I am going to make my reflection about the book Out of the Dark by David Weber. Now then I am going to quickly summarize the book. Essentially the book follows several characters spread over the world during an alien invasion. We humans though are not reacting to the alien’s superior fire power as they thought we would. Because of this they decide to wipe human species out. It should be noted that they managed to kill half of all humans before they reached this decision. So humanity is doomed with no hope of turning the tide of alien’s invasion. Then it happens. Deus ex machina.
Deus ex machina is when something extremely unexpected happens in a story that saves the cast from whatever literary corner they had been painted into. The way it is implemented in this book means that there is no chance of seeing it coming unless you have very specific and obscure knowledge about a certain subject. To avoid spoiling the book I won´t go any deeper than that.
Now to what I think of the literary device deus ex machina. I generally don’t like it when authors use it in their books but I think Out of the Dark was an okay book even though it had a deus ex machina ending. Now my belief is that generally a deus ex machina is a cheap way for an author to get his plot out of a difficult position. It is usually also inconsistent with books internal logic and challenges the suspension of disbelief. So why is it still used if it can disrupt the flow of the story so badly? Well maybe the author just one day decided that it was something he or she wanted to write. Perhaps it didn’t feel as a deus ex machina when the writer wrote it but when looked at from perspective of a new reader it might. This question seems to have quite a few possible answers so I think I will leave it at that.
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