Status Updates From Weaveworld

“Uriel” is an eclipsing villain, a force of nature, a living holocaust. Its killing outside of the Quarter has been less gruesome than the tortures that it inflicted on Shadwell’s guides. Actually, Hobart’s dissolution has been more grotesque, an unwilling frame bearing the burning spirit of the “angel”.

the revelation: the scourge is a spirit who stood watch over the garden that the Seerkind were born from—our Eden—and it waited in its guardianship until it went mad with loneliness. the spirit reads the Bible and reprocesses itself in the context of Genesis: it is Uriel, the angel left to guard the gates of Eden, and it will slay all trespassers and transgressors with fire.

The falling action of the destruction of the Fugue, heartaching. Shadwell’s journey into the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert in the world, in search of the Scourge, is extremely my jam.

like someone else said in a review, this feels like what could have been a three book series condensed down into one bewildering epic. the scope of what is going on right now with the Seerkind revolting against Shadwell to prevent him from accessing the gyre and all the moving parts… it’s dense, but Barker paints with a broad enough brush that it doesn’t feel dense.

A pretty bloody 50 pages. I enjoyed Cal and Suzanna’s trek through the Fugue and verbally sparring with some of the residents. Something leads me to believe that Cal actually met with his future self near the Gyre, and that’s why he couldn’t speak, because then it would be obvious hearing his own voice.

I got a feeling that a whole lot of Seerkind are about to die 😬😬😬

The Fugue is a wonderful, prismatic fantasy land, as Cal intuits a Wonderland but delving further into the implications of what that means for a world with “adult” problems and desires. I know that things are about to get super messy as the trifecta of Immacolata, Hobart, and the as of yet unseen Scourge close in on the story, and now we have Shadwell becoming his own operative. That’s a lot of villains!!