Dreadgod (Cradle 11) - Will Wight
I plan to reread this whole series soon, maybe once Waybound has a release date. There's so much foreshadowing that I know I missed the first round and I want to have to full experience now.
I don't think I can talk about this without spoilers. It is what it is.
The penultimate installment of Cradle picks up with the impending doom of the Dreadgods, Ozriel returned to his spot as the Reaper, and Monarchs being their typical shady selves.
Character takeaways from Dreadgod!
I appreciate how Lindon's morals have stayed on track throughout all these books: stealing and cheating is fine if it gains you leverage against people stronger than you. His family dynamics are so interesting throughout the series as well; he doesn't want anything bad to happen to his blood relatives but he doesn't seem very emotionally attached to anyone but Kelsa. He seems to feel obligated to keep them safe if he can, but his found family are the real priority.
Mercy has really been given the short end of the stick through this arc being under Malice's thumb but she still keeps up a smile and abides by her familial duty. She's kept in the dark on important matters, not allowed to advance at her own pace, and not allowed to contact her friends. She fulfills her duties as the clan secretary/PR agent and that's it. Until Lindon decides to come and cause a stir.
Ziel, Orthos and Yerin had their own advancement adventures with the Dragons of the old Blackflame Empire and the Red Moon Hall but I feel like they didn't get enough page time, these parts could have easily been longer but they were ramping up then cut short by the Silent King entering the battlefield.
I realized while writing this that Yerin is a rare female character written by a man that is written with 0 male gaze. In fact, the only male gaze in this series I think is the slightest bit involving Eithan. Yerin is strong, independent, and a little gruff when it comes to her tolerance for people, but she is here for herself and her own goals. Though we’ve gotten next to no page time on the matter, her and Lindon are a great ship because they are both two complete wholes that just compliment each other.
Malice has been a somewhat grey character all this time, where it’s unclear if she's friend or foe. When she is helping and doing good deeds it always is for her own future gain of some sort. But with a name like Malice, it is expected for her to be a little evil. Malice, Malice, Malice. It would appear that Malice wants to keep her position of power at absolutely any cost.
Now about that book…
I think the events of Reaper were so impactful and devastating that Dreadgod was in an awkward transitional position for the first 2/3 of the book. Reaper wrapped up some of the subplot plans that had been building for several books, and without the whole series ending shortly after those events it makes sense to have a low period.
The first fight ends with the Akura clan falling back as the Dreadgod was just too powerful. Malice had fended off a Dreadgod before, but now all of them are awake at the same time and much more powerful. This served as something of a reality check for Lindon and Company- and ultimately they realized it was time for another training montage with the goal being advance as quickly as possible, much to Malice's displeasure.
I always find myself wanting the Big Strong MCs to encounter actual struggles as these kind of stories advance. They just get stronger and stronger without a lot of challenge. I thought that Lindon was going to face some severe struggle when he unintentionally broke his oath to Malice, the oath that was to rip his soul to shreds when broken. In the end Lindon was kept alive and his soul mended, but there was the part where Charity said that it may hinder his future advancement. I'm very curious to see if it will cause problems for him later down the road, but he appears to have been 100% fixed with no bad side effects as of the end of this book.
I admire Will Wight's ability to write immersive fight scenes. I don't tend to read books for the fight scenes, a lot of the time they don't advance the plot in any way and are just fighting to fight. But Will Wight masterfully crafts the scene of the battlefield from all angles and each fight throughout Cradle serves a specific purpose. Some fights are to show a character's strengths or weaknesses, some are to show exactly how devastating an enemy is, some are to make or break teamwork skills. Some fights show that allies are actually enemies. I think the conclusive fight of Dreadgod did all of those things. Will manages to pull all of these moving pieces together to create a cohesive scene that reads like the intro to Game of Thrones where it zooms around to all the places on the map. That's how it looks in my head. I especially admire how he is able to fully capture the scale of the varying sizes and powers of all the characters. He makes the Dreadgods and their abilities feel so mind bogglingly massive with wonderful descriptions like cracked space, he makes each rank of human only as powerful as their currently cultivation level and makes them easy to distinguish. I think without him saying a human's rank in the text you could guess what they are. He also managed to make Blue feel ever so tiny and her adjectives changed accordingly as she got bigger. I just appreciate that with a large cast of characters he still puts the little details into all of them.
I was expecting something different than this as a follow up for Reaper, but I do overall think it was a good transition and set up for the big conclusion to the series. It brought some characters true intentions to light, some secret politics came out of the woodwork to cause clan tension, and continued to paint how terrifyingly powerful the Dreadgods are. I trust that Waybound will bring a really strong finish with this setup.
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I agree im so sad about sage of red faith coming and going instantly. there is a fan theory that yerin will turn the sage of red faith's remnant into her presense like lindons dross. I really wanted to see the two remnants of redmoon form into a complete whole, that wouldve been badass.
yay