wraeththu iii

Alright, alright... it was pretty good. The last book of the Wraeththu Trilogy, The Fulfillments of Fate and Desire, was again narrated, first person, by one of the main characters and follows him--for lack of a better term from the author--on a journey of discovery about himself, Wraeththu, and his feelings.

Thanks again to Aimee Fleck for allowing me to use the artwork. The Fulfillments of Fate and Desire, at left, is the third in her series.

Once I stopped trying to understand Wraeththu in my own terms and began to understand them as a newly hermaphroditic race, struggling to understand themselves, it became easier to empathize with them.

In the end, I think I figured out what Constantine was trying to say, she just took a lot of prose to say it. The last book seemed pretty well written, as was the second. I didn't find any groaners or typos like I did in the first book, so it seems fixable. (I guess I'm talking to you Storm.) Although, the appendixes were full of stuff what needed fixin' right quick. Per esempio: small spoilers ahead

From Appendix II, page 792, comes this:

"It has been rumored that the Uigenna tribe of North Megalithica are fluent with the use of poisons effective against their own kind, but this is yet to be proved."

Then, from The History of the Twelve Tribes of Jaddayoth, page 779, we find this:

"The Uigenna... were famous for their ability to devise poisons fatal or painful to harishkind..."

Doesn't add up, right? After all, I just read in the body of the third book, The Fulfillments of Fate and Desire, this:

"... [A] wanted to shake that packet of crystals into the poor fool's mouth... Few poisons can effect a harish frame. We left [D] gasping and writhing at the edge of the water."

That's right... an' he's dead! "Yet to been proved?" Seems proved to me, like, 200 pages previous. This is the kind of crap that drives me crazy. Someone spent a whole lot of time putting this 800 page epic together, one more proof read wasn't going to kill anyone.

Immanion Press, Storm Constantine's publishing company, lists a copy of this third book for sale "expanded and updated" with a publish date of 2007, versus the copyright date of 1988 in my copy, so maybe she's fixed it all up.

I didn't hate it...