SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: The Ascent to Godhood by JY Yang

JY Yang's Tensorate novella series is one of the more interesting series of novellas to come out in the past two years.  The series has always tried to maintain a tradition of having each book be stand-alone and yet at the same time fit into a longer continuity, allowing a reader to pick up any entry into the series in any order.  It's also been a series unafraid to explore different tones and styles, even as each entry takes place in the same Asian-inspired queer-friendly fantasy world.  I think I enjoyed the third of these novellas (The Descent of Monsters - review here) the most, but they've all been at least solid, so naturally I was always bound to pick up this 4th novella.

The result is probably my least favorite of the series, as it feels the most generic of them all - a flashback to the rise of the Protector, the greater antagonist of the series so far, from the perspective of her one-time romantic partner and later political opponent.  It's also incredibly short, and left me feeling "That's it?" when it was completed.  More on this after the jump:

Quick Plot Summary:  The Protector is dead.  One would think that this news would make Lady Han - the leader of the Machinist rebellion against the Protector - celebrate.  But instead, she grieves for the loss of the woman she has fought against for years.  In the midst of this grief she finds a fellow soul also grieving, and to that soul Lady Han tells the story.  The story of how Lady Han came to meet the Protector and became the Protector's right hand woman, as the Protector - then named Hekate - rose from ambitious but still human royal daughter to the monster they all knew and feared.....

Thoughts: The Ascent to Godhood is an.....interesting installment in this series, in that it feels both so very unconnected from the rest of the series and at the same time seems to make the most references to obscure or seemingly-forgotten characters from prior installments (particularly the first) that it made me repeatedly want to go back.  The novella starts by positing a major event in the series - the most significant long-running antagonist is dead! - and then....never actually tells the story of her death at all (how it happened is implied at the end in a reference to the 3rd novella).  Instead, this is a prequel about how the Protector came to be the cruel evil tyrant as she rose from a young royal princess to the most powerful person in the country.  And it's a solid story mind you, if a little predictable, and the emotional connection between the Protector and Lady Han (herself one of those bit characters I'd forgotten about) does work pretty well, as does the rest of Yang's writing.

But at the same time, the whole of it feels, and maybe this is because this is such a short installment, incredibly generic, with little of the interesting aspects of the setting really making much difference.  You could easily have shifted this novella to another fantasy universe and I think it would still work, which is kind of disappointing and removes some of its impact, especially after all that we've read through the first three installments.  By contrast, that third installment for example (The Descent of Monsters) was often hilarious in tone as well as emotionally strong, and used the special aspects of this series in excellent ways to further the story....here we lose that last bit.  Again, it's a fine novella, but it left me more nonplussed than anything at the end.  Ah well, hopefully we get a fifth installment that can bounce back.