I knew this was coming. When I was 200, then 300 pages into the book, I knew that there just wasn't enough time left for the story to go in a different, shocking direction or to offer a conclusion of finality to The Aspect Emperor like The Thousandfold Thought ending sequence did for The Prince of Nothing. When I turned the final page to the glossary, I knew this was the most insane epic battle I've ever read but a small part of me raged that this story is clearly far from over.
I just feel like this is not the book that's been teased since the publication of the White Luck Warrior. Sorweel, Mimara, Achamian, Meppa, Cnaiur, and the Survivor's Son all had zero bearing on the ultimate destination of the plot. It makes me wish we could have instead gotten what I was hoping to see from The Aspect Emperor, to really dive behind the scenes of characters like Maithanet, Aurang, Shauriatas. Both glossaries refer to the Mangeacca as a contemporary school, Kellhus saw them huddling over Aurang's body but now they all supposedly died out a long time ago? I don't know why this book is called the Unholy Consult.
There was no g-string. We only saw more Ur-Sranc, Bashrag, and Erratics. The Inverse Fire is exactly what we were told it is (which, I've been meaning to give my brother H some serious props for nailing it - that it's both a factual depiction of one's future damnation and the goad that the Consult uses to recruit talent). We were all getting psyched up for something that never happened. The No-God rising is the conclusion we were told was coming in the first chapter of the first book.
I really want to re-read just The Aspect Emperor because I expect it's going to resonate more now that it's complete and that these books in particular are going to age very well. It's clearly a much better written series than PoN, which is saying a lot, but it also has serious structural problems that make it such a far less satisfying story. A lot of fantasy fans like to defend a lack of closure by citing to the fact that these are large, overarching series. My response is always that the first three books here each had a clear beginning, middle, and totally unique, unforgettable end. The characters are completely different people at the end of each novel than they were at the beginning. If nothing came after TTT, you still would have read one of the greatest self-contained fantasy trilogies ever. So many of the TAE stories went nowhere and as amazing as Golgotterath was, my eyes really started glossing over the descriptions of fighting Sranc at that point. Again, I'm not scrutinizing Bakker for any of his plot point decisions, just the structuring.
And how can anyone deny the Deus Ex Machina at the end? There's no way that kid got to the upright horn!