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Fictional characters can die.

I think that it doesn't matter to the character whether the book itself is destroyed: that would be the death of the book.

I'll use "Othello" as an example. Every time "Othello" is performed (or read), Othello, Desdemona (and many supporting characters) die. When the play is restarted, they are alive again, but that doesn't reduce the significance of their death.

Just because they are fictional, doesn't mean they can't die. The fact that a character exists does not negate the fact that s/he dies.

Death is emotional, significant symbolically and generally an important plot point. Why shouldn't we fixate on whether or not Thassa died? It changes our reading of the ending, the meaning of the ending, and the meaning of several parts of the book, particularly Tonia Schiff's.

On a slightly different tangent, perhaps the reason that the emotional connections to this particular character's death could be taken as amusing is because it appears that Powers doesn't particularly want his readers to emotionally connect to his characters. Though, I have to ask, what's the point of fiction if there is no emotional connection? Who wants to read and re-read and fall in love with a novel which has no desire to engender an emotional connection in its readers?