Brust, Steven - To Reign in Hell
Sat, Apr. 24th, 2004 02:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterBorrowed from the bookstore because Aliera likes Brust and because I am apparently a sucker for the war in Heaven stories. Another one to add to the back cover hooks...
I really loved it in the beginning, but it kept going downhill, sadly. I adored the introduction and the world of Heaven, in which everything in new (Lilith is the first person to invent gender and is the reason why most of the angels are male) and chaos in the form of flux or cacoastrum battles with order in the form of illiaster. I also loved the play on words, particularly of Genesis. I wish I had a better recollection of Paradise Lost, because I feel many of the angel characters would have been ten times funnier with that knowledge.
My main problem stemmed with the fact that the war in Heaven, obviously a giant even, happens because of a Big Misunderstanding. Actually, about a dozen Big Misunderstandings. I will give Brust that someone is willfully causing said BMs, but the further into the plot I got, the more I wanted to beat my head against a wall and yell at the characters to just talk to each other, damnit! This kind of plot in which the entire thing could be solved if someone would just sit down and talk to the other person really annoys me. Especially when there are about half a dozen near misses. And then, when they finally do talk (Yaweh and Satan), they are absolute idiots.
The second problem I had was that Yaweh and almost everyone on his side were seriously lacking in intelligence. While I am not religious in any way, shape, or form, I do find it rather insulting to have every single person on Yaweh's side be mind-numbingly a) stupid b) holier-than-thou or c) both. With the exception of Raphael. In the end, I was extremely annoyed because it felt like Brust was trying to hammer in the point that Yaweh was horrible and that Christianity was The Big Lie, what with the distortion of Yeshuah and the New Testament. I personally do not take offense at the viewpoint of God as patriarchal and a sort of tyrant in Heaven (as was portrayed here), but I do have a problem with a war that is so incredibly one-sided.
I do realize that Brust was trying to portray Satan as being prey to some of the same faults as Yaweh, including pride at the final meeting, but in the end, the characters that Brust spends the most time with (the Firstborn and a good deal of the archangels) are the ones who end up propping up Satan and opposing Yaweh. It seems to be a rather loaded fight to begin with, in terms of reader sympathy.
Maybe I came in with a completely different mindset -- I read the blurb about the rebellion in Heaven, and immediately I start thinking of larger than life figures! Life and death! You know, all that Paradise Lost stuff. I guess it is partly Brust's point that it is so entirely petty, except... I don't know. I felt like it was supposed to be Significant.
Maybe I will go off and reread Good Omens now.
I really loved it in the beginning, but it kept going downhill, sadly. I adored the introduction and the world of Heaven, in which everything in new (Lilith is the first person to invent gender and is the reason why most of the angels are male) and chaos in the form of flux or cacoastrum battles with order in the form of illiaster. I also loved the play on words, particularly of Genesis. I wish I had a better recollection of Paradise Lost, because I feel many of the angel characters would have been ten times funnier with that knowledge.
My main problem stemmed with the fact that the war in Heaven, obviously a giant even, happens because of a Big Misunderstanding. Actually, about a dozen Big Misunderstandings. I will give Brust that someone is willfully causing said BMs, but the further into the plot I got, the more I wanted to beat my head against a wall and yell at the characters to just talk to each other, damnit! This kind of plot in which the entire thing could be solved if someone would just sit down and talk to the other person really annoys me. Especially when there are about half a dozen near misses. And then, when they finally do talk (Yaweh and Satan), they are absolute idiots.
The second problem I had was that Yaweh and almost everyone on his side were seriously lacking in intelligence. While I am not religious in any way, shape, or form, I do find it rather insulting to have every single person on Yaweh's side be mind-numbingly a) stupid b) holier-than-thou or c) both. With the exception of Raphael. In the end, I was extremely annoyed because it felt like Brust was trying to hammer in the point that Yaweh was horrible and that Christianity was The Big Lie, what with the distortion of Yeshuah and the New Testament. I personally do not take offense at the viewpoint of God as patriarchal and a sort of tyrant in Heaven (as was portrayed here), but I do have a problem with a war that is so incredibly one-sided.
I do realize that Brust was trying to portray Satan as being prey to some of the same faults as Yaweh, including pride at the final meeting, but in the end, the characters that Brust spends the most time with (the Firstborn and a good deal of the archangels) are the ones who end up propping up Satan and opposing Yaweh. It seems to be a rather loaded fight to begin with, in terms of reader sympathy.
Maybe I came in with a completely different mindset -- I read the blurb about the rebellion in Heaven, and immediately I start thinking of larger than life figures! Life and death! You know, all that Paradise Lost stuff. I guess it is partly Brust's point that it is so entirely petty, except... I don't know. I felt like it was supposed to be Significant.
Maybe I will go off and reread Good Omens now.
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Sat, Apr. 24th, 2004 09:57 am (UTC)I love Steve Brust, but the latter was just boring. So boring that I never even managed to finish it.
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Sun, Apr. 25th, 2004 03:13 pm (UTC)I wasn't so much bored as frustrated out of my mind. I hate hate hate plots that happen because everyone manages to not talk to each other.