For myself, because at this rate I'll never write anything down anymore: In 10 sentences write down your thoughts about the final book in the Aspect Emperor Quartet.
1. Well, here I am, at the end of the long slog, and though I pretty much got exactly the ending (to the Aspect Emperor cycle, at least) that I wanted, there's more than enough reasons to be both profoundly disappointed and baffled by exactly how we got here.
2. I came into the final two novels of the Aspect Emperor books without foreknowledge, but with pretty high expectations, a lot of them actually very concrete, having built my 'Road of Faith' blog-posts around my ideas on how these final two novels were going to go.
3. But even though I guessed the heart of the matter correctly, and knowing that I actually will still (probably) end up getting what I want in the books yet to come (if they ever do), I finished The Unholy Consult very troubled.
4. There are several reasons for this; the incredibly poor editing, the gratuitous level of sexual violence (which I, this time, find myself quite unable to accept the in-book reasons for), the repellent (though also immensely compelling) chapters of various characters' various descents into madness, the sudden appearance of certain elements at the novel's eleventh hour that completely derail plot developments into avenues heretofore impossible to foresee, and other elements I can not talk about without going into major spoilers.
5. A very large part of my distress (and it truly is that) derives from having gone into the final novel certain in the knowledge that I knew where this was going to end up (the bubble of my assumption that author and the novel's prime subject's goals had been in alignment all along was, at the novel's close, quite ruthlessly held to a candle's brilliant flame and popped without compunction) and this is something that I'm aware of, and don't hold against it, seeing the fault as mine, but there still are niggles here and there that lead me to declare that this novel would have been served a lot better with maybe a year or two extra in the editing phase, (maybe even for the quartet as a whole).
6. The relationship between Overlook Press and Bakker lies at the root of this, deadlines passed or no, and it is a shame that art and vision can be pressed in such a way that the cracks become plain for all to see, and it is my sincere hope that Bakker will eventually release a preferred author's text for the last few novels in the Aspect Emperor Quartet.
7. But even with a strenuous bout of editing to streamline the vague mess that calls itself the Unholy Consult, strange choices have been made; storylines and characters are truncated and altered, respectively, to a very confusing and unsatisfying extent, new plot elements are introduced way too late in the game without enough foreshadowing to build them up, and some of the book's many revelations and heel-turns just don't seem to make much sense.
8. For me it is plain that there needed to be more build-up for many of these elements.
9. That being said, The Unholy consult's final stages are so bold, and the final page and paragraph might as well just go to a hospital emergency room right now because no way is that normal, the size of those balls, and I applaud it all the way.
10. Though the Aspect Emperor Quartet is almost fatally flawed, and mars much of the perfection that was the Prince of Nothing trilogy, it does eventually work pretty well, provided that one can accept that this is a story that is unlike any other and that it plays completely by its own rules, and that it simply does not give one shit about your expectations or your satisfaction.
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More concrete thoughts, though random, these pretty much are definite spoilers.
- Kelmomas does the deed. Brilliant, and a truly head-slapping moment of 'why didn't I see this coming?' and built up satisfyingly, but then also how is it even remotely possible that Kelmomas is here, in this place? You could explain it, yes, but still it just doesn't seem to be possible.
- Ajokli. Holy fuck.
In a way this could have been awesome, but the fact this is introduced here, a dozen or so pages from the end, makes this feel like a massive deus ex machina. This might precisely be the point, but there should have been precedent for this, and the W-L-Warrior concept does not compare to what this is. What happens here is unprecedented, and for some reason it happens to another major character after this as well? The rules surrounding this are nonexistent and it feels like a massive cop-out, and feels very unsatisfying. There are loose threads everywhere here regarding this thing and it is this, more than anything else in the novel, that made it feel unsatisfying.
- The Encyclopedia's Notes on the Decapitants are extremely chilling, and it feels as if this is one of the things that should have been in the novel proper in order to build up the aforementioned point.
- The whole 'Resumption' chapter doesn't seem to make sense. Proof prime of much needed editing.
- The reveal of the Unholy Consult. Brilliant. Makes sense and is completely believable. And just as I knew it would had to: it actualizes the author's goal in an identity within the story. My mistake was that I assumed that this identity would be Kellhus, but in this way it probably works out better.
- The meeting of the three who are able to love made me quite teary-eyed. Hands down best part of the Aspect Emperor cycle.
- Plotlines get radically truncated:
Sorweel's journey is probably the most indicative of this. Though he is pretty consistent in the Judging Eye and the White-Luck warrior, he is so inundated beneath change and upheaval in the subsequent books that it can be safely stated that his character ceases to be after the beginning of the Great Ordeal. Of course, characters can change. But Sorweel is just reshaped according to the needs of the plot. In ishterebinth he is bonded to a Nonman soul which makes him completely different, and in the Unholy Consult he ceases to be himself and is ridden by the White-Luck until his death. There was almost nothing recognizable from his point of view, he became a supremely alien character in the last two books of the quartet.
I recognize that this is the danger of how this world works, but it is heavily inimical to conventional storytelling and character-building.
I might just add some thoughts when I feel like it, the series is too big in my head and my thoughts too disordered to properly write much down these days.
