Ship of Destiny

I really loved this series, and I'm glad I read it. It was a unique fantasy story, easy escapism, and I'm really glad it exists in the same world as her other series so I don't have to leave it entirely. I especially loved that the character development, personalities, and behaviors were extremely thoughtful and nuanced, which I think is lacking in a lot of fantasy. It was super refreshingly trying-and-doing-a-solid-job-to-be feminist. The lower rating for the third book is my frustration with the extreme heteroness of it, and the fact that it did so much so great and fell short in just a few areas. (Spoilers) In trying to tie things up in the end, there was just so much forced pairing and happily ever afterness and it felt like too many characters were forced into “ending up” with a partner. I was disappointed because otherwise, the series portrayed capitalist structures like monogamous economic marriage as problematic, but this aspect was glorified. Who knows, maybe the publisher wanted it that way.

CN (w/ spoilers sort of) is that the series is about trauma and there is lots of talk of rape, especially in the third book. Rape scenes were told from the perspective of the people who were raped, and weren't used in a way that felt like an exploitative story arc or “just for character development.” I'm still not sure what I thought of it overall, but I'm pretty sure I'm landing at: she did a great job centering the experiences of trauma and intergenerational trauma and how they affect people, and presented everything thoughtfully and carefully.

Overall I'd recommend it!