About book The Wraiths Of Will And Pleasure (2003)
This is the first book in the second Wraeththu trilogy by Storm ConstantineAgain, I'm really blown away by her beautiful writing style and the characters I keep falling in love with. This book actually is timed between the second and third in the first trilogy. It is very much the story of the secondary characters in that trilogy. You would think initially that would belabor the story, or at best be "Ground Hog's Day" ad nauseum. It works splendidly. I found myself very grateful not only for the fill-in of detail to the original story, but her deft ability to draw the reader into several characters at once. It's awfully hard to choose a side in her writing, which is the whole point of androgyny anyway. There is no side.This one really shows the struggles that the incepted Wraeththu have in contrast to those of the pure-born Wraeththu. Only males can be Wraeththu, usually boys or teens. Their inception involves exposure to Wraeththu blood, after which they are no longer human but hermaphroditic forms of perfection, for the most part. Eventually certain castes of the race could reproduce. For many of the young men who were incepted, they are still very much trapped in their masculine personas and their feminine virtues are suppressed, out of fear of them and discomfort with them. The ones that are pure-born don't struggle with that as much, especially if they conceive and bear life. Tthey are more accepting of their feminine. It's very interesting, cos I can see how in the depiction of sexual balance in how the main characters live in first trilogy the reader could easily feel it is just another literary projection of a masculine dominance. But she shows the characters struggling with that too. They know they aren't purely masculine. The Wraeththu don't know who they are yet, and are afraid they will destroy themselves before they can find out.Oddly the 'women' in the book go through the same thing with regard to their masculine virtues. How familiar.Interesting to observe how the voice of the feminine evolves in this trilogy. It's very fitting and artful for Constantine to allow it to emerge and shape now. She has an excellent grasp of how her characters grow and evolve and how to "teach" the reader much in the same way to remain included in the lack of sexual polarity she's created. I find that as I enter into the second book of the second trilogy, I don't bring any thoughts of them being human or a gender at all. It's really wonderful and shaped my worldview really well.Apart from physical androgyny, there is also the presentation of nonpolarized "will," meaning, her presentation of the storyline is so artful that the reader learns in a very well timed succession WHY the characters make the decisions that they do, their true motivations and inner events, that you really can't judge any of them as right or wrong, good or bad. You see the whole picture. That is not an easy style to write, and I admire her for that.
I read the first trilogy "Wraethu" by Storm Constantine some time ago, so I had forgotten quite a lot of what happened in those 3 books. I had also sort of forgotten just how good a writer Storm Constantine is, but was soon reminded as I started to read "The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure". This book takes place between the 2nd and 3rd books of the Wraethu trilogy. We are reacquainted with some of the characters from those books and new characters are introduced as well. I thought this book was wonderful. I wasn't as confused about the Wraethu and hars, etc. as I was in the first series. I'm not sure if it was explained better or if I just understood it better because I had read the first trilogy previously. I thought the relationships between the various characters were very well done. The author does a great job of making the reader care about the characters. I liked the pace of the story. There were some parts of the story where several years pass, but this was done seamlessly, in my opinion and I didn't feel as though the author rushed any part of the story. The passage of years without writing every moment of them was done with great effect. I should mention that this book is tagged as M/M, but it really isn't because the main characters are really hermaphroditic, although the har think of themselves as being male for the most part. I thought this book was a really fast read. No parts of the novel seemed slow to me. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy. The author did a great job in world building a world in which humans are no longer in existence or very few of them exist anymore, actually.
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The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure fleshes out much detail of the original Wraeththu trilogy. I tells the story of Flick after he left Salrock to find what happened to Pell's family and tells the stories of Pell's siblings. Much more detail is given about the 'science' of Wraeththu physiology, their origins and the nature of Wraeththuian Sex 'Magic'. The nature of the Kamagrians is explored in detail. A Pagan bent is prominent in this new trilogy, hinted at in the original. Much had been made of Storm's Gothic fiction. But, I consider this a misnomer, at least as applied to the Wraeththu series. I find the world to be very positive and compelling, one in which I long to be a part. There is certainly romance, good and evil, but I do not find the horror, death, decay and such, that are such a part of Gothic fiction and subculture. White and beauty is much more a part of its world than black and ugly insanity. In simple terms it is about the fall of one civilization and the struggles of the rise of another. Its politics are timeless.
—Kernos
Not quite as mind-blowing as the original trilogy, but still terrificWarning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS. Rating: 9/10PROS: - The world-building in this series is amazing: detailed, beautifully written, and unique. Constantine is particularly good at using concrete descriptions to bring abstract ideas to life.- Events related in this volume serve to illuminate incidents and characters introduced in the original Wraeththu trilogy. When I read the trilogy, I wished on numerous occasions that I could see more of what happened between certain characters, and in many cases, that background information I craved is present in this book.- There are a couple of teasers at the very end of the third book that suggest an entire world separate from but related to that of Wraeththu. Those teasers are, much to my delight, developed (and even focused on) in this volume.- In spite of the magnificence of the story idea and Constantine’s actual writing, my favorite thing about the Wraeththu series is the characters--especially the romantic relationships they form with one another. There are several new relationships in this book, one of which involves a character I liked very much in the original series.CONS:- This volume is told in third person, whereas each of the original stories is narrated from a different character’s perspective. The plus side of the third-person POV here is that we get to see a lot of different characters’ experiences, which gives the story a broader scope than the original Wraeththu stories have. The down side is that this story doesn’t feel as intimate as the earlier ones, because the comments we’re prone to are those of a removed, omniscient narrator rather than a character who’s actually participating in the action. - I thought the story was a little slow at first. It took almost a hundred pages for me to get really interested in it, even though I already knew and liked one of the main characters from the previous stories.Overall comments: I think if you’ve read the original trilogy, this is a must-read as a follow-up. The background it provides for several of the main characters is wonderful, as is the expansion upon ideas only briefly touched upon in the first books. If you haven’t read the original books, the story here is probably engaging enough to catch your attention; however, you’ll be missing out on much of the emotional impact of the events related in this volume.
—Charly
The book was better than I had anticipated. Like the original books ("Wraeththu" collection), the story didn't have a conventional straightforward plot as such, but a chain of events: stuff happening to the characters and the characters doing stuff. This time the chain of events was more easy to follow and also made more sense. I'd say this book is better than the originals.I found I cared about the main characters more. They were different and distinct people and I could understand their actions and motives at least most of the time, though not always. The characters' dialogue still felt a little weak. They spoke more naturally but didn't seem to have their own unique voices.The mysticism, magic and gods don't fit very well with my preference for scientific explanations and solutions, but I do still enjoy the presented mysteries. I liked it when the characters got philosophical about the mysteries and explained things. I would have liked it to happen more often, even.
—V. E.
