IT’S HERE!!!!
My book is finally here!
Look at it!!
My picture may be bad, but the book is amazing!!
If you will excuse me now, I will be holed up reading this fine display of workmanship!
(Atlantis review postponed until next week so I can enjoy this!)
So I said this week would be the next book or a Guide and Snow post.
Guide and Snow won out.
In the anthology ‘Far Horizons’ is a short story about when Snow chose Guide as her Consort. I’ll do a couple posts about it because it is GOOD!
The story itself is fantastic because it’s also the story of when Guide and his Hive reprogrammed the Asurans, stopping them from slaughtering the Wraith.
Guide is still young here, but he and Seeker (a cousin and friend) have made places for themselves as part of Queen Snow’s zenana.
Queen Snow is somewhat different from other Queen’s in that she sees the value in Clevermen and what they can bring to the Wraith as a whole. The impression is that Clevermen are needed and also valued, but Blades are more important because they keep everyone safe.
Of course, we know that Guide himself is quite practiced as a cleverman. Wether it’s because of his age or because he’s smart enough not to make the same mistake twice (we are distinctly not mentioning his making deals with the Lanteans multiple times and expecting them not to screw him over).
I’m pretty sure, though it’s not eluded to in any way here, that Snow is the reason he got into the Clevermen track of life. If only enough to get himself in trouble.
This time though, his clever mind is the reason the Asurans were defeated.
Talking to Seeker, Guide asks why another of the zenana (a Cleverman and also vying to be Snow’s Consort of course) hasn’t figured out how to stop the Asurans.
The conversation hits a point where Guide asks why they can’t be reprogrammed.
They can.
The real problem is that the new code would have to be uploaded directly to the main core.
Which is on the home planet and, obviously, well guarded.
Guide, already being the lovable psycho we know now, decides that that’s what they’ll do.
Infiltrate the Asurans homeworld and upload a new code before heading home.
As we also know now, he succeeds on most occasions with astounding results.
This is no different.
They succeed and life goes on until the Lanteans come around and undo the work.
At which point they need Guide to help them and they take him prisoner and so on until Rodney’s sister is infected with nanites.
This is a very brief summary of what happens. I’m going to be diving in a little more because it’s a really great look into Wraith life and especially Guide’s early start with his beloved Snow.
Also, Snow is awesome!
See everyone next week!
Hello everyone!
I didn’t realize last week that this would be the 50th post since starting the Legacy series reviews. I was mostly concerned about the ‘Part 15’ part I wanted to get to before starting the next book.
Am I doing something special this week?
Nah.
Mostly because I only realized this was the 50th review just now when I sat down to do this post. Hopefully I’ll remember the 100th review post and plan something special, but we shall see.
For this week however!
The first Wraith are worth taking another look at for this last review. When they woke as Wraith, whatever had been done to them had pretty much wiped their memories. Or at least a good portion of them. It’s the reason they took on new names that were based on their minds’ feel, because they couldn’t immediately remember their own names and then it became their thing. Separate from the Alterans and simply being ‘subjects’.
When Osprey gave Kairos his new name it was because of his mind. She knew his name still but chose to call him what he had become.
I wonder if his mind felt like ashes because that’s how he felt about the entire thing. The Alterans and their experiments. His part in them. All the dead he couldn’t save that shouldn’t have been lost to begin with.
There were one hundred men and one hundred women used in the tests. Ninety-one women died, and one man did leaving the Wraith to start with nine Queens and ninety-nine men who became Blades and Clevermen.
I wonder if they split in to equal bands?
We know that’s what they called themselves for the first long while. Until they created the Hiveships they used stolen Alteran technology ( and possibly other advanced society ships though I wonder how far the Alterans actually let anyone else get). We only really know about Osprey and some of the men who followed her because she’s where Teyla gets her Wraithiness from.
I kind of feel like it wouldn’t be an even split though. After all they had gone through I feel like some gravitated towards certain people they felt closer to or that they were more comfortable with and probably some moved around from band to band sharing information and such until they found their place.
What is interesting (and I wonder if it’s a typo) is that Teyla thinks about the timing of the Wraith and says it was eleven thousand years ago that they first became. Which would mean that the Old One is only one thousand years older then Guide is.
Which is still pretty old, but not so much for Wraith.
I can’t wait to get to the novella with Guide and Snow! It’s so cute and wonderful! Maybe, now that we’ve met his daughter, I should take a short break from Legacy proper and do a review of that story?
It would kind of fit in with the whole timing of Wraith history and all…
I have to end this post now because it’s getting long and getting late. I know it was kind of rambley, but I kept seeing things I’d missed the first few times I’d read it.
These books are WAY TOO GOOD!!
I’ll see peeps next week with either a Guide and Snow story or the next book in Legacy.
Till then!
Wraith gestation periods are apparently quite long.
Ya’ll didn’t think I’d go there did ya?
Reading through one of my absolute favorite scenes in this book (my favorite being when Guide meets his daughter again) it occurred to me that Alabaster was pregnant for a long time compared to humans.
Really shouldn’t have taken me so long since they literally say how long she was on the planet before giving birth to Darling, but you always seem to find something new in a book when you go back through. Which is why I don’t get too many points taken off for this one.
Anyways, Alabaster carried Darling for two years before giving birth. Considering that Guide thought about when she was little and asleep in the Hiveships womb (pretty sure that was the word used) I have so many questions about Wraith children!
They can obviously carry to term (which was one of my questions), so are the newborns put into a womb-like place on a Hive to help them grow and learn about the Wraith until a certain age and it wasn’t an option for Darling so she simply raised him?
Or is the word ‘womb’ in relation to a Hiveship simply a sleeping place for the young?
It would be cool to find out, and there are other stories still I haven’t read or listened to so the answer may be there. Or be in one of the books I’ve read already and just didn’t see it the first time through.
In any case, I’ll keep it on the backburner while I’m going through the next books and see if I can get more info.
Another thing this week, while we’re talking about Wraith and their children, is Guide and Alabaster’s reactions to meeting again after twenty-one years.
Pretty dang hard for a human and not so different for the Wraith. Alabaster kept expecting her father to come to the rescue and Guide, apparently, had several times where he expected her to be on the other end of a message.
Needing Bonewhite to watch his back in case he got himself into trouble is a very telling thing. Guide thinks about how he’s feeling in the moment, but twice since Woolsey contacted him, Guide has considered Bonewhite to be the best person to keep things going if this time is like the rest and a false call.
I can’t remember if the reason he was caught by the Genii in the first place was because he was following another lead on his daughter.
At least this time turned out far better for him then that time.
I like that we keep seeing these little snippets of Wraith life. You wouldn’t think that Bonewhite and Guide are close, (being Commander and Second is one thing but advancement is also a thing) but these two little scenes tell a different story. We all know Guide is older by a good bit than most of the Wraith we’ve met but it’s nice to see that the Wraith form different kinds of friendships like humans do.
Having said that, it can’t be easy being friends with someone like Guide who always seems to be in some kind of trouble or other. Either needing rescuing or just a little more time to see his plans to fruition.
I shall leave this post here for the week and let ya’ll know that it was meant to be the last but then I realized I could do one more and get to a solid 15 for this book, so why not?
Next week will be the last review for ‘Secrets’ and then onto the next!
Have a great week everyone!
The Dark Library 