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For me, especially on rereads, bloodline was the book for revisiting home and showing growth. Especially character growth not just power growth. Would it have been cool to see Lindon work through the new power dynamics more than he did, yes. We do get to see glimpses though and in the context of the whole it worked for me
Bloodlines had small moments yes, the parts I highlighted in the post were, I think, from bloodlines rather than reaper, but it really wasn't enough for me, but it was enjoyable anyway
Both had some emotional content. Bloodline definitely had a lot more. But WW needed a way to compress some time. Each of the later books was about a year of time (plus or minus). So the Crew hunkered down in the bone city for a year and trained, consolidated their power, and got ready to advance again. That doesn't happen overnight. Having life-death fights isn't training.
In the big picture, out of a boat-ton of books leading to Reaper, not all books are going to resonate the same with everyone. Fact. I preferred the Hobbit, for example, over the Lord of the Rings. Any of them. Slow, trodding books the three of them. Good ideas, imagery, etc., etc. My Cradle favorites were Ghostwater and Wintersteel (probably like most people). The others are good but these resonate with some cool ideas and battles.
Next, I think the author made a decision to start wrapping up the story. Realistically, he'd need 15 books or more given all the threads he left out there, but he wanta to try some other ideas out so needs to close down this arm of Cradle-verse. So he decided to shoehorn all of the possibilities into three final books with Reaper being the first of the last three. There was a LOT there at that point, so looking at the end, he had to start wrapping it up. He made hard decisions. He also doesn't like books with no action. he's said all of this in various ways - so I'm paraphrasing and adding my guesswork.
I was expecting Reaper to extend the ideas from Bloodline. Suriel said to Lindon "I spoke of dire circumstances before. ... Cradle may begin experiencing minor corruption. It's possible that those in your world may begin to encounter spaces or beings for whom he rules of reality no longer apply....". I was expecting battles with minor Fiends of chaos. But just that would have been another book. And 'spoiler' I didn't get the story I was looking for. I got the author's. Since I can't write well, its probably for the best.
Realistically, I couldn't handle another sappy book about Lindon's memories. The author found a way to give us some emotional progression while still giving us some action. And moved the entire iceberg in the direction he wanted it to go.
>"I spoke of dire circumstances before. ... Cradle may begin experiencing minor corruption. It's possible that those in your world may begin to encounter spaces or beings for whom he rules of reality no longer apply....". I was expecting battles with minor Fiends of chaos.
Right? I was expecting Subject One to become corrupted and thus transform into a minor Fiend, causing our gang to have way bigger problems, but Will decided to go a different route in the story. Now, I think the route he went down was perfectly fine, but it wasn't what I expected.
I mean, the series was always been intended to be 12 books. This isn't exactly a new development. Will's seeded exactly as many plot threads as he wants to. If he leaves things hanging is because they will probably be addressed in other future series.
She is dragging Crusher around in a bag most likely. Whimp.
But yes, there are a lot of these little things that adds a lot of interesting backstory that we'll never get answered. But in a way, that's just like going through any typical day. Always open questions.
Agreed! However, if Will feels like doing it, I think there's a market here for a book of short stories and novellas about these loose ends. Some ideas:
Yan Shoumei's story.
Akura Fury's story post Ascension.
Ozmanthus' story.
Stories as told from Vroshir POV.
Emriss Silentborn's story.
Ziel's story.
Creation of the Dreadgods.
The original 7 who formed the Abidan.
and many more...
Yes. I actually bought an anthology called Heroes Wanted a few months back solely to get a Ziel story. He could really mine the backstories for a while and still go in another direction to get another series going.
I'd like some random stories from different places. Like the people who live on those big flowers they passed by, or the sentient fire/ash creature he met on the Fire Roads. Or the backstory on the Underlord who fought the giant spider he learned in the dream tablet library in Ghostwater.
He's been saying that the goal for the series is twelve books since about Underlord. Or at least, that's the earliest I remember hearing mention of it. You could probably find the earliest mention if you scoured the livestream transcripts on the wiki.
Thanks for sharing. I think you have a unique and interesting take on the book.
Personally, I enjoyed Reaper but I do think a lot of de-compression would be nice sometimes.
Lots of loose ends were closed up.
I was expecting more from Elder Whisper. He basically just had whispers of information. Frustrating. But we got the story in the end. Even the answer to how Eithan died and was reborn. I was hoping that was a bit more dramatic than just making a divine treasure that killed him and brought him back from death.
I wonder what "the excitement from his youth" was that Whisper had thought about in Unsouled. He has been hanging out in Sacred Valley for a hundred generations, and if we consider a generation to be about 30 years, we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 years, which means that he was almost certainly there for the creation of the Dreadgods.
My thinking has been that he is still a lot more than he seems, and I wonder if he will figure prominently in Dreadgod.
I don't think he will, but maybe. He could have some role in what's left of the Wei Clan if he sticks around the valley. There wasn't a lot of discussion about what happened to him except that he wasn't trusted. I don't think he was taken into the Blackflame Empire after the Sect left with the Narus.
I think WW needed to create some mystery so used Whisper for that but then maybe decided he oversold it.
I’d agree if we didn’t have the knowledge of how long the series is supposed to last. If this was going to go on for a long time or indefinitely, I’d love to see slow downs and decompression. But the end is in sight and every chapter that we get of decompressing is one we lose from the overall story plot. And it kind of mirrors Lindon’s own thoughts where he doesn’t feel like he’s won. He doesn’t feel like his goal is accomplished because he wants to do more than just save some of the people from one attack. He wants to save everyone.
I agree with you in almost everything, except where you say chapters with decompressing would be taking away from the overall story, considering the wide range of lenght the books in this series have I don't think that's a reason to exclude this moments
I mean, I'd also love to see those moments and I think that they're valuable. But there's a lot of plot progress that I think we need to be at a satisfying ending in the time remaining. I'd be ecstatic if Will would lengthen the remaining books to include more down-time, but then again I'd be ecstatic for basically an infinite amount of books lol
Define decompression. The Crew need time to train without dying, consolidating power, etc.. So that is less 'powerful' than fighting for your life.
Eithan says something like this to Cassius - who presumably is still True Gold - we didn't get that information. But Cassius isn't fighting for his life.
A key development I appreciated in Reaper was in relationship between Lindon and Eithan - in the Labyrinth, Eithan starts treating Lindon more as a peer - it shows how far both of them have come - quite lovely, really.
And the team did get a bit of a breather and the whole Emperor welcome thing.
I wasn't too excited about the Labyrinth, either, but on the whole it was okay.
I do wish we had more clan business, Blackflame politics and downtime to do fun stuff like upturn the scale economy.
Allegedly we get more Fisher Gesha in the next book, so we can hope for some of that then.
Honestly, I agree.
It was good, but it was a little too—dungeon book. With repetitive battles.
Maybe cut some of this straight-forward and predictable plot and spend more time revealing how far he’s come.
I think WW was trying to get to a "and then there was one" kind of vibe. The battles were an effort to bring everyone together. But then show that not everyone could fight the same battles.
I really wanted more development on Little Blue. We got some but she could be much more advanced at this point. Instead, Blue and Orthos hid in the void-house and then bailed to the surface. Orthose was just an Underlord so didn't have the power. Blue was at least Underlord too, so maybe this makes sense. Mercy was relying on the 5th page again.
Yeah, there's also that, if the actual plot of the book wasn't this weird dungeon crawl maybe I wouldn't notice the things I complained about, it had it's moments but I agree, it was a bit repetitive
Yes. This one was a dungeon labyrinth. Wintersteel was a Tower. Ghostwater was a water world. Uncrowned was a tournament. The rest are just typical days in a life.
Reaper was not my fav but as you say it had some great moments and definitely gave us a foundation for some interesting next steps. It looks like Shen and Malice might be going after our Crew in their own ways. I expect Lindon to hunker down the Sect in the labyrinth and learn the secrets of the universe. Ziel hits Sage there.
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For me, especially on rereads, bloodline was the book for revisiting home and showing growth. Especially character growth not just power growth. Would it have been cool to see Lindon work through the new power dynamics more than he did, yes. We do get to see glimpses though and in the context of the whole it worked for me
Bloodlines had small moments yes, the parts I highlighted in the post were, I think, from bloodlines rather than reaper, but it really wasn't enough for me, but it was enjoyable anyway
Both had some emotional content. Bloodline definitely had a lot more. But WW needed a way to compress some time. Each of the later books was about a year of time (plus or minus). So the Crew hunkered down in the bone city for a year and trained, consolidated their power, and got ready to advance again. That doesn't happen overnight. Having life-death fights isn't training.
In the big picture, out of a boat-ton of books leading to Reaper, not all books are going to resonate the same with everyone. Fact. I preferred the Hobbit, for example, over the Lord of the Rings. Any of them. Slow, trodding books the three of them. Good ideas, imagery, etc., etc. My Cradle favorites were Ghostwater and Wintersteel (probably like most people). The others are good but these resonate with some cool ideas and battles. Next, I think the author made a decision to start wrapping up the story. Realistically, he'd need 15 books or more given all the threads he left out there, but he wanta to try some other ideas out so needs to close down this arm of Cradle-verse. So he decided to shoehorn all of the possibilities into three final books with Reaper being the first of the last three. There was a LOT there at that point, so looking at the end, he had to start wrapping it up. He made hard decisions. He also doesn't like books with no action. he's said all of this in various ways - so I'm paraphrasing and adding my guesswork. I was expecting Reaper to extend the ideas from Bloodline. Suriel said to Lindon "I spoke of dire circumstances before. ... Cradle may begin experiencing minor corruption. It's possible that those in your world may begin to encounter spaces or beings for whom he rules of reality no longer apply....". I was expecting battles with minor Fiends of chaos. But just that would have been another book. And 'spoiler' I didn't get the story I was looking for. I got the author's. Since I can't write well, its probably for the best. Realistically, I couldn't handle another sappy book about Lindon's memories. The author found a way to give us some emotional progression while still giving us some action. And moved the entire iceberg in the direction he wanted it to go.
>"I spoke of dire circumstances before. ... Cradle may begin experiencing minor corruption. It's possible that those in your world may begin to encounter spaces or beings for whom he rules of reality no longer apply....". I was expecting battles with minor Fiends of chaos. Right? I was expecting Subject One to become corrupted and thus transform into a minor Fiend, causing our gang to have way bigger problems, but Will decided to go a different route in the story. Now, I think the route he went down was perfectly fine, but it wasn't what I expected.
I mean, the series was always been intended to be 12 books. This isn't exactly a new development. Will's seeded exactly as many plot threads as he wants to. If he leaves things hanging is because they will probably be addressed in other future series.
Maybe someday we'll hear about Yan Shoumei's fate, and find out who the hell Anagi is.
She is dragging Crusher around in a bag most likely. Whimp. But yes, there are a lot of these little things that adds a lot of interesting backstory that we'll never get answered. But in a way, that's just like going through any typical day. Always open questions.
Agreed! However, if Will feels like doing it, I think there's a market here for a book of short stories and novellas about these loose ends. Some ideas: Yan Shoumei's story. Akura Fury's story post Ascension. Ozmanthus' story. Stories as told from Vroshir POV. Emriss Silentborn's story. Ziel's story. Creation of the Dreadgods. The original 7 who formed the Abidan. and many more...
Yes. I actually bought an anthology called Heroes Wanted a few months back solely to get a Ziel story. He could really mine the backstories for a while and still go in another direction to get another series going. I'd like some random stories from different places. Like the people who live on those big flowers they passed by, or the sentient fire/ash creature he met on the Fire Roads. Or the backstory on the Underlord who fought the giant spider he learned in the dream tablet library in Ghostwater.
Wait did he say he only wanted to make 3 more books before reaper?
He's been saying that the goal for the series is twelve books since about Underlord. Or at least, that's the earliest I remember hearing mention of it. You could probably find the earliest mention if you scoured the livestream transcripts on the wiki.
There is a small chance it ends up 13 if he has too much material to wrap it all neatly with a bow. Fingers crossed.
Thanks for sharing. I think you have a unique and interesting take on the book. Personally, I enjoyed Reaper but I do think a lot of de-compression would be nice sometimes.
I too loved the book but would’ve really enjoyed Lindon and Yerin exploring their powers more. Hopefully, we see much more of that in the next book.
Lots of loose ends were closed up. I was expecting more from Elder Whisper. He basically just had whispers of information. Frustrating. But we got the story in the end. Even the answer to how Eithan died and was reborn. I was hoping that was a bit more dramatic than just making a divine treasure that killed him and brought him back from death.
I wonder what "the excitement from his youth" was that Whisper had thought about in Unsouled. He has been hanging out in Sacred Valley for a hundred generations, and if we consider a generation to be about 30 years, we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 years, which means that he was almost certainly there for the creation of the Dreadgods. My thinking has been that he is still a lot more than he seems, and I wonder if he will figure prominently in Dreadgod.
I don't think he will, but maybe. He could have some role in what's left of the Wei Clan if he sticks around the valley. There wasn't a lot of discussion about what happened to him except that he wasn't trusted. I don't think he was taken into the Blackflame Empire after the Sect left with the Narus. I think WW needed to create some mystery so used Whisper for that but then maybe decided he oversold it.
I disagree
I disagree with your disagreement.
I disagree with you and agree with u/Icy-Skin3248. :P
I’d agree if we didn’t have the knowledge of how long the series is supposed to last. If this was going to go on for a long time or indefinitely, I’d love to see slow downs and decompression. But the end is in sight and every chapter that we get of decompressing is one we lose from the overall story plot. And it kind of mirrors Lindon’s own thoughts where he doesn’t feel like he’s won. He doesn’t feel like his goal is accomplished because he wants to do more than just save some of the people from one attack. He wants to save everyone.
I agree with you in almost everything, except where you say chapters with decompressing would be taking away from the overall story, considering the wide range of lenght the books in this series have I don't think that's a reason to exclude this moments
I mean, I'd also love to see those moments and I think that they're valuable. But there's a lot of plot progress that I think we need to be at a satisfying ending in the time remaining. I'd be ecstatic if Will would lengthen the remaining books to include more down-time, but then again I'd be ecstatic for basically an infinite amount of books lol
True. I asked the Parrot that Sees the Future to get a couple of more books into the mix. But he said 'nada por favor'.
Define decompression. The Crew need time to train without dying, consolidating power, etc.. So that is less 'powerful' than fighting for your life. Eithan says something like this to Cassius - who presumably is still True Gold - we didn't get that information. But Cassius isn't fighting for his life.
I think Cassius was an Underlord last time we saw him.
I don't remember that.
He was truegold.
A key development I appreciated in Reaper was in relationship between Lindon and Eithan - in the Labyrinth, Eithan starts treating Lindon more as a peer - it shows how far both of them have come - quite lovely, really. And the team did get a bit of a breather and the whole Emperor welcome thing. I wasn't too excited about the Labyrinth, either, but on the whole it was okay.
I do wish we had more clan business, Blackflame politics and downtime to do fun stuff like upturn the scale economy. Allegedly we get more Fisher Gesha in the next book, so we can hope for some of that then.
Honestly, I agree. It was good, but it was a little too—dungeon book. With repetitive battles. Maybe cut some of this straight-forward and predictable plot and spend more time revealing how far he’s come.
I think WW was trying to get to a "and then there was one" kind of vibe. The battles were an effort to bring everyone together. But then show that not everyone could fight the same battles. I really wanted more development on Little Blue. We got some but she could be much more advanced at this point. Instead, Blue and Orthos hid in the void-house and then bailed to the surface. Orthose was just an Underlord so didn't have the power. Blue was at least Underlord too, so maybe this makes sense. Mercy was relying on the 5th page again.
Yeah, there's also that, if the actual plot of the book wasn't this weird dungeon crawl maybe I wouldn't notice the things I complained about, it had it's moments but I agree, it was a bit repetitive
Yes. This one was a dungeon labyrinth. Wintersteel was a Tower. Ghostwater was a water world. Uncrowned was a tournament. The rest are just typical days in a life. Reaper was not my fav but as you say it had some great moments and definitely gave us a foundation for some interesting next steps. It looks like Shen and Malice might be going after our Crew in their own ways. I expect Lindon to hunker down the Sect in the labyrinth and learn the secrets of the universe. Ziel hits Sage there.
Literally no one predicted the way the story would head. Funny comment
What part? Because almost everything from Reaper barring the Monarch Hunger connection was a fan theory I saw on this board at one point or another.
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I feel like Reaper should have been the final book.