It’s likely no coincidence that the events of Chapter 25
landed right at the midpoint of Souldancer.
This is one of those chapters that relentlessly hammers the reader. You get the first inkling of what full blown
souldancer on souldancer combat might look like. You get another layer of souldancer power,
clairaudience, shown in explicit detail.
You are shown what a great guy Cook really is. And to top off that layer cake you get the
frosting of the first overt acknowledgement of Xander’s love for Astlin coupled
with Astlin’s first hint that she might be lovable.
Souldancer is definitely a book of monsters. Some of the monsters are ugly on the inside
and the outside. Irallel, the
waterdancer, looks like a drowned woman and has the spirit to match. Some are only ugly on the inside – in my mind
Hazeroth is as pretty as he is foul. And
some of the monsters are only ugly on the outside – Cook might look like a sack
of potatoes that just lost a fight against the ugly stick, but he’s solid gold
inside. This constant refrain of
larger-than-life characters really helps elevate Souldancer’s game. It serves
as a constant reminder that we’re treading on ground that is unlike the
standard cut-and-paste genre fiction.
Of course, Neimeier doesn’t let up the pace in Chapter 26
either. The relatively simple stealing
of the Kerioth gives way to the first
real showdown with Hazeroth, and what a showdown that was. The combined might of two souldancers backed
up by Xander’s formidable talent are barely enough to scratch the guy. It’s only the timely intervention of Sulaiman
that allows them to escape certain doom and get to the Steersman Vault.
And again, the threat level is ratcheted up when it takes
all four souldancers to put down one left-over security guardbot. That little fight reveals a little something
about poor Irallel, but it also highlights that this universe is in many ways a
shadow of what it once was. Or perhaps
it demonstrates how formidable the Guild was at the height of its power. One basic warbot took the souldancers
combining Voltron-like to defeat?That really puts the events of Nethereal in perspective. We knew the Guild was tough, but this raises the bar considerably.
