Talen Reads Glory In The Thunder – Chapter 6

At this point, chapter six, we’re coming up on the quarter-way point through this book. One of the greatest challenges of this experience so far is avoiding nitpicking, which is slow and unuseful, and stylistic suggestions, because that’s asking Elliott to consider, maybe, have you thought about doing something else? Which isn’t useful at all. I’m not trying to tell a friend how to write her book, I’m trying to show her – and other people interested – what I am getting from the book.

In the course of review I often think of myself as a sort of buyers’ guide, or really, a salesperson. I like to think that with my experiences and my ability to communicate, I can talk to someone and tell them, after a bit of time, what it is that they want, what they want out of a story.

What I can tell you about Glory in the Thunder so far is that if you have any reason to care about characters interacting, if you look at Barsamin and think ‘he’s like me’, or if you look at Hayr and think ‘I’d like a boy like that to hug me,’ or think you’re just like Chakori, then this story will fill your boots.

We have a cast of, by my fingertip math, about fifteen characters, and most of them have been in one or two scenes. If you like the way these characters show themselves, if you like how they go about being, and if you like the way they talk, there is plenty in this story for you.

In this chapter, we’re treated to flashbacks showing Clarion and Rashk, and Eodar and Evren. One of them shows us that childbirth and related injuries are dreadful and may make you crazy, while the other shows us that promises made as children in the name of friendship will probably go badly, at least if you make them with people with vastly different inhuman perspectives on reproduction and permanence.

This chapter is focused more on Hayr, learning to read, and picking up words like ‘sonorous,’ and showing us some more of Tsovinar and Rashk arguing. There’s also a rule clarified; artifices can hold divine stars. So you can be a manufactured god, like some kind of immortal engine. Between gods arguing and promises being made, we’re shown what we have seen before, again, in the past and in the ‘now’.’ Reiteration to reinforce, I daresay.

1 Comment

  1. Needs more Alchemical Exalted

Back to top