Still, gods and humans have to coexist for one another’s survival.
But it still whet my appetite for more information that never came. And that’s actually terrific, because not only does it make Patience enormously appealing as a character, these human weaknesses make Leckie’s gods as a whole more believable. Patience has to learn to empathize with and care for the humans who worship it. In these scenes, we see that the gods of this world started out sort of stumbling around learning things, no differently than the people. The closest Leckie gets to anything in line with her customary brilliance is in a passage where Patience painstakingly figures out how to communicate with its young priestess, using tiny stones. And I frankly would have appreciated a bit more exploration into the relationship between the gods and humans, particularly an understanding of how these gods are nurtured by the worship and sacrifice, especially blood sacrifice, of the humans they serve. But in an epic fantasy, the more you convey that your world has a magic system under which everything works, readers will want to have some kind of grasp of the whys and wherefores. There’s never an explanation of their origin, except in the case of another god, the Myriad, who is hinted at being some kind of extraterrestrial.Īn element of mystery is often helpful in evoking a sense of the otherworldly. Leckie plays around a bit with speculation on what kinds of entities these so-called gods really are. It’s just as well this is our narrator, because it’s really all the book has to offer by way of an interesting and appealing character. Our narrator is one of these gods, an entity called The Strength and Patience of the Hill, which has taken possession of an enormous boulder. It’s set in a world inhabited by both people and beings they call gods.
They just never construct a satisfying whole. It’s a book I found so very frustrating because all of the pieces are there. But it’s the fantasy debut of none other than Ann Leckie, a writer of enormous and richly deserved acclaim, and that makes it so much more disappointing. This might be a thoroughly unremarkable thing if the book was yet another mid-list debut. The Raven Tower is one of those impeccably crafted epic fantasy novels in which characters we’re given no particular reason to root for fight for stakes we’re given little reason to care about. Share book reviews and ratings with Thomas, and even join a book club on Goodreads. Book cover artwork is copyrighted by its respective artist and/or publisher. All reviews and site design © by Thomas M.
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