#Ruin of Angels

[morkaischosen]

Gal shouldn't be here.

The Craft Sequence is a very contemporary fantasy, and one with a realistic- if not cynical- view of power. Again and again our protagonists find themselves up against gods and corporations, establishments with the very most established positions, and have to use every edge at their disposal just to keep some kind of hope for something better alive. There aren't any knights in shining armour coming to save them. Except...

The Ruin of Angels deftly sketches in a picture of Camlaan - an insular island with Imperial dreams, spinning tales of love and heroism as it sends its thugs to project its will outside its island borders. It's a familiar picture to me as an English reader, and its mythology is so clearly a justification, a comforting self-deception for the iron fist of an immortal queen. You can't say "a true knight wouldn't-" because the knights who would are real, and the ones who wouldn't just a story they tell. Except...

The Ruin crew are thieves. They have their motivations and dreams, and they're risking life, limb and legal process to score artefacts, and for all Raymet's preoccupation with scholarship and heritage, that seems to be a side-hustle to the crew's overall goal: profit. And yet, somehow, one of the crew is a storybook knight with an unbending code of honour. It's not that she's a hypocrite, not exactly - the climax of her arc with Raymet wouldn't make any sense, wouldn't have remotely the same emotional impact, if I didn't feel in my heart that what Gal's willing to justify (what she feels is just) is the most important limit on her behaviour - but she's like an invader from another story, too wild and pure to live by the rules of this world.

And all of that is vital to her place in the book.

We see her, largely, through Raymet's eyes, and our sense of genre brings us right along- how are you even real?

But the book carries on, and she keeps being like that, and eventually Raymet curses her out, and the people who made her into someone who just doesn't fit the world that really is, and- "I don't understand this. I don't understand you."

Gal reads like the intrusive work of another, better world, and part of me resents her for that; but once I accept that she really, truly is only and completely what she seems, the only word for such a senseless thing is miracle.

It's a book about love. It's a book about a lot of things, but when I read for Raymet and Gal, it's a book about love. Disbelief, and fear, and the blossoming of joy as you realise this is real, you're here, all the reasons you shouldn't be just don't matter because you are.

That's how it feels, sometimes.

-----

This week's campaign of Galposting is brought to you by @swordswomanshowdown and my discovery that I'm willing to put a whole lot of effort into trying to get people to vote for a character I adore in a Tumblr poll tournament.

[hiddenschools]

“No,” she said, “this is not the dead city.”

“Where, then?”

“We are in my garden, in a city with a name we rarely whisper—a city that threads itself around the world of iron words the Iskari forged. We are not angels anymore. We do not take on shapes of righteous truth. But we build, though the Wreckers think our building a subversion.”

Ruin of Angels

[booksandchainmail]

Close friends, Zeddig had found, developed a sort of telepathy. Nothing mystical about it--though a musing Craftswoman might spin you a tale of spiritual entanglement and primitive localized divinity, then charge you a few hundred thaums for the musing. Graybeard coffee-fiend dockside chessmasters could glance at a position and say, mate in twelve, because they knew the game. Friends just learned the game of you

Ruin of Angels, by Max Gladstone

[soulsuckingisaacnewton]

Long rambling notes about different characters’ perspectives on the beginning of the God Wars in Ruin of Angels by Max Gladstone.

Zeddig: rose-colored glasses towards Old Alikand, inclined to gloss over any atrocities or strategic blunders on the part of the High Families

Tara: biased in favor of Gerhardt, admires Old Alikand as a godless society, “grand unforeseeable tragedy” arising from conflicting interest of two noble forces

Bescond: skewed towards justifying the Iskari occupation, emphasizes or possibly exaggerates Gerhardt as a monster to contrast with Iskari as saviors but also denigrates Old Alikand

I wish I could hear more of how Raymet understands the story. “some of us have theories” like what Raymet? probably something that makes Zeddig’s ancestors look bad

It is interesting to note that Ley's final summation of the story mentions “heroism”, but she doesn’t say who she regards as heroic.

(none of these biases necessarily represent malice or dishonesty on anyone’s part, they’ve all been taught about the events from different perspectives and have different priorities)

-

Zeddig locates responsibility for the Wars with Gerhardt’s decision to stay in Alikand, not the Families’ decision to attack him or the foreign gods’ involvement (which, I mean, this is probably fair but still it is a thing)

-

Here’s how Zeddig describes the origin of the Wastes:

“Drained of power, torn from their faithful, they hid in dumb matter. Desperate, they fused sand to glass and stranger forms, built labyrinths to hide within. Matter is not so comfortable as a mind, to a god. But they tried to take the story matter tells itself - I am a stone, I am sand, I am a river - and shelter there. So, in his rage, Gerhardt broke even those simpler stories. And here we are.”

In Zeddig’s narrative, Gerhardt’s enemies were already defeated and fleeing for their lives when he, motivated by rage, broke reality in order to kill them. Her telling encourages sympathy for the gods by placing emphasis on their suffering and presents Gerhardt's final attack upon them as a pointless, vindictive act of destruction.

Here’s how Tara describes the same events:

“These are... the nightmares of dying beings, feasting on one another, growing inside one another to burst from each other’s chests. They war against themselves, in this world Gerhardt wrecked. In his hunger, Gerhardt scraped away the [...] thingness [...] from the Wastes - and when he began to die, he lost control.”

Tara's use of the word hunger implies need, maybe even desperation, on Gerhardt’s part. She doesn’t totally exonerate him - this world Gerhardt wrecked is pretty blunt about the harm he caused and his responsibility for it - but she emphasizes that he was fighting for his life against powerful enemies. She also mentions that he lost control, possibly implying that he did not predict or intend the full extent of the damage he caused. Her description of the gods evokes pity and horror more than respect or compassion. 

[aptitudor]

"But a Knight may rescue her lady from a tower. That is practically what Knights are for."

It might not look it, but all the book leading up to this quote makes this quote probably the most romantic statement I've ever read.

(taken from Ruin of Angels by Max Gladstone)

[harvocel]

trigun stampede is a good show

[maiko-coy]

You're my angel Angel baby, angel You're my angel, baby Baby, you're my angel Angel baby

[rienafoutre]

[bunninophia]

My fellow huskerdust shippers I offer you this

Ahh I love them, and their dynamic...i need more of it

I want them so badly to become a healthy couple that boosts each other up, to help them heal together. Remember what husk said in the pilot? This whole ship is how he learns how to love again AGHHHHH I WISH

🌷🕷️🐈‍⬛🪽

[j0celynh0rr0r]

[carlestin]

dumping all my huskerdust here that ive gathered

[hiddenschools]

Wait, when does that happen? A Craft Sequence timeline

Being published out of chronological order has confused the hell out of many Craft Sequence readers, myself included. So I went through the series and figured out an approximate timeline and all the main characters ages YOU'RE WELCOME.

...and then I found an official version in the inside cover of the German translation but shhh mine's better

[vintage-ukraine]

Apotheosis by Hryhorii Nechyporenko, 1994

[little-buzz]

Husk (and Lucifer) wanted to hug the others but Alastor had to come in and ruin the moment😭😭

[stevenrogered]

Buck’s perception vs Eddie’s reality

[mai-blue]

I will always see Evan as an artist. Street artist … notebooks full of sketches … art student at uni, whatever.