Hi there, I’m a writer and I critique stories I like. The intro is solid, interesting, beautiful. The first memory gave me such feels that I had to get up and walk around in order to process them. And then we get to… this.
“Omnia mutantur,”they said, reaching for something they’d been told long ago,“nihil interit.”
The witch rolled her eyes. “Latin, right? Unfortunately, I was too busy talking to the living to learn a dead language.”
Death almost rolled their eyes in return. “It’s a quote from the Roman poet Ovid. Everything changes, nothing perishes.”
“Very profound. And do be assured that I mean that in the worst possible way. It’s the sort of thing that sounds wise, as long as you don’t, you know… actually think about it. I mean, it’s fine as a line of poetry, but what can it mean between two people who know that no spirit transcends death? Sure, maybe Ovid’s atoms are drifting through the air; maybe a molecule of water from his body is in my coffee. But Ovid was not his atoms or his molecules, and only someone who wished to hide from the truth might find profundity in the idea that he lived on in hydrogen bonded to carbon or oxygen.”
“I liked Ovid,” Death replied, which they had to admit, didn’t add much to the conversation.
“Then it’s a shame that he changed into dust.”
Pardon, but. Did Ovid not just speak with Death’s voice? Serious philosophical question.
Even setting aside questions regarding the definition of identity and personhood, this is a setting with at least one ancient magekiller robot and/or anthropomorphic personification running around, where magic appears to be a vocational skill, and where magic can certainly encode consciousness.
Even if the afterlife looks more like ‘suspended animation in the akashic library’ than ‘personal minecraft server’, it seems deeply premature to conclude that there isn’t one.
(I will be editing in the rest of my review as I continue reading.)
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to write up your thoughts.
One thing to note is that there are presumably things that witch knows that the reader does not. So while the story itself might not give us enough detail to conclude that there is no afterlife in the story world, the witch may have additional information that allows her to reach this conclusion with some fair confidence.
Oh, that’s clearly what it’s meant to come across as. But to me it reads more like a Materialist Immortalism sermon delivered by someone who really ought to know better in context.
Also I’m a little irritated that Death has apparently literally never felt the need to justify itself before, but does this time. Human history is deep, like ‘the time of Christ until now is like the most recent ten percent’ deep. How, among the untold billions who have died, has Death never encountered a mage capable of making it experience shame and/or guilt until after Melbourne came into existence?
Did magic only recently become possible? Is the Death we see younger than King Arthur? Is magic a skillset so encouraging of hubris that this witch is literally the first magic-user in history to both desire endless life and have a clue that repentance is important?
I love the frame idea of a debate with Death while a mage tries to imprison it, but if it’s a frame for a philosophical debate, the philosophy could use a lot more development.
Hi there, I’m a writer and I critique stories I like. The intro is solid, interesting, beautiful. The first memory gave me such feels that I had to get up and walk around in order to process them. And then we get to… this.
Pardon, but. Did Ovid not just speak with Death’s voice? Serious philosophical question.
Even setting aside questions regarding the definition of identity and personhood, this is a setting with at least one ancient magekiller robot and/or anthropomorphic personification running around, where magic appears to be a vocational skill, and where magic can certainly encode consciousness.
Even if the afterlife looks more like ‘suspended animation in the akashic library’ than ‘personal minecraft server’, it seems deeply premature to conclude that there isn’t one.
(I will be editing in the rest of my review as I continue reading.)
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to write up your thoughts.
One thing to note is that there are presumably things that witch knows that the reader does not. So while the story itself might not give us enough detail to conclude that there is no afterlife in the story world, the witch may have additional information that allows her to reach this conclusion with some fair confidence.
Oh, that’s clearly what it’s meant to come across as. But to me it reads more like a Materialist Immortalism sermon delivered by someone who really ought to know better in context.
Also I’m a little irritated that Death has apparently literally never felt the need to justify itself before, but does this time. Human history is deep, like ‘the time of Christ until now is like the most recent ten percent’ deep. How, among the untold billions who have died, has Death never encountered a mage capable of making it experience shame and/or guilt until after Melbourne came into existence?
Did magic only recently become possible? Is the Death we see younger than King Arthur? Is magic a skillset so encouraging of hubris that this witch is literally the first magic-user in history to both desire endless life and have a clue that repentance is important?
I love the frame idea of a debate with Death while a mage tries to imprison it, but if it’s a frame for a philosophical debate, the philosophy could use a lot more development.