My opinions are mostly positive! But there’s one thing that really made me feel bait and switched…
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I think probably that’s the thing I’m specifically mad about .
If it’s Iana getting sidelined and having an incredibly Weird I’M NOT GAY conversion with Thara…
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Yup, that’s the thing! I had a feeling when you made a grumpy journal post about this book that Thara/Iäna was not to be.
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INDEED.
I did have other issues, too. But that was the one where I was like, “okay but what the fuck???” It made me second guess my entire experience of the previous two books. But I don’t think I was wrong for assuming Thara/Iana was the end game. I think the author just lost the magic. What bothered me the most was that New Soldier Boy ALSO likes opera, ALSO is a half-goblin and ALSO likes honey in his tea, etc.
So he’s just Iana but hunkier, and not tied to Amalo so Thara can leave more easily.
AKA he’s just solving the issue of Iana being rooted and the author wanting Thara to end the series UNrooted.
It bothered me a lot.
Other issues were more craft related. I had very little patience for how many times we were trundled along to read as Thara told yet another person about the thing he just saw/experienced. Like, Thara goes to X to say what happened. Then Thara goes to Y to say what happened. Then Thara goes to Z to say what happened.
That is…
Not a tight book.
I felt like it was a bit of a betrayal. Not only of the romance I expected, but also of Thara’s character.
In this final book, he suddenly just tells both Tomassaran and Iana of his Tragic Backstory ™ like it’s no big deal. And the final scene of the Grief of Stones was him wanting community and realizing he could maybe have it, but the end of this book is him fleeing, leaving behind those he became so connected to.
Other things that bothered me:
- Nothing about the prelacy writ large in Amalo was fixed. He left Tomassaran to be JUST as overworked, and just as under-paid after he left, with little attention to that fact.
- Iana becomes basically just the mail boy. I feel that his character was just as besmirched as Thara’s in this. The I’m Not Gay scene COULD have worked, but afterwords, instead of being a powerful friendship, which was apparently what Iana wanted, he’s relegated into just showing up with mail on and off for the rest of the book.
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Do you think this is the end of the series? I’m really hoping there will be more, especially since Thara clearly has more adventures ahead of him!
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Interesting! I didn’t catch onto that but you make a good point. I was really into the romance after the first startlement but maybe that’s because it was so similar to the romance I’d been waiting for. Ugh, I was so excited for the super-slow-burn romance 
I bet you’re right about the author losing interest in it.
I didn’t have an issue with the traveling around and telling people his story, but it did make the book slower than the previous two (and definitely longer—the first two were novellas, weren’t they? This one had to be a full novel). I actually really liked him sharing his tragic backstory because I felt that it showed him learning to trust people. But then yeah, he leaves them all behind at the end.
I really wanted the book to end with Thara being made ulis’othala or Amal’othala. He would have hated it but he would have done it and he would have been really good at it, cleaned up all the political nonsense, and quite possibly learned to love it.
…hm. Is it fanfic time?
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RIGHT?
It feels like the lead up to more.
But Addison has stated that this book was very difficult to write and that she’s taking a break from the world. So I think… uh.yeah…
ESPECIALLY with that, it feels like a weird as fuck ending.
HAHA right? hed have HATED IT but it would have been perfect and then he could have trained up Tomassran to take his place and keep making changes and allowing women into roles etc. while he just watched opera with Iana.
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Positive notes!
I LOVED seeing Maia and gang again!
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Yes, that was so fun! Maia is such a good emperor. 
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Read Outline by Rachel Cusk and All Fours by Miranda July in the same weekend. Accidentally picked the perfect angst middle aged married person book combo. I LOVED All Fours, if there is a better book about being married, bisexual, middle aged and going insane I have not read it.
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Extremely good review
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The Teller of Small Fortunes is super cozy under the current trend
I would have skipped over the D&D scenario, and done a bit more with the baker, but I really needed some cozy books right now, so I appreciate the library delivering.
Obviously Mairelon the Magician and Sunshine are better.
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Currently listening to Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne. Also tremendously cozy. It even says it’s a cozy fantasy right on the cover.
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Just finished Half Soul by Olivia Atwater and it was cozy. Now onto the next one Ten Thousand Stitches
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I finally got my goodreads ported over to storygraph, if anyone wants to be friends there! My username is sardinetoast
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friending yoooou
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Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution by Rebecca Spang (who I know from her work about the beginning of the idea of the restaurant)
really interesting about how France tried to deal with its national debt during the revolution, and how different efforts helped and hurt different groups. and that money is a lot about you trying to figure out if the people you want to use it with will accept it as money in exchange for goods, which is also based on them doing that calculation about whether others will take it from them. I’d love to hear her talk about bitcoin and whether it’s money.
Also, did you know there was a whole set of investments around ‘30 maidens in Geneva’? basically, you could buy an annuity, but it was generally fixed rate, not underwritten based on the person getting it. So obviously you don’t get it for the rich person who wants the payments, because they’re probably older, you get it in the name of someone pretty young who is likely to live a long time - which means a young woman with a supportive family. And if you could, you’d buy shares in a number of these women, not just one, to spread out the risk. So the bankers in Geneva were like ‘we’re doing this on our own daughters and nieces, obviously we will do all we can to have them live as long as possible’ and then they made blocks of the 30 girls/women and resold the payouts… (the women had to show up on a regular basis to prove they were still alive, because if they died then that portion of the payouts stopped.)
which is great until you realize they weren’t inflation adjusted, because people didn’t have a good framework to look at that type of risk.
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I’m gonna look for you right now!
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Annalee Newitz Automatic Noodle is a found (mostly robot) family starting up a restaurant in a post war San Francisco where robots have some rights, but also not really.
Cozy
It makes me more regretful that we didn’t get to the pulled noodle place I had flagged when we were in Montreal (the shadowy one wasn’t excited, and the best day for us to go they were closed)
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That sounds fun, and now I want pulled noodles.
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That sounds similar to The Cybernetic Tea Shop which was an enjoyable cozy read, down to the “rights but not really” so there’s a bit of unpleasantness there.
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