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language: English
country: USA
year: 2019
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
series: Elemental Logic, #4
dates read: 11.10.21-12.10.21, 20.7.22-24.7.22, 2.5.24-3.5.24
I realized I forgot to review Air Logic after I finished it! as the final book in the series, there was a lot of ground for it to cover, and I think it does a pretty excellent job doing so. the resolution is maybe slightly too neat, but given how much I love what it does along the way it doesn’t bother me too much.
obviously we got the Willis stuff in Earth Logic, but having Chaen and Tashar as POV characters in this really helps emphasize the changes internal to Shaftali society that have taken place over the past twenty years. Tashar in particular I think works really well because he’s simultaneously “villainous” and really ordinary. like, he’s just a guy who hates the coworker he’s been assigned to work with (who hates him, too), and we’ve all been there, or in a comparable situation. so you come to understand him to an extent, and also you hate him.
Air Logic also points towards other, material transformations that are ongoing within Shaftali society, something we’ve gotten hints of in the past in the context of the impact of increasing urbanization on social organization but see in clearer focus here in the emergent proto-bourgeoisie of Hanishport.
however. mostly I just want to talk about a) the air children, b) the Paladins trying to be Emil, plus everyone trying to reason through air logic from a fire logic perspective.
the air children. ohhhhh my goodness. first of all, I am loves them. Anders especially, obviously. I particularly loved his note exchange with Norina about congeniality. obviously the details of their approach to problem-solving are very different from the fire bloods’, but I love the ways the entire series continues to center a) communication and b) communal thinking. even when they all have similar approaches to problem-solving, it still takes all of them together to arrive at a solution, because the solution they arrive at is one that none of them individually had enough information to reach on their own.
Chaen’s observations of the Paladins’ collective reasoning (and the time with Medric trying to make sense of the Ship of Air) makes this explicit, the way — whether or not they’re conscious of it — each of them takes on a role in order to approach the problem from multiple directions even if they’re predominantly fire bloods. I love it! it’s so good!
I also loved that we got to see Medric do some more active fire magic here, beyond having visions and working with glyph cards. in some ways fire logic comes to feel almost ordinary over the course of the series, since Zanja (the through-line of the whole series), Emil, and Chaen all have it, plus Medric, and tbh I think Clement, while not a presciant, is definitely fire-inclined in terms of her ability to enact unexpected possibilites, even without seeing them beforehand.
I think the resolution of the Death-and-Life plot was a little fast, and I also wish the J’han thing had had a little more emotional weight — it felt like we didn’t get quite enough space for it to really land; J’han in general, I’ve been realizing, gets kind of short shrift, partly by virtue of never being a POV character. but I did nonetheless tear up about it, so.
and the ending. holy shit. losing my mind.
incredible conclusion to an incredible series.
moods: emotional, hopeful, inspiring, reflective