Spoilery Discussion: Jenn Lyons' The Memory of Souls

So, I posted my review of Jenn Lyons' "The Memory of Souls", the third book in her epic fantasy series "A Chorus of Dragons" a few weeks ago, in advance of the book's publication date.  But as the third book in a series of doorstopper epic fantasy novels, I really wanted to talk more about spoilery events that occurred within it - which I could've talked about with ROT13 in that post, but that's always uncomfortable to do with an advance review - and this book I enjoyed enough and contains enough spoilery stuff that I felt like doing a whole extra post.

If you haven't read this book yet, my review for it is here:

DO NOT read any further if you don't want to be spoiled - spoilers after the jump:









The Memory of Souls features the first time I can ever recall the fact that "Race is a Social Construct" (as its most usually phrased) being used as an actual PLOT Point.  I'm going to admit that it took me a second to realize this fact, given that the relationships between all the races in this series has always been one of the bits that has confused me throughout the books - sorry the "four" races being named Vané (Vorfelané), Voras, Voramer and Vordreth DOES not help.  But well, the book's major plotline features the main characters tasked by the eight (7) Immortals, particularly Thaena, to get the Vané to enact the Ritual of Night, which strips a race of their immortality in order to obtain the power to fix the warding crystal keeping Val Korath asleep.  The ritual has been supposedly enacted three times previously - by the Voras (who essentially became human), the Voramer and the Vordreth (who each became other named races) - leaving only the Vané immortal.

So much of the plot resolves around whether this makes sense as a thing to do - it only buys time to figure out a way to stop Val Korath permanently, and each use of it has only worked for a shorter and shorter period of time (such that the next usage of it will probably only work for 250 more years, instead of the original 3000), so is it really worth killing the caster and removing an entire people's long lifespans to cast?  And then of course there's the fact that Relos Var has altered the text from which the ritual is to be cast so that it will instead break Val Korath from his prison entirely, and to kill the eight immortals in the process.  Terindel supposedly refused to cast the Ritual himself centuries ago, and well the Vané, as well as the main characters, have differing opinions as to whether its worth doing it NOW, despite Thaena's attempts to force their hands.

But as hinted at early in a Therin chapter, the official history is WRONG - Terindel didn't refuse to cast the Ritual, he actually DID try....and it didn't work because, well as I put above, RACE IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT, not a biological one.  The Vané split away from the Voras millennia ago, and have used their magic to change their appearances (they're basically the Fair Folk of this setting) and to stay immortal by transferring their souls to objects and then to newly created bodies so they never die from old age.  But that never made them biologically a different RACE than the Voras, despite their claims, so when the Voras lost their immortality with the first casting of the Ritual of Night, well, so did the Vané - no one just noticed since they were keeping their immortality already in an entirely different fashion.  Literally the fact that race differences aren't a real thing is a Plot Point and fuels the climax, which is...something!  It's certainly interesting and it works, even if I'm not sure it really says anything about the real world.

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Anyhow aside from that point, there's a whole lot of great stuff here.  I swear the relationships between Kihrin-Teraeth-Janel are amazing, especially when you add in Valathea-Doc....Kihrin's repeated denying of his own sexuality was getting a bit old, but thankfully this book ditches it quickly with Teraeth admitting his love for the two others to Kihrin forcing Kihrin to realize his denial was pointless.  And then you have Janel admitting how much she's jealous Kihrin and Teraeth (who kiss and are about to go further before having coitus interruptus by DRAGON) because they know their relationship isn't due to memories from past lives (with Janel being in relationships in past lives with each of the two of them).  And to make it more hilarious, you have Valathea offering to invite Janel into her marriage bed, which is just hilariously awkward.

And of course there's our other relationship: Thurvishar-Senera, the authors of our first two books, the series' good and evil master human wizards respectively.  I'm not particularly in love with the format of how each book is written by one of the two characters, as the footnotes are kind of not that interesting most of the time and there's no way the writer could know the info or viewpoints to transcribe a lot of the time, but it's almost all worth it for these two's interactions.  My view on Thurvishar was that he was Ace (a view not contradicted here btw), but he's clearly not aromantic, and his feelings for Senera were hinted at last book, and the two of them arguing over sourcing and bad transcribing practices was amazing.  And as a romantic last minute gesture, Senera giving Thurvishar book 2 to read and review is just.....sooooooo cute.  <3

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Finally that cliffhanger....how is this going to work?  If Kihrin's soul rejoins Val Korath, aren't they just back to the last time the demon king awakened before Elana separated them, when he tried to essentially go all Sephiroth on the planet?  And if Janel and Taraeth are aware of the deception, how is Talon going to be able to pull of a Kihrin impression while around either of the two of them?  They'd have to invent some reason for him to go off on his own, and wouldn't that set off alarm bells?  Damnit, I need book 4 soon after all that....