Ateli-weird

S’aight.

Similarly to Ancillary Justice, The Raven Tower follows the viewpoint of a non-human character, this time a mysterious god. It’s split between two times - the present, where the Lease (a weird monarch/sacrifice position) is due to be replaced, and the past, where the god recounts its history, leading up to the present day.

Once again, I think the narration of a nonhuman character was stellar. Admittedly I’m partial to this kind of worldbuilding, where gods and beliefs have (somewhat limited) influence over the state of the world. Unfortunately the book was let down on a couple other points.

A - The Plot: Part of the problem with split plots is that you have less time to tell each story. What conflict we get in the present seems to be carried mostly via miscommunication, read: characters not listening to each other. It’s a trope I personally detest, and it wasn’t good here. The story got more interesting in the last ~10 pages, which was just a little too late for me…

B - Sloppy handling of a trans character: Most of the story set in the present follows Eolo, who is trans. Unfortunately, any conversation between him and others re: his transness was off. Not entirely sure how to put this - it’s very reminiscent of those questions you hear from probably-well-meaning-but-ignorant people, along the lines of “will you have the surgery” “are you really a man, or just a crossdresser”, etc. These seem to be shunted in kind of artificially, and don’t really serve any purpose. I think it’s fine (interesting, even) to have a character that’s merely incidentally trans, but it seems weird to insert these kinds of scenes just to show this.