Jeff P. ’s Reviews > The Last Legends of Earth > Status Update

“Velvety whirrs and clicks flurried from above, where it was dark, where clapped forebrains spangled with song-thoughts, where elemental greeds rippled villi along needlesharp feedertubes.”

These interstitials from imagined texts are my favorite part of the book. They get at the humanity and the characters’ understanding of the world in a way the main narrative misses with all of its one-dimensional characters/relationships/storylines.

Whatever comfort, whatever power we gain from outside ourselves diminishes us—because comfort and power…are illusions that make us forget the emptiness that carries us. When we forget that, we believe we deserve comfort and power and so we are capable of any evil. We deserve nothing but what we make of ourselves. We deserve nothing else. And when we understand that, then nothing is enough."

The ghost vapored away during the lynk transit, and his last words were, "The nongyls are chewing my brain. They think they can patch me back. I think they can, too. I'm becoming less. Look for Chan-ti Beppu in Perdur on the Dragon's Shank of Mugna. Neter Col carried her there, back to our time. Save her from the Brood of Night in the Witch Maze."

“Birds squirted through the sky above the oasis. “
Lol.

Seems odd that with all the technology that abounds, the Glyph Astra is essentially printed and distributed by hand.

Seems like the zōtl have the power to create their own machine intelligences, apply “phanes” to their plasma bodies and feed on their suffering for eternity. Of course there are moral questions around using ai in this way, but it must be a better option than an existential war with humans/rimstalkers. A suffering engine.

They are profoundly sexual-which will facilitate breeding them—yet their passion for procreation did not prevent them from exterminating them-selves. They are vicious and selfish animals with pretensions of intelligence. I'm confident that the zōtl will find them appetizing and that we need feel no remorse for their animal suffering.”

These creatures call themselves humans," Genitrix said. "They're more cunning than they look though nowhere near the stature of the Tryl. Their music is orgulous and strident-occasionally poignant." Strains of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto 6 intercut with Coltrane's Ascension. "They existed a billion years prior to the Tryl, and their history is nothing more than a catalogue of wars among themselves….

“The dark air before the Form glittered with brush-sparks, and a figure appeared whose shape was similar to that of a Tryl and equally alien. Instead of horn stubs on its head, it had hair that fell past its shoulders. Its flesh was as sleek as the Tryl's but without throat frills or markings— and its eyes were small and frightened….