Tear Jerker / Alien Chronicles

• The beginning of the first book pulls no punches with Ampris being taken from her mother. The callousness of the Viis slaver perfectly establishes his species' cruelty towards the abiru. So too does the sorrow Ampris' mother express over losing her daughter capture the horrors that the Aaroun and the rest of the abiru have suffered. At one point, Ampris' mother even expresses excitement about teaching her Aaroun culture and history - something that's been suppressed by the Viis and is in very real danger of dying out.
  • And to make matters worse, there's no reunion. Ampris simply never gets to meet her birth family.
• Elrabin's origins are similarly tragic. Stuck with a single working mother and younger, annoying brothers, he decides his best chance at any sort of success is to run away and follow his deadbeat father into a life of crime. His mother passes away at some point, and he never gets to learn what happened to her or his brothers. Even his father ends up in custody and sold to a labor camp, leaving Elrabin truly alone.
• Lady Zureal is perhaps the only Viis to show Ampris unconditional kindness. She's also eager to establish a bond with Israi, being genuinely mortified when it turns out she sent the Sri-Kaa an age-inappropriate gift by mistake. This makes it all the more tragic when Israi's pettiness-fueled prank results in Zureal having an alergic reaction to the itching powder involved, miscarrying the Kaa's eggs. The Kaa himself - who has fallen deeply in love with Zureal - is utterly devastated.
• As horrific as the ordeal surrounding it is, Ampris still loves her half-Viis children from her Medical Rape and Impregnate at the hands of the Mad Scientist Ehssk. This makes it all the more devastating when he takes her daughter away to be dissected mere hours after birth, darkly mirroring the experience Ampris had with her mother. The loss leaves her frantically desperate to hold onto Nashmarl and Foloth, and escape the lab so she can raise them free.
  • Which makes it all the more sobering when the third book features Nashmarl and Foloth as adolescents, raised by Ampris and her free band of abiru, only for the relationship between the three to have turned out deeply troubled. The two brothers' hybrid nature makes them both outcasts to both the abiru and the Viis, even as Nashmarl finds himself drawn to the former and Foloth to the latter.
  • One standout is when Nashmarl gets into an altercation with another member of the group, who accidentally falls off a cliff to her death in the process. Nashmarl is horrified by the incident, but Ampris is so disappointed in him that she tells him that if the group's leaders decide that he murdered the woman on purpose, then she would be the one to carry out his execution. Fortunately, it doesn't come to that.
  • Even so, by the end of the trilogy the family's relationship has made only limited progress in healing. As Ampris lies on her deathbed, it's clear that Nashmarl and Foloth both love their mother and are loved by her in return, but the two brothers have a lot of growing to do and will have to face it without their mother in their lives. Foloth even voices a desire to be named Kaa of the new abiru society and institute Viis-style rule, the very thing the abiru sought to escape in the first place. Ampris' last words are directed at him, imploring him not to embrace his Viis side.
• The fates of the various test subjects at Vess Vaas range from bittersweet to outright depressing.
  • Lua the Myal, having been subject to the same heinous ordeal as Ampris more than a dozen times, has long since lost her mind and is clearly suffering physically. The Viis scientists deem her no longer useful to the experiments, and have her disposed of as casually as they would discard a broken piece of lab equipment.
  • Shevin is a Kelth noted as being little more than a lit - the Kelth term for a child - with the implication she may only be a teenager. She's still subject to the same horrors as the other subjects, if not worse with the Kelth lab assistant Niruo leering over her, and is similarly killed off before Ampris can hatch an escape plan.
  • Robuhl is an older Myal, formerly a scholar and archivist like so many other Myal. While he lives long enough to escape, his previously keen mental state declines over the timeskip between the second and third books, leaving him with a condition resembling severe dementia and requiring constant care.
  • Paket is one of the Kelths who accompany Ampris on her escape, and despite his age quickly becomes one of the more resourceful members in her free band of abiru. Early in the third book, he doesn't hesitate to assist Elrabin in rescuing Ampris after a farm raid goes wrong, but he ends up getting killed during the rescue attempt.
• While it's very much a bittersweet conclusion to the series, Ampris' death is still heartbreaking. After all she's been through - the pain, the sorrow, and the humiliation - she doesn't get to help her family and friends start their new life in The Promised Land. The Eye of Clarity at least gives her one last vision to show that her people will prosper, and it's implied she will continue to watch over them in death.
  Exhausted, she leaned her head back, gazing one last time at Elrabin, her oldest and truest friend. Her eyes closed, and she entered peace.
  Elrabin stared at her, lying there as though she had simply fallen asleep, and knew she was gone. He touched her hand and her face, and wept.
  Behind him, one by one, the abiru people knelt also, grieving together in the sunlight of this world she had given them all.
  At dawn, Elrabin carried Ampris' body to the top of a high, silent mountain rising above the landing site. Allowing no one to help him, the Eye of Clarity swinging on its cord around his throat, he buried her in a quiet place where she could always watch over her people.

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