at the same time, and comms were compromised at the place their mission was set in. Batman had the idea to ask John Constantine about any spells that links multiple people's minds together. Everyone's gonna be okay with this cause y'know they know each and others Identities and stuff except for..

Captain Marvel. To escape the fate of telling the JL about his identity he made then believe he was an ageless God who was magic incarnate, it is believable cause it was shown that there's paintings about the suit even dating back to the stone age.

Billy who's just freaking out had to agree to it cause it would've been VERY suspicious if he didn't, but he thought as long as he stayed in the captain Marvel form everything would've been alright..

There they were. Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, The flash, Green Lantern, Plastic man (For whatever reason), and.. Billy well in the hero form of course. Stood in a room as the chain-smoking exorcist casted some sort of magic thing that will bind their minds together. And it finally happened, they could each here eachothers own thoughts and stuff.

Plastic man: Hey? Who's voice is that??

Crap. He didn't think about the heavenly twitch cha- no, the God's voices.

Flash: ...Is there a little kid in here, what does he mean by God's?

Zeus: !!! They can hear our voices..

A series of gods jumbled into surprise and started to talk, talk ALOT filling up most of their minds.

And that started a chain reaction with the JL they all started questioning each other, Luckily no one payed attention to Captain who put on his best confused face.

Wonderwoman seemed to be in deep thought.. Why was that voice sound so familiar???

Captain, No Billy was now trying to suppress the God's thoughts, he went into a slight panic abut his identity trying not to think of himself. But you know what happens if you don't wanna think about something? You think about it.

Superman: Who's imagining a young boy right now?

Plastic man: Hm.. Isn't that the Fawcett whizz kid? With the radio show? Wait Captain do you have an interview with him later on?

Captain Marvel changing his thoughts "voice" into his hero persona's ones.

Captain: Oh.. Yeah, yeah definitely. I'm just so excited..

Green Lantern: Hey.. Didn't you appear as a guest last time? How come your appearing again?? This is unfair..

Batman: This is not the point. Captain, do you know where the 5 *He closely listened in to his thoughts* no.. 6 new voices come from? (He most definitely knows about Billy's secret identity one way or another.)

Captain Marvel: Haha no..

(Part 1 of 2!)

[lottieedotsblog]

[the-cassandriad]

i've not written poetry in years (i'm more of a novelist) but i allowed myself some cassandra thoughts (as a treat). i actually had a lot of fun with this and i'm desperate to do more with the idea in the future so we will see.

inspired obviously by my own muses, @two-bees-poetry for the brilliant contrapuntal poems about greek myth, and anne carson, specifically when she talks about cassandra's speech being split in two and her bridging of past and future!

more of my logic in the tags because i'm annoying!

[sage-nebula]

Book Reviews: City of Blades - Robert Jackson Bennett

Rating: 4/5

Taking place five years after City of Stairs, City of Blades is exactly what one would want and expect from a sequel — both great, and not so great.

City of Blades follows Turyin Mulaghesh, an important side character from the first book who, while she got some nice moments there, didn't get a chance to truly come into her own as a fully realized character until this novel. Here, we see that she is not the stolid, dependable commander that she appeared to be in the first book; while she still has a handle on leadership and military command, she is also dealing with the PTSD that comes from being a soldier, from both experiencing and causing the horrors of war. This look into Mulaghesh's psyche and backstory makes her a nuanced, compelling character; as much as I love Shara, Mulaghesh is a meatier character to go on a journey with, and I love that Bennett both didn't shy away from the war crimes that soldiers can and will commit, but also the horrific effects it leaves both on those who suffer the crimes as well as those who cause them.

Like its predecessor, City of Blades gets off to a slow start. It reintroduces us to Mulaghesh, as well as catches us up to speed on how the world of the trilogy has progressed in the five years since the first book. It is refreshing that not everything went swimmingly for the characters in the intervening five years; political choices lead to logical conclusions, which set up plenty for the next book in the trilogy to build upon as well. But while the book gets off to a slow start, it — like its predecessor — keeps the momentum going when it gets it. The continuation of mythology building with the Divinities does not disappoint, and it becomes very clear very quickly why Mulaghesh was chosen as the protagonist for this particular adventure; there is no one else that it could have been.

The one complaint I do have is that the mystery element was not handled as well as its predecessor. While I mentioned in my review of the first book that one of the plot reveals was a bit soap opera drama, the reveals still came at a decent kip that made me unable to put the book down. Here, however, I identified the main culprit behind the mystery about two hundred pages before Mulaghesh got with the program. And while it could be said that this makes sense, because Mulaghesh is not an investigator like Shara and so would not know what to look for as Shara would, ultimately it left me feeling a bit frustrated as I kept wanting to shout the name of the culprit at Mulaghesh. While it is good that Bennett didn't pull a random twist out of thin air to "shock" the reader (as many TV writers like to do nowadays), at the same time it took far too long for his protagonist to catch up to the obvious. Again, I understand the character reasoning why this is the case, but it still felt frustrating.

All in all, though, it ends up being a mild complaint compared to how enjoyable the book was overall. The characters were fantastic, I love how the different aspects of war (all terrible) were explored through different characters with equally differing viewpoints, and I love that the progression of the world state was kept grounded, without favoring the protagonist of the first book more than would be believable for the political situation. Overall, I heartily recommend this novel.

[lanalove2012]

[gossamerg1rl]

[the-fyre-flie]

Dr Sivana knows Captain Marvel is a 10 year old kid, and instead of having murderous intent, he just... adopts Billy. The Big Red Cheese can't stop him if The Cheese is currently grounded for "Do Goodery and Related Scheme Stopping".

Sivana: William, eat you greens. You cannot leave the table until you finish them.

Billy, pouting, debating transforming and just flying out the window: You're not my da-

Sivana, pulling out the adoption papers, pushing up his coke-bottle glasses: In fact I am your father, little cheese! And you are grounded! *evil laughter*

Zeus: You could always trick him into eating a stone!

Billy, head in hands: ...

Georgia and Thaddeus do NOT go easy on him in Mario Kart during Evil Family Game Night (Georgia is 100% a Peach player, and Thaddeus refuses to play unless he gets Yoshi)