#THE ASEXUAL EXPERIENCE type memoirs that my sister always tries to recommend

[curiosity-killed]

Would love to hear your thoughts on atfots… the plot really surprised me given how the last book ended but overall it felt like a mixed bag to me

*cradles ur face tenderly in my hands* babycakes u have opened a can of worms

I'm not even going to pretend that this will be short or coherent so tl;dr: if I'm looking for a fun AU, I turn to ATFOTS; if I'm looking for canon compliant, meaningful sequels to HOTE, I turn to fanfiction.

General disclaimer that here be spoilers for ATFOTS and that while I don't intend this to be lambasting ATFOTS by any means, it's not the most positive review. So like, don't read below if you a) want to avoid spoilers or b) enjoyed the book, probably?

I think there are roughly 2 main categories of critique I have for ATFOTS, with a third just being the catchall for anything I miss and/or me yelling about the things that matter most to me lol so:

I. Sequel Sins

I am generally not a fan of sequels primarily because I think they tend to fall into a lot of similar traps such as overexplaining, inconsistent characterization, and undermining their own themes. This may be a product of growing up in love with sprawling series that all wound up basically having the same formula. ANYWAY.

Overexplaining: ATFOTS starts off by reintroducing Cliopher Mdang. My good sir. The POV character for the other doorstopper novel that came before (& which I love). I get the desire to make a sequel accessible to people who haven't read the first book but ATFOTS feels consistently like it's holding your hand very gently and bending down to make sure you're getting its full sincere eye contact and talking very slowly. I don't have a copy of the book on me to pull quotes, but it's especially flagrant in the first couple chapters.

Inconsistent characterization: WHOO BOY. Cliopher is so old! No he's young again! Now he's middle-aged! I have mixed feelings on the characterization overall—Rodin, for instance, came a bit out of left field—and most of it comes down to the way I loved the characters in HOTE and then in ATFOTS they all felt...a bit flatter and a bit caricaturized and a bit less true.

Undermining themes: The character thing comes in hard here IMO. One of the major threads of HOTE is Kip shaping his own path of success and receiving acknowledgment from his loved ones for his unique, uncommon route. And then ATFOTS comes in and is like ACTUALLY we're going to overwrite that with this GRAND and MYTHOLOGICAL story that also conveniently follows closely the story that will be familiar to your family. This isn't to say there isn't value in that type of story, but it definitely cheapens (imo) the thematic value of HOTE. And this is true for...kind of a lot of the stories' themes. ATFOTS seems to want to be "HOTE themes but bigger and better" and in doing so, kind of falls flat in delivery imo.

II. ATFOTS-Specific Pro/Con

Alright now onto a little more specific issues. This will be brief bc I think they're pretty self-explanatory lol

Con: Overall, I think ATFOTS tries to do too many things. I love a good book with many plotlines (see: erha my beloved) but ATFOTS' structure felt borderline episodic rather than building together into a satisfying reveal/culmination.

Pro: I'll get into Kip's sexuality below but do love the concept of fanoa

Con: It felt like a lot of tidbits of "oh ACTUALLY this was happening all along in HOTE I just didn't mention it"—see the comment that started this all around humming Aurora—in a way that felt less like a delightful little revelation and more like VG retroactively trying to incorporate things she hadn't decided on till that moment. Also feel this way about Ludvic's fam reveal but I'll get into that below.

Pro/Con: While I think the writing structure was a little tighter than HOTE (I'm sorry, I love Kip and I love HOTE but there were like 200 pages of having the same conversation over again) (maybe not actually 200. possibly 20. still.), girlie REALLY needed a copy edit. Like. I will copy edit ur book Ms. Goddard for u (I am cheap) but please let me fix the errors.

III. Getting My Grubby Little Gay Hands All Over this Book

aka personal preference shit that is entirely my opinion without critique for the writing quality but nonetheless are part of my critique

I love HOTE and I love HOTE principally for three four main categories: The Household (and Them), civil service, being The One Who Left, and ASEXUALITY BABEY. There are other aspects I love, of course, but these are kind of the big non-negotiables for me and four that ATFOTS kinda...did dirty imo.

In terms of the Household, HOTE gave us these middle-aged dudes who are pretty much defined and fulfilled by their dedication to their job to the exclusion of most other things. Kip has family but it's not family that really understands him most of the time and it's family that is very far away (*this will come up again). The rest of them don't have family outside of the household. They are very sincerely found/forced thru work family in a way that feels both very natural and blessedly free of nuclearization. They love each other and understand each other** in a way that none of them really have access to outside of this group.

And then ATFOTS (and admittedly RPA) comes along and is like "Ludvic has a dad! Conju's sister and boytoy are alive! Rodin has a devoted penpal!" in a way that feels a BIT like pairing off everyone so that the main couple can be together. Which like. I love Kip/Fitzroy, don't get me wrong, but I love the household and their weirdly intimate and formal and seemingly smooth as clockwork but internally messy vibe. I was so looking forward to reading about the retirement house and how that unspools (or at least thinking a lot about it in the way of the blorbo in the microwave) before ATFOTS.

So much of the heart of HOTE is the idea of community and connection (or isolation) and ATFOTS mostly veers away from that both thru the pairing off and through the things like Kip's solo adventures. It also, in some ways, sort of undermines some of the characters' core traits, such as Ludvic's devotion. Ludvic being a stout, unflinching companion for HR because he believes in him and sees the true man behind the Serenity is imo very different from Ludvic being an unflagging companion because he views HR as his uncle. Idk about y'all but family duty and personal devotion from choice are two different things in my experience.

On their own, they aren't bad but they are disappointing when compared to the aspects of HOTE I loved and would have hoped to see expanded upon in the sequel.

Kip's experience in civil service is also really important to me (literally made me more patient and cheerful at work when I was actively envisioning setting a plague of frogs loose upon my supervisor's house so like. Significant Importance to Me.)! This will not be articulate (I've legit been starting and deleting this sentence for like 5 min) bc it's very near and dear to my heart but the ideas of a) choosing to take a harder path, that is outside your community/family's conception of "normal" because you believe it is good and worthy, b) trying to improve a shitty system because you believe it can be made to better serve the people, and c) learning from both systems—are! just! very important to me okay. And not something I see a lot in fiction, but especially not in my most beloved of monstrously large fantasy novels.

And then ATFOTS is just JK time for an epic fantasy romp! and that's cool but that's not why I loved the first book! that's not the right tone at all!!! if i wanted an epic fantasy romp I would pick up Iron Widow but I wanted the bureaucracy D: (shoutout to ao3 user alfgifu for giving me the bureaucracy and also sorry for all the nonsense comments)

This is also super closely tied to Being the One Who Left tbh because well. Me. But one of the core elements of HOTE—the part that actually first snagged me and pulled my attention in—is that Kip is the one who left his community behind for no good reason to chase a weird dream instead of settling down and following the normal path to success.

*eyeing my high school classmates who are all settled down with 2.5 kids and starting photography businesses on the side while living within 20 minutes of where they grew up* Huh I Wonder Why This is Relatable

At the heart of being the one who left is this tug between guilt and desire/love/duty/curiosity/whatever pull factor. In HOTE, Kip is pushed to stay home by his duty to his community, his love of his family, and his family's own pressure. He's pulled to stay in the service by his duty to the world/government, his love of his found family, and by the urge to do more, to make things better as much as he can. In both places, he's not fully understood and when he's in either location, he misses the other. The importance is the tug, the dual identity, the sense of always being partially understood and partially misunderstood in different ways depending on the ground you're standing on. I could...very literally, write essays on each of these last items but I am trying to wrap it up bc I should actually be coding rn whoops

ATFOTS blots this out by transforming his Solaara experience into, basically, Just A Job. A job he cares about and can be proud of, sure, but just the job. It really...kind of aggressively, ignores the relationships and life Kip has made there in favor of focusing solely on this glorious return to home while conveniently giving everyone else people to be with instead of the household. which I'm sure my mom would like but ANYWAY

and now, last but decidedly not least OR clearest *drum roll pls* ASEXUALITY BABEY

okay so I will caveat this by saying different rep serves different people, there are infinitely many ways to be asexual, etc etc that all being said ATFOTS' handling of Kip's sexuality just left me a little...dissatisfied? And tbh I struggle to articulate it because I feel like it probably comes down to "this isn't the rep I would like but I can see where it's meaningful to others."

Like I can justify it—a lifelong commitment as fanoa is described is different than a romantic or sexual relationship, it's entirely fair to have a character want that commitment without risking it by mixing in romance/etc., it's good to have a devoted and platonic relationship at the core where normally a (straight) romantic/sexual relationship would be

and yet. I caught myself making faces at the book half the time when dealing with their relationship. Some of it feels a little like trying to Do All The Rep in one go—Kip's tingly fuzzy feelings and (mostly) lack of romantic attraction, neutrality around sex and aversion to sex in this relationship—in a way that almost definitely describes actual humans out in the world but feels a little...off in a fictional character? My general wish for asexual characters is getting to be in devoted relationships where the allosexual partner(s) is willing to not have sex and still be committed but I caught myself being like "y'all just fuck already" in ATFOTS which is uhhhh not the norm

tbf my ideal Kip/Fitzroy retirement relationship is basically just them (and the household) all living together and everyone on the outside kind of being ???? is it a sex thing???? while they contentedly carve out their own life yet again but this time with more touch and laughter and song.

Actually having gotten to this point, I feel like my main sticking point with ATFOTS sexuality is that Sex Is A Big Thing in the book while never being super effectively resolved imo and also not actually being a big thing to the characters in HOTE. Like one of these dudes has been celibate for 1000 years or so and another one has had like 3 brief lovers across the same amount of time. I think there are some other things we could focus on here