Kriemhild and Brunhild

Spoiler filled review. While a lot better paced than the second book which had some pacing issues that were hard to ignore I can't help but still prefer the previous book as it reached higher highs than this one as the characters writing in this volume was rather weak.

The main antagonist Warren(who is the centerpiece of the story) attempts to control and eventually kill the 2 titular leads of this book to create the panacea which has eliminated all disease and ailments from their country and serves as the reason as to why their country is so prosperous. It is however also established early in the beginning of the story that unlike how Warren was able to make the panacea with Brunhild and Kriemhild's foremother's bodies he is unable to do so with Brunhild and Kriemhild's body yet he still tries to do so anyways.

At first I thought this was a rather poor writing choice to make it so that even if Warren did actually win against the sisters his plan would not work as he cannot make the panacea with the sisters' bodies which makes him a rather foolish character. I also thought by doing what the book did it missed an opportunity to do a moral dilemma and an interesting version of the trolley problem. However I later realized the author was intentionally trying to depict the foolishness and futility of trying to maintain the idealized past of a society so I ended up coming around to the whole thing and thinking it rather clever.

Despite that I still find issue with the character writing for Warren. The book paints him as a sort of sympathetic character. The concepts of a sympathetic antagonist who's doing something for the greater good and a foolish old man trying to maintain the past despite it being established as something impossible really contradicts and negate each other. You really can't do both. I don't really find an old man trying to stupidly preserve the past to be something sympathetic. Had the book only focused on one of the concepts I think it could have worked.

Another character I wasn't a fan of was Bernstein who was supposed to contrast Warren by virtue of being another fatherly figure for one of the two leads. Unlike Warren, Bernstein had the opinion that adults instead of clinging to the past should try to create a future for the children. Bernstein failed their narrative purpose however. For a lot of the book Bernstein is treated more like a potential love interest than a supposed father figure.

The author has explored the concept of a teenage girl pining for their father figures in interesting ways in previous books but the author didn't do anything interesting with it here. It even prevented Bernstein from fulfilling his narrative purpose. Bernstein actively pines for Brunhild which really made me not consider him to the protective father figure that he was supposed to be to Brunhild. Overall his whole attraction to Brunhild felt pointless to the story.

The other characters specifically the 2 titular main characters are alright. I thought they were rather interesting though I think I would have liked it if the story explored Brunhild's feelings for her sister a bit more.