Reading roundup: more Prince Jerk, and The Goblin Emperor
53. Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns (Broken Empire #2) -- Hmm. I still enjoyed it, but, unexpectedly, I found it less fun than the first one. Still a hell of a ride, and impressive in its way, and I have hopes for #3, because I think a lot of the things that made this one less my thing that the first book have resolved themselves by the end. But, yeah, the middle section kind of dragged for me, and the structure worked less well, and older Jorg's voice wasn't quite as much fun, even though I respect the character development. It definitely picked up for me at the very end, though (maybe about the time Miana joined the narrative in earnest), and I've already started on #3.
Before I get to spoilers, a quick note on the violence level in this book, since I know a few of you were potentially intrigued. I think the violence was actually down a notch in this one, but there is more zombie-horror, and there is a fairly extended passage of animal cruelty in flashback that I had a hard time getting through. It's a traumatic event for the characters involved, too, so it's definitely treated seriously. But, if you're planning on reading and are especially sensitive to things like that, you may want to know about it.
Spoilers from here!
The structure, of splitting the narrative into "Wedding Day" (the present) and "Four years earlier" sections, seems to be there mostly to maintain the suspense on thing Jorg has prepared and stashed outside of his mind, in the little box. It's a clever trick, but has too much the feel of one, and I think it sapped the energy from the middle parts of the narrative for me in both timelines -- in the case of "Four years earlier", it was already pretty clear who was going to survive from the flash-forwards, and the "Wedding Day" plot kept getting interrupted and had its momentum sapped because of that. So, yeah, that didn't really work for me, and it wasn't until we got to the last sections of the present day that things started getting interesting to me. But also, just, having Jorg not know/remember what he was doing in the Wedding Day chapters, remembering just the right thing in the nick of time felt too much like a cheat to me. I mean, it is supposed to be a cheat -- he is cheating Sagaeous in this way, using the box -- but it's also a cheat on the reader, and I didn't like that very much.
Speaking of structure, the Prince of Arrow shell game was pretty neat. It is one of those neat reveals where there seem to be little inconsistencies/awkward bits until the penny drops, and then everything becomes clear, and it's pretty neatly done (I went back a bit and looked). And, of course, the final swap, with Jorg becoming the (presumably prophesied) Prince of Arrow by getting Egan to adopt him as a brother. Also, Jorg bringing a gun to a sword fight (and then bluffing that he was a left-handed fighter to explain why he has his sword strapped on the left all of a sudden), was extremely in character -- an upleveled version of using crossbows against Sir Galen and at the melee. I did wonder how likely it was that a 1000-year-old gun would only jam once out of seven times, but I suppose that's where the stasis chamber comes in? Like, the gun was preserved for that reason? This wasn't clear in the book, but I assume that's what we're meant to surmise. Also, everything around the duel was pretty cool, and I especially liked these lines: "The best damn sword arm in history is what I've got up my sleeve." and "You know why I've practices with the sword every day since we last met? [...] So you would believe that I'd stand against you in a a fair fight.'
Another problem for me personally, not really having to do with the intercuts, was the whole zombie thing in the middle. I find zombies boring, and had not signed up for a horror book, so all the dead people and ghosts and necromancers really didn't do much for me. Although I did enjoy the character aspects of Jorg animating Brother Row to fish out the box, and Makin's revulsion at this. "I felt the steel at my neck. I looked around, up along the blade. 'Don't ever do that to me,' Makin said. 'Swear it.' 'I so swear,' I said. I needed no convincing." and "We left him in the pool. I told Makin I had set him free. But I didn't." Conversely, I was very happy to see that the necromancy plot, at least as far as Jorg's ability is concerned, seems to be over, the necromancy and the fire fragment having burned each other out. And I'll admit that having the primary zombies be bog bodies is an inspired touch -- those things are super-creepy even when they're not moving around.
I was also thinking, at some point two thirds through the book, that Jorg who seems to have grown something of a conscience was less interesting to me than the wild Jorg of the first book, but having finished, I don't think that's really true. It's more that the Jorg of the middle sections, who has some memories, some essence hidden away in the box, is less interesting to me, but Jorg himself comes to the same conclusion, and this seems to be resolved at the end of the book, so. (The terrible crime, which, committed inadvertently after he goes to the trouble to have had the chance and purposefully step back, drives Jorg mad felt fairly fitting, given the way the whole thing started with William's death.) And I was happy to see him haunted by Gelleth, now that he's matured sufficiently to truly grasp what he did there beyond "won". (Also, we are getting continued revelations -- even more in book 3, which I've already gotten to -- that some of Jorg's most violent acts actually happen for a reason rather than random violence -- that Inch, the servant he killed with a poker, was there during the thing with Justice (and in book 3, that there was more to it than just that, as well as to Jorg's history with Bishop Murillo. This makes a lot of sense, actually, and I don't think it diminishes or excuses Jorg's violent acts, so much as puts them in context.)
Overall, I actually really liked the way Jorg's development is shown. Having matured, he has not really become much less erratic -- it's that he's added random acts of what-he-thinks-is-kindness to the random acts of violence -- sometimes combined within the same act, as when letting out the hungry circus lion in the Nuban's memory. His act of grim mercy (sweetened with a Builder toy) with Marten's daughter also seemed very in character for him. As does the fact that he keeps insisting he does these things not out of any kind of mercy or goodness, but just because he randomly feels like it (as with the women he saves from witch-burning).
I continue to love Jorg's opposition to everything ("Because fuck him" is still as good a motto as ever). Especially his opposition to fear, which involves throwing himself at whatever it is he's afraid of. Like eating live spiders for a week ("How am I with spiders, Row?" "Weird."), because he's arachnophobic. Or, "I made an enemy of the ache in my head and started to fight." Or climbing mountains because "The mountains told me I couldn't." (I do wonder for this reason if he would've ever actually been able to accept Orrin as emperor, even though he realized Orrin was the better man. I kinda doubt it, frankly. And not while Orrin had Katherine, I'm pretty sure.)
Katherine is... someone I like, and having her own words in the diary pages helps a lot there, but I find it harder to like her because Jorg/the narrative talk her up so much, and I find her articulate and relatable but not really justifying Jorg's level of obsession. Which, love doesn't need to be justified, and Jorg is in love, and even she feels some dark attraction for him. But it's like when your friend has a huge crush and won't shut up about how glorious the object of their affection is, and from what you can see, there just isn't enough there to justify all the attention, so it gets boring to listen to before too long. It does seem like she's heading off in an interesting direction, though, so I'm willing to be convinced of her awesomeness by book 3.
The character I do love, though, is Miana. She stole pretty much every scene she was in for me, from the first "I can see why your miniature was in profile" to the flashback scenes where she's an eight-year-old lying that the doll she's holding is not hers, to everything between her and Jorg at the end of the book. I love that she is clever and ruthless, and, at 12, takes out a swath of Arrow's army, but not before asking Jorg whether Lord Jost, who had accompanied her, is still fighting, so that she knows she is sacrificing him as well as Jorg's troops. I love their banter over the dowry ('"My dowry," she said. "I hoped for something bigger." [...] "Isn't that my line?"' -- and Miana totally won that round). I love that Jorg -- even though he doesn't love her -- is full of admiration for her ("Keep her here, Rodrick. Unless she comes up with a plan to destroy the remainder of the enemy. In which case you're to let her do it.") Basically, Miana for empress! (She's probably not realistic for a 12-year-old, but Jorg wasn't a realistic 13-year-old either, and I don't care, she is too awesome for reality to spoil it.)
I still like Makin a lot, and I continue to get Jorg/Makin slashy vibes, from bits like: "Sir Makin is almost the handsome knight of legend, dark locks curling, tall, a swordsman's build, darkest eyes." (Also, when Jorg fights the Prince of Arrow: "'He yields' Makin at the far end of the same tunnel. 'He yields.' 'Like hell I do.'") And I love that Jorg gives him permission to try to talk him out of overly extreme things: "Since Coddin is at home, and the Nuban isn't with us [...] I'm saying, if I set on a path that's... maybe a little too harsh. Just let me know. All right?" and then reacts predictably when Makin does: "'That was probably too harsh,' he said. 'You did ask me to point these things out.' 'Fuck off,' I said." And this converation: "I was consumed by me, by what I wanted. Nothing else mattered. Not my life, not anyone's life. All of it was a price worth paying." [...] "That's a place everyone visits on their way from child to man. You just went native." [...] "Gelleth I am sorry for... My father would think me weak. But if it were now -- I would find another way." "There was no other way. [...] Even the way you took was impossible." (And on that note, I really liked this, though it has nothing to do with Makin: "Since the night of storm and thorns I'd been haunted by what others had done to me. Gelleth taught me I could also be haunted by what I'd done to others.") And: "This is family business and I'll do it my way." "That tends to mean everyone dies."
On the other hand, the closeness with Coddin feels a bit more forced to me, though I liked some of their dialogue. ("I've no sons, but if I did I wouldn't want them to be like you. You're a vicious bastard at the best of times. [...] I love thee for no good reason [...] but I do love thee well.")
Some of the other people around Jorg are starting to become proper characters, too. I didn't quite feel it for Sim, and Rike is still mostly the devil on Jorg's shoulder, but Red Kent with his surprising piety and occasional blushing and feeling all honored to be casually knighted by Jorg grew on me. And I developed some posthumous Gog feels after the scene which we get through Katherine's diary: '"I want to be big and strong. [...] to make Jorg happy. And I want to be happy, to stop Gorgot being sad." [...] "And what do you want for you?" [Katherine] asked him. [...] "I want to save them," he said. "Like they saved me."' And I liked his uncle Robert, his mother's twin ("In some twins the gifts are not shared out evenly. She got the brains and the looks. I got... a knack with horses.")
Worldbuilding is continuing to come along. I continue to prefer the parts where you can see the stuff leftover from the Builders -- the "No Overnight Parking" plaque (I guess my parking garage impressions of Tall Castle were right), Jorg figuring out the Builder machine and ?satellite? ring ("Point me at the single most useful and portable piece of Builder-magic in this chamber."). The more magical stuff I'm more eh on in this case, and I don't find it easy to buy the explanation that Builders unlocked magic by nudging the laws of physics. But OK, I can roll with that. Also, this was awesome: "When a game cannot be won, change the game. I read that in the book of Kirk." and "the nonsense doggerel 'Merican Pie'" and a couple of words from it, like "Chevylevy was dry". I also have been noticing the way geographical names are twisted but preserves -- the Aups (which Hannibal passed over with his elephants), the river Rhyme, etc.
The writing is still great:
"Burning to death has always been a worry of mine. Call it a personal foible. Some people are scared of spiders. I'm scared of immolation. Also spiders."
"Rike can't make an omelette without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens and wearing their entrails as a necklace."
"Young Sim, older than me of course but still with little use for a razor if you discounted the cutting of throats."
"I don't have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. I got me a devil on both. But [Rike] you're like the bad one."
"Climbing, it turned out, was as new to the people of the Highlands as it was to me. They knew all about getting up to places where they needed to be. [...] But about getting to places they didn't need to go... well who has time for that."
"A fool may scrawl on a slate and if no one has the wit to wipe it clean for a thousand years, the scrawl becomes the wisdom of ages."
"as boys do when they're hurt -- and at fourteen I discvered I was still a boy if the hurt came fierce enough -- I thought of my mother."
"I took his head with one clean blow. I'm not one to boast but it's not easy to decapitate a man in one swing. [...] When you kick somebody in the head as you do from time to time, they tend to be actively trying to move themselves out of the way and the contact is lessened. A severed head is a dead weight, even if it's watching you. || And that exhausts my insights into the kicking of severed heads. Admittedly it's more than most people have to offer on the subject but there were Mayans who knew a lot more than I do. That of course is a whole different ball game." XP
And the whole passage with Jorg offering to everyone to show off his juggling even though he doesn't juggle was hilarious. As was Jorg not liking the food on the Horse Coast (~Spain): "All your food tastes like shit that somebody set fire to."
And occasionally it's oddly lyrical, like:
"'I thought my watch stopped.' But it wasn't the watch."
"She died in the winter of a lost year, the daughter of a wealthy man who would have given all his wealth, and more, to buy her into spring."
"The dead rise like a tide. They outnumber the living, and each battle makes more corpses, not more men."
So, in general, still really enjoying this series (and am now about a quarter into the last book, which is continuing to be fun).
54. Katherine Addison (aka Sarah Monette), The Goblin Emperor -- I heard a lot of good things about this book, but I'm not sure I would have picked it up if Monette had not already built up my trust with Melusine and Iskyrne, because it sounded like it could be tedious. It's a slow book, more inwardly focused than anything, but tedious it was definitely not, at least to me. It's got interesting, unusual (though somewhat challenging) worldbuilding, and the protagonist, who has a lot of the focus of the book, is not the sort of character I normally gravitate towards, but his kindness, humility, and determination to keep being a decent person in the face of sudden power and circumstances where conflict between duty and doing the right thing was frequent and conflict between either or both of those and what he would have truly liked to do was pretty much universal was quite impressive, and so he really earned my sympathy and respect. Spoilers from here
I wish we got more of the other characters (I wholly subscribe to egelantier suggestion of a book dealing with the same events but from the household's point of view), but even though we only got them through Maia's POV and there were a lot of secondaries, I grew to love a whole lot of them. Csevet, courier-turned-emperor's secretary, was the first character I really loved, though it took me a while to realize who he was reminding me of (Mairsil from the Magnum Opus), which gave me some built-in fondness for him from the start. He did not disappoint, with his impressive organizational abilities, and walking the fine line between "managing" his emperor and, originally, dutiful deference which eventually evolves into a teasing fondness. I also really liked Cala the ~wizard guard, and was almost as frustrated by the stagnated relationship between him and Maia for most of the book as both of them were; I was very happy they decided that though it wasn't the sort of friendship that non-emperors are allowed to have, they could be their own kinds of friends after all. The other nohecharis, Beshelar, took a lot longer to grow on me, but by the time he was apologizing for bleeding on Maia's lap after thwarting the assassination attempt, I was completely sold on him as well. I also really liked Kiru, who replaces the traitorous wizard guard, and is basically the lone grown-up in Maia's immediate bunch and uses her powers of being unfazed by absolutely anything for the greater good.
In the court, I immediately liked Idra, Maia's nephew and heir (though I do think he gets some overly-grown-up moments towards the end), and his little sisters were really cute. Csethiro, Maia's fiance, started out blandly enough, but became one of my favorite characters -- at the moment, I'm not sure if I like her or Csevet best -- I love her fierceness and her complete unwillingness to even pretend to be a proper elvish maiden, the way she tells Maia he shouldn't be terrified of her (though one can't blame him for being, a little), the way she feels about the widowed empress, the way she writes in the warrior's alphabet which is out of favor in the current court, and gives Maia the ancestral family sword for his birthday, and comes by to see for herself that he is unharmed after the assassination attempt and then promptly leaves, because she realizes that the last thing Maia needs is another person to deal with, and how she finally teaches him to dance. One of my greatest regrets about the fact that Monette has said there will not be a sequel is that we won't get to see Maia and Csethiro get to know each other better, and I won't get to spend more time with her.
The first proper conversation between them was pretty great:
"Serenity, Min Vechin is using you."
"Of course she is," Maia agreed.
Dach'osmin Ceredin's eyebrows shot upward, and Maia was unable to keep his bitterness pent decently behind his teeth. "How stupid you must believe us to be, to think we are unable to discern that for ourself. We thank you."
She looked as if she'd just been bitten by a cushion.
[...]
"Since we have disgraced ourself, we may as well ask: if yu know she is using you, Serenity, why do you accept it?" She did not sound judgemental now, merely curious.
But Maia had no answer -- at least, none that he could articulate. He said lamely, "She is very beautiful."
"And she has the sense not to frighten you." Dach'osmin Ceredin said, and Maia took a step back, wanting to protest her deduction, but unable to deny its truth.
"We should take lessons from her, we see," Dach'osmin Ceredin said, more than a little sourly. [...] Dach'osmin Ceredn swept another curtsy -- not as graceful as some of the other cour ladies, but as precise and sharp as a swordsmaster's salute -- and said, "Serenity, we do not wish you to be frightened of us." And perhaps to prove the truth of her words, she turned and went back to her friends.
I also liked Arbelan, the emperor-Maia's-father first barren wife, who builds a rapport with Maia based on mutual experience of Maia's father's cruelty, and I thought her relationship with Maia, where her being set aside and relegated reminds him of his mother, and she shares her secret of a miscarriage with him, was really nicely done. I liked Vedero, Maia's half-sister who would rather study astronomy than get married, and her friends (including "friends" she doesn't like but has the bond of wanting an education with), and I liked Eiru Berenar, whom Maia taps for Lord Chancellor and who thrives on the resulting brambles, and Lord Pashavar with his sharp tongue and unexpected gestures of trust and his true friendship. Oh and Thara Celehar, the Witness for the Dead, was also really well drawn, I thought, a broken man at the start who nevertheless has his dignity and calling. I liked even the characters who show up in only a couple of scenes, Deshelar who draws caricatures of his fellow ministers, and Prince Orchenis the grimly loyal, and the Avar's illegitimate daughter who gives Maia the gift of family gossip (her sister the sea captain sounds pretty cool, too), and the Archprelate, who watches Maia carefully and offers him the gift of a place to meditate and the reassurance that it is OK to be religious for an emperor. There's a real gift here for introducing in just a few lines characters I would love to get to know a lot more; that was one of the things I really liked in Melusine, and it is undiminished here, in the different universe.
I actually thought at some point that it was getting a little improbably that nearly all the "good guys" were won over by Maia, but, really, just as I found it hard not to feel both respect and sympathy for him, I think the same is true of all the decent people he encounters. He is trying so hard, and he is aware of all his tiniest impulses towards cruelty or pettiness (really aware, with the sensitization of someone who had to live with an abusive authority figure and suffer from the rule of another) and resists them so earnestly, without expecting any kind of recognition for it, simply because he is a kind person by nature and abhors being the source of pain or discomfort for others, even when no-one would fault him for it. His insistence of attending the funerals of the non-royals killed in the airship wreck which made him emperor, his refusal to ever forget about those victims, which both the court and the revolutionaries seem happy enough to discount, his care for the dying noblewoman who had been kind to him at his mother's funeral, his attendance at his treacherous nohecharis's ritual suicide because he had asked, his determination to see the saboteurs tried and to speak with them himself, his insitence on showing clemency to those he can, like Idra's mother and the former Lord Chancellor, his continued worry about his servants -- he is a genuinely good person without being improbably flawless -- he is given to the occasional flares of temper, and he tries hard to keep rein on that snappish inner voice which he originally attributes to Setheris. I also really loved how his love for his mother, who died when he was eight, pervades everything -- how he is willing to forgive pretty much anything directed at him, but won't stay silent when it comes to injustices done to Chenelo: one of the big moments for me was when he asks Avar, his grandfather and Chenelo's father, why he never answered her letters, why he didn't try to help, because that is what he needs to come to terms with.
Speaking of Setheris, he was another character I really, really liked. Not as a person -- he is rather a terrible person, and Maia is kinder to him than he deserves in giving him something to do and never wanting to see him again -- but as a character, because I like the way his wife knows him as a different man (and is horrified when she learns that he beat Maia), and he is afraid to see her opinion suffer, but he seems not the least bit repentant of his treatment of Maia, and is all too happy to try to capitalize on his influence over Maia, which is the influence of abuse and fear. But having been unfairly accused of treason and exiled into poverty without any due process, away from his wife and the courty, with a child he cares nothing for, it's not hard to see why he would take to drink and have no particular fondness for Maia. And I especially liked how Maia acts with him -- that he has to keep reminding himself that Setheris no longer has control over him, that he has nothing to fear, but still has to stop himself from cringing; that he hastens to tell people the thing that left the scar was an accident and that Setheris was horrified himself; and especially this line, from early on in the book: "'He has done no wrong.' The memories of a thousand separate cruelties mocked him, but o one save Maia himself had ever counted those as wrongs, and it was unust to have them declared wrongs now, merely because he could." -- this was the point where I really started liking Maia, because it takes a special kind of person to separate justice from personal injury while still being so affected by said injury, and I really admire that in a character. Also, this line was great: "Despairingly he thought, I shall never know anyone as well as I know Setheris".
So, yeah, the characters are really great, from Maia on down. The plot was mainly character development, and I was quite happy with that. Maia's delight at the clockwork bridge, Maia's bewilderment at the concept of celebrating his birthday (with presents! including from people who genuinely want to make him happy), Maia getting to know the various people at court and his grandfather, Maia's awkward but full of decency crush on the opera singer, Maia's behaviour during the kidnapping and forced abdication attempt (where he cares much more about the effect on the children of the chief conspirator than about the political implications) and in the aftermath of the assassination attempt -- I mean, stuff happened, to be sure, but the point of the stuff happening was seeing how Maia reacted or bore up under it and learned from it, and how other people did. I'm not surprised some people apparently complain not enough happened in the book, but it was enough for me, because I tend to prefer character-driven stories to plot-driven ones anyway. The one bit of plot that genuinely surprised me was the twist that, while Tethimar had intended the Wisdom of Choharo flight to be a trial run with a fake incendiary device, so that the assassination would take place after Tethimar's wedding to Vedero, Shulivar premeditatedly betrayed him and killed the emperor right then, propelling Maia onto the throne. "Miscommunication" didn't make a lot of sense as an explanation, and Shulivar with his weidly calm, prophetic incadescence was both interesting and creepy (and I really liked that the three revolutionaries/saboteurs Maia speaks to all have different reactions, one grovelling, one viewing it as a glorious blow for freedom, and Shulivar playing a longer-term and subtler game for incremental but real improvements.
The worldbuilding was something I found a bit of a barrier -- there's a list of characters in the back and a note on names, but the spelling of the names is quite impenetrable, so even looking up stuff is hard -- but not enough of one to interfere with my enjoyment, as you can just infer stuff from context or not worry about it too much, and in the last 10 pages or so, the names finally started making an intuitive sort of sense. But there is some really interesting cultural stuff here. The one that I found most interesting was a linguistic quirk -- the full use of second person informal and formal (thou and you; which led to informal language that reminded me a lot of Kay Brightmore in Melusine, actually, but that is neither here nor there), and also first person formal and informal (represented by "we" and "I"). It was a convention that proved remarkably easy to get used to -- I found myself occasionally thinking in first person formal while reading the book -- and the shifts to first person and second person familiar worked really well for me for relationship and situation transition markers -- totally worth the linguistic gimmick. The masculine names ending in -a and -it/-et and feminine names ending in -o tripped me up for a long time, because -a is a feminine ending in Russian/Italian and -it/-et in Hebrew, and -o is a masculine ending in Italian, and it was all backwards... There are also a lot of neat elvish and goblin words, which all seem to make sense although I confess I mostly skimmed them, and some linguistic geekery about obsolete words still being used in other cultures. There are non-linguistic cultural trappings, too, gemstone rings and long hair in braids for everyone, and the significance of colors in clothing, and samovars, and obsession with horses, and signs of cultural fashions changing over time, like bows vs curtsies and religion going in and out of style, and so on. And also, it's neat to see another industrial age fantasy, with airships and clockmakers and mentioned factories and other non-medieval things. Oh, and one bit I really loved was how the pale-skinned elves kept blushing all over the place -- you generally don't get that with elves, but it makes perfect sense that a nation that fair-skinned would be very prone to coloring. On a similar note, the expressive ears, dipping and flattening and drooping and so on, is not exactly new in fantasy, but was very well integrated into the emotional coloring here, I thought.
At some point, probably when the revolutionaries came along, I started really wanting to see a crossover with Dragaera, because two very regimented, but very differently regimented ~elven societies, one with complete gender equality and the other with pretty much total subjugation of women. I would be very curious to know what Shulivar and Cawti and her bunch would have to say to each other (the woman, I feel like, would be more at home with the Red Lotus philosophy, since that's fresh in my mind). And Maia could probably use a sympathetic listener in Zerika.
Some quotes:
"the pounding headache came from tension, from the constant, half-crippled feeling of having to make decisions without sufficient inforation with an always incomplete understanding of the situations, the motivations, the possible reprecussions."
"'He [Setheris] had no right to say such a thing to you,' Idra said, with the same indignation with which he had championed his sisters' right to be loved by their grandfather."
"Even with the progress he'd made, he still understood half or less of the Corazhas' debates, and asking questions was only getting harder -- he felt as if he were accusing Berenar with his ignorance."
"Veklevezhek [...] it is a goblin word, and it means to decide what to do about a prisoner by staking him below the tide-line while you argue.[...] We know that the Corazhas frequently practices veklevezhek, for if they cannot agree whether to hear a matter -- the matter goes unheard."
Mais to Csevet: "It has never once occurred to us to doubt your loyalty. Nor do we do so now. [...] Were you part of Lord Chavar's plot, it would have been much better executed."
Csehiro, on empress Csoru: "On our first introduction -- for as we are the same age as Csoru, all but a handful of months, and named after her dead mother, so it was considered our fate to be her beloved friend -- we lasted slightly less than ten minutes before we hit her. Now, of course, that we are an adult, we can hold out for nearly an hour."
Maia, being summoned to Osmerrem Danivaran's deathbed: "There was a horrible, jolting moment when first he couldn't remember who Osmerrem Danivaran was or why he cared about her death and then *did* remember and was hit with grief like a stone to the chest."
"Lord Berenar says Osmer Orimar [in charge of couriers] was concealing dishonesty of some considerable scope from Chavar."
"Gracious," said Csevet. "We would not have thought he had the intelligence."
"It does not seem to have been very difficult."
"Ah," said Csevet.
Idra on his mother: "Mother would not be [...] what she is if she had ever had something given her that was a burden equal to her strength." (this also made me think of Cersei)
I was very glad to see that this book was nominated for Yuletide, because where it leaves off really does cry out for fic. Hopefully YT will produce some -- I'm looking forward to reading it already!
P.S. ikel89, look who's a fan :)
P.P.S. I'm using this icon because I don't have a more generic "elves" or "crazy bloodthirsty maniacs" icon, but that reminds me that Hawk comes out in 24 hours!
Before I get to spoilers, a quick note on the violence level in this book, since I know a few of you were potentially intrigued. I think the violence was actually down a notch in this one, but there is more zombie-horror, and there is a fairly extended passage of animal cruelty in flashback that I had a hard time getting through. It's a traumatic event for the characters involved, too, so it's definitely treated seriously. But, if you're planning on reading and are especially sensitive to things like that, you may want to know about it.
Spoilers from here!
The structure, of splitting the narrative into "Wedding Day" (the present) and "Four years earlier" sections, seems to be there mostly to maintain the suspense on thing Jorg has prepared and stashed outside of his mind, in the little box. It's a clever trick, but has too much the feel of one, and I think it sapped the energy from the middle parts of the narrative for me in both timelines -- in the case of "Four years earlier", it was already pretty clear who was going to survive from the flash-forwards, and the "Wedding Day" plot kept getting interrupted and had its momentum sapped because of that. So, yeah, that didn't really work for me, and it wasn't until we got to the last sections of the present day that things started getting interesting to me. But also, just, having Jorg not know/remember what he was doing in the Wedding Day chapters, remembering just the right thing in the nick of time felt too much like a cheat to me. I mean, it is supposed to be a cheat -- he is cheating Sagaeous in this way, using the box -- but it's also a cheat on the reader, and I didn't like that very much.
Speaking of structure, the Prince of Arrow shell game was pretty neat. It is one of those neat reveals where there seem to be little inconsistencies/awkward bits until the penny drops, and then everything becomes clear, and it's pretty neatly done (I went back a bit and looked). And, of course, the final swap, with Jorg becoming the (presumably prophesied) Prince of Arrow by getting Egan to adopt him as a brother. Also, Jorg bringing a gun to a sword fight (and then bluffing that he was a left-handed fighter to explain why he has his sword strapped on the left all of a sudden), was extremely in character -- an upleveled version of using crossbows against Sir Galen and at the melee. I did wonder how likely it was that a 1000-year-old gun would only jam once out of seven times, but I suppose that's where the stasis chamber comes in? Like, the gun was preserved for that reason? This wasn't clear in the book, but I assume that's what we're meant to surmise. Also, everything around the duel was pretty cool, and I especially liked these lines: "The best damn sword arm in history is what I've got up my sleeve." and "You know why I've practices with the sword every day since we last met? [...] So you would believe that I'd stand against you in a a fair fight.'
Another problem for me personally, not really having to do with the intercuts, was the whole zombie thing in the middle. I find zombies boring, and had not signed up for a horror book, so all the dead people and ghosts and necromancers really didn't do much for me. Although I did enjoy the character aspects of Jorg animating Brother Row to fish out the box, and Makin's revulsion at this. "I felt the steel at my neck. I looked around, up along the blade. 'Don't ever do that to me,' Makin said. 'Swear it.' 'I so swear,' I said. I needed no convincing." and "We left him in the pool. I told Makin I had set him free. But I didn't." Conversely, I was very happy to see that the necromancy plot, at least as far as Jorg's ability is concerned, seems to be over, the necromancy and the fire fragment having burned each other out. And I'll admit that having the primary zombies be bog bodies is an inspired touch -- those things are super-creepy even when they're not moving around.
I was also thinking, at some point two thirds through the book, that Jorg who seems to have grown something of a conscience was less interesting to me than the wild Jorg of the first book, but having finished, I don't think that's really true. It's more that the Jorg of the middle sections, who has some memories, some essence hidden away in the box, is less interesting to me, but Jorg himself comes to the same conclusion, and this seems to be resolved at the end of the book, so. (The terrible crime, which, committed inadvertently after he goes to the trouble to have had the chance and purposefully step back, drives Jorg mad felt fairly fitting, given the way the whole thing started with William's death.) And I was happy to see him haunted by Gelleth, now that he's matured sufficiently to truly grasp what he did there beyond "won". (Also, we are getting continued revelations -- even more in book 3, which I've already gotten to -- that some of Jorg's most violent acts actually happen for a reason rather than random violence -- that Inch, the servant he killed with a poker, was there during the thing with Justice (and in book 3, that there was more to it than just that, as well as to Jorg's history with Bishop Murillo. This makes a lot of sense, actually, and I don't think it diminishes or excuses Jorg's violent acts, so much as puts them in context.)
Overall, I actually really liked the way Jorg's development is shown. Having matured, he has not really become much less erratic -- it's that he's added random acts of what-he-thinks-is-kindness to the random acts of violence -- sometimes combined within the same act, as when letting out the hungry circus lion in the Nuban's memory. His act of grim mercy (sweetened with a Builder toy) with Marten's daughter also seemed very in character for him. As does the fact that he keeps insisting he does these things not out of any kind of mercy or goodness, but just because he randomly feels like it (as with the women he saves from witch-burning).
I continue to love Jorg's opposition to everything ("Because fuck him" is still as good a motto as ever). Especially his opposition to fear, which involves throwing himself at whatever it is he's afraid of. Like eating live spiders for a week ("How am I with spiders, Row?" "Weird."), because he's arachnophobic. Or, "I made an enemy of the ache in my head and started to fight." Or climbing mountains because "The mountains told me I couldn't." (I do wonder for this reason if he would've ever actually been able to accept Orrin as emperor, even though he realized Orrin was the better man. I kinda doubt it, frankly. And not while Orrin had Katherine, I'm pretty sure.)
Katherine is... someone I like, and having her own words in the diary pages helps a lot there, but I find it harder to like her because Jorg/the narrative talk her up so much, and I find her articulate and relatable but not really justifying Jorg's level of obsession. Which, love doesn't need to be justified, and Jorg is in love, and even she feels some dark attraction for him. But it's like when your friend has a huge crush and won't shut up about how glorious the object of their affection is, and from what you can see, there just isn't enough there to justify all the attention, so it gets boring to listen to before too long. It does seem like she's heading off in an interesting direction, though, so I'm willing to be convinced of her awesomeness by book 3.
The character I do love, though, is Miana. She stole pretty much every scene she was in for me, from the first "I can see why your miniature was in profile" to the flashback scenes where she's an eight-year-old lying that the doll she's holding is not hers, to everything between her and Jorg at the end of the book. I love that she is clever and ruthless, and, at 12, takes out a swath of Arrow's army, but not before asking Jorg whether Lord Jost, who had accompanied her, is still fighting, so that she knows she is sacrificing him as well as Jorg's troops. I love their banter over the dowry ('"My dowry," she said. "I hoped for something bigger." [...] "Isn't that my line?"' -- and Miana totally won that round). I love that Jorg -- even though he doesn't love her -- is full of admiration for her ("Keep her here, Rodrick. Unless she comes up with a plan to destroy the remainder of the enemy. In which case you're to let her do it.") Basically, Miana for empress! (She's probably not realistic for a 12-year-old, but Jorg wasn't a realistic 13-year-old either, and I don't care, she is too awesome for reality to spoil it.)
I still like Makin a lot, and I continue to get Jorg/Makin slashy vibes, from bits like: "Sir Makin is almost the handsome knight of legend, dark locks curling, tall, a swordsman's build, darkest eyes." (Also, when Jorg fights the Prince of Arrow: "'He yields' Makin at the far end of the same tunnel. 'He yields.' 'Like hell I do.'") And I love that Jorg gives him permission to try to talk him out of overly extreme things: "Since Coddin is at home, and the Nuban isn't with us [...] I'm saying, if I set on a path that's... maybe a little too harsh. Just let me know. All right?" and then reacts predictably when Makin does: "'That was probably too harsh,' he said. 'You did ask me to point these things out.' 'Fuck off,' I said." And this converation: "I was consumed by me, by what I wanted. Nothing else mattered. Not my life, not anyone's life. All of it was a price worth paying." [...] "That's a place everyone visits on their way from child to man. You just went native." [...] "Gelleth I am sorry for... My father would think me weak. But if it were now -- I would find another way." "There was no other way. [...] Even the way you took was impossible." (And on that note, I really liked this, though it has nothing to do with Makin: "Since the night of storm and thorns I'd been haunted by what others had done to me. Gelleth taught me I could also be haunted by what I'd done to others.") And: "This is family business and I'll do it my way." "That tends to mean everyone dies."
On the other hand, the closeness with Coddin feels a bit more forced to me, though I liked some of their dialogue. ("I've no sons, but if I did I wouldn't want them to be like you. You're a vicious bastard at the best of times. [...] I love thee for no good reason [...] but I do love thee well.")
Some of the other people around Jorg are starting to become proper characters, too. I didn't quite feel it for Sim, and Rike is still mostly the devil on Jorg's shoulder, but Red Kent with his surprising piety and occasional blushing and feeling all honored to be casually knighted by Jorg grew on me. And I developed some posthumous Gog feels after the scene which we get through Katherine's diary: '"I want to be big and strong. [...] to make Jorg happy. And I want to be happy, to stop Gorgot being sad." [...] "And what do you want for you?" [Katherine] asked him. [...] "I want to save them," he said. "Like they saved me."' And I liked his uncle Robert, his mother's twin ("In some twins the gifts are not shared out evenly. She got the brains and the looks. I got... a knack with horses.")
Worldbuilding is continuing to come along. I continue to prefer the parts where you can see the stuff leftover from the Builders -- the "No Overnight Parking" plaque (I guess my parking garage impressions of Tall Castle were right), Jorg figuring out the Builder machine and ?satellite? ring ("Point me at the single most useful and portable piece of Builder-magic in this chamber."). The more magical stuff I'm more eh on in this case, and I don't find it easy to buy the explanation that Builders unlocked magic by nudging the laws of physics. But OK, I can roll with that. Also, this was awesome: "When a game cannot be won, change the game. I read that in the book of Kirk." and "the nonsense doggerel 'Merican Pie'" and a couple of words from it, like "Chevylevy was dry". I also have been noticing the way geographical names are twisted but preserves -- the Aups (which Hannibal passed over with his elephants), the river Rhyme, etc.
The writing is still great:
"Burning to death has always been a worry of mine. Call it a personal foible. Some people are scared of spiders. I'm scared of immolation. Also spiders."
"Rike can't make an omelette without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens and wearing their entrails as a necklace."
"Young Sim, older than me of course but still with little use for a razor if you discounted the cutting of throats."
"I don't have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. I got me a devil on both. But [Rike] you're like the bad one."
"Climbing, it turned out, was as new to the people of the Highlands as it was to me. They knew all about getting up to places where they needed to be. [...] But about getting to places they didn't need to go... well who has time for that."
"A fool may scrawl on a slate and if no one has the wit to wipe it clean for a thousand years, the scrawl becomes the wisdom of ages."
"as boys do when they're hurt -- and at fourteen I discvered I was still a boy if the hurt came fierce enough -- I thought of my mother."
"I took his head with one clean blow. I'm not one to boast but it's not easy to decapitate a man in one swing. [...] When you kick somebody in the head as you do from time to time, they tend to be actively trying to move themselves out of the way and the contact is lessened. A severed head is a dead weight, even if it's watching you. || And that exhausts my insights into the kicking of severed heads. Admittedly it's more than most people have to offer on the subject but there were Mayans who knew a lot more than I do. That of course is a whole different ball game." XP
And the whole passage with Jorg offering to everyone to show off his juggling even though he doesn't juggle was hilarious. As was Jorg not liking the food on the Horse Coast (~Spain): "All your food tastes like shit that somebody set fire to."
And occasionally it's oddly lyrical, like:
"'I thought my watch stopped.' But it wasn't the watch."
"She died in the winter of a lost year, the daughter of a wealthy man who would have given all his wealth, and more, to buy her into spring."
"The dead rise like a tide. They outnumber the living, and each battle makes more corpses, not more men."
So, in general, still really enjoying this series (and am now about a quarter into the last book, which is continuing to be fun).
54. Katherine Addison (aka Sarah Monette), The Goblin Emperor -- I heard a lot of good things about this book, but I'm not sure I would have picked it up if Monette had not already built up my trust with Melusine and Iskyrne, because it sounded like it could be tedious. It's a slow book, more inwardly focused than anything, but tedious it was definitely not, at least to me. It's got interesting, unusual (though somewhat challenging) worldbuilding, and the protagonist, who has a lot of the focus of the book, is not the sort of character I normally gravitate towards, but his kindness, humility, and determination to keep being a decent person in the face of sudden power and circumstances where conflict between duty and doing the right thing was frequent and conflict between either or both of those and what he would have truly liked to do was pretty much universal was quite impressive, and so he really earned my sympathy and respect. Spoilers from here
I wish we got more of the other characters (I wholly subscribe to egelantier suggestion of a book dealing with the same events but from the household's point of view), but even though we only got them through Maia's POV and there were a lot of secondaries, I grew to love a whole lot of them. Csevet, courier-turned-emperor's secretary, was the first character I really loved, though it took me a while to realize who he was reminding me of (Mairsil from the Magnum Opus), which gave me some built-in fondness for him from the start. He did not disappoint, with his impressive organizational abilities, and walking the fine line between "managing" his emperor and, originally, dutiful deference which eventually evolves into a teasing fondness. I also really liked Cala the ~wizard guard, and was almost as frustrated by the stagnated relationship between him and Maia for most of the book as both of them were; I was very happy they decided that though it wasn't the sort of friendship that non-emperors are allowed to have, they could be their own kinds of friends after all. The other nohecharis, Beshelar, took a lot longer to grow on me, but by the time he was apologizing for bleeding on Maia's lap after thwarting the assassination attempt, I was completely sold on him as well. I also really liked Kiru, who replaces the traitorous wizard guard, and is basically the lone grown-up in Maia's immediate bunch and uses her powers of being unfazed by absolutely anything for the greater good.
In the court, I immediately liked Idra, Maia's nephew and heir (though I do think he gets some overly-grown-up moments towards the end), and his little sisters were really cute. Csethiro, Maia's fiance, started out blandly enough, but became one of my favorite characters -- at the moment, I'm not sure if I like her or Csevet best -- I love her fierceness and her complete unwillingness to even pretend to be a proper elvish maiden, the way she tells Maia he shouldn't be terrified of her (though one can't blame him for being, a little), the way she feels about the widowed empress, the way she writes in the warrior's alphabet which is out of favor in the current court, and gives Maia the ancestral family sword for his birthday, and comes by to see for herself that he is unharmed after the assassination attempt and then promptly leaves, because she realizes that the last thing Maia needs is another person to deal with, and how she finally teaches him to dance. One of my greatest regrets about the fact that Monette has said there will not be a sequel is that we won't get to see Maia and Csethiro get to know each other better, and I won't get to spend more time with her.
The first proper conversation between them was pretty great:
"Serenity, Min Vechin is using you."
"Of course she is," Maia agreed.
Dach'osmin Ceredin's eyebrows shot upward, and Maia was unable to keep his bitterness pent decently behind his teeth. "How stupid you must believe us to be, to think we are unable to discern that for ourself. We thank you."
She looked as if she'd just been bitten by a cushion.
[...]
"Since we have disgraced ourself, we may as well ask: if yu know she is using you, Serenity, why do you accept it?" She did not sound judgemental now, merely curious.
But Maia had no answer -- at least, none that he could articulate. He said lamely, "She is very beautiful."
"And she has the sense not to frighten you." Dach'osmin Ceredin said, and Maia took a step back, wanting to protest her deduction, but unable to deny its truth.
"We should take lessons from her, we see," Dach'osmin Ceredin said, more than a little sourly. [...] Dach'osmin Ceredn swept another curtsy -- not as graceful as some of the other cour ladies, but as precise and sharp as a swordsmaster's salute -- and said, "Serenity, we do not wish you to be frightened of us." And perhaps to prove the truth of her words, she turned and went back to her friends.
I also liked Arbelan, the emperor-Maia's-father first barren wife, who builds a rapport with Maia based on mutual experience of Maia's father's cruelty, and I thought her relationship with Maia, where her being set aside and relegated reminds him of his mother, and she shares her secret of a miscarriage with him, was really nicely done. I liked Vedero, Maia's half-sister who would rather study astronomy than get married, and her friends (including "friends" she doesn't like but has the bond of wanting an education with), and I liked Eiru Berenar, whom Maia taps for Lord Chancellor and who thrives on the resulting brambles, and Lord Pashavar with his sharp tongue and unexpected gestures of trust and his true friendship. Oh and Thara Celehar, the Witness for the Dead, was also really well drawn, I thought, a broken man at the start who nevertheless has his dignity and calling. I liked even the characters who show up in only a couple of scenes, Deshelar who draws caricatures of his fellow ministers, and Prince Orchenis the grimly loyal, and the Avar's illegitimate daughter who gives Maia the gift of family gossip (her sister the sea captain sounds pretty cool, too), and the Archprelate, who watches Maia carefully and offers him the gift of a place to meditate and the reassurance that it is OK to be religious for an emperor. There's a real gift here for introducing in just a few lines characters I would love to get to know a lot more; that was one of the things I really liked in Melusine, and it is undiminished here, in the different universe.
I actually thought at some point that it was getting a little improbably that nearly all the "good guys" were won over by Maia, but, really, just as I found it hard not to feel both respect and sympathy for him, I think the same is true of all the decent people he encounters. He is trying so hard, and he is aware of all his tiniest impulses towards cruelty or pettiness (really aware, with the sensitization of someone who had to live with an abusive authority figure and suffer from the rule of another) and resists them so earnestly, without expecting any kind of recognition for it, simply because he is a kind person by nature and abhors being the source of pain or discomfort for others, even when no-one would fault him for it. His insistence of attending the funerals of the non-royals killed in the airship wreck which made him emperor, his refusal to ever forget about those victims, which both the court and the revolutionaries seem happy enough to discount, his care for the dying noblewoman who had been kind to him at his mother's funeral, his attendance at his treacherous nohecharis's ritual suicide because he had asked, his determination to see the saboteurs tried and to speak with them himself, his insitence on showing clemency to those he can, like Idra's mother and the former Lord Chancellor, his continued worry about his servants -- he is a genuinely good person without being improbably flawless -- he is given to the occasional flares of temper, and he tries hard to keep rein on that snappish inner voice which he originally attributes to Setheris. I also really loved how his love for his mother, who died when he was eight, pervades everything -- how he is willing to forgive pretty much anything directed at him, but won't stay silent when it comes to injustices done to Chenelo: one of the big moments for me was when he asks Avar, his grandfather and Chenelo's father, why he never answered her letters, why he didn't try to help, because that is what he needs to come to terms with.
Speaking of Setheris, he was another character I really, really liked. Not as a person -- he is rather a terrible person, and Maia is kinder to him than he deserves in giving him something to do and never wanting to see him again -- but as a character, because I like the way his wife knows him as a different man (and is horrified when she learns that he beat Maia), and he is afraid to see her opinion suffer, but he seems not the least bit repentant of his treatment of Maia, and is all too happy to try to capitalize on his influence over Maia, which is the influence of abuse and fear. But having been unfairly accused of treason and exiled into poverty without any due process, away from his wife and the courty, with a child he cares nothing for, it's not hard to see why he would take to drink and have no particular fondness for Maia. And I especially liked how Maia acts with him -- that he has to keep reminding himself that Setheris no longer has control over him, that he has nothing to fear, but still has to stop himself from cringing; that he hastens to tell people the thing that left the scar was an accident and that Setheris was horrified himself; and especially this line, from early on in the book: "'He has done no wrong.' The memories of a thousand separate cruelties mocked him, but o one save Maia himself had ever counted those as wrongs, and it was unust to have them declared wrongs now, merely because he could." -- this was the point where I really started liking Maia, because it takes a special kind of person to separate justice from personal injury while still being so affected by said injury, and I really admire that in a character. Also, this line was great: "Despairingly he thought, I shall never know anyone as well as I know Setheris".
So, yeah, the characters are really great, from Maia on down. The plot was mainly character development, and I was quite happy with that. Maia's delight at the clockwork bridge, Maia's bewilderment at the concept of celebrating his birthday (with presents! including from people who genuinely want to make him happy), Maia getting to know the various people at court and his grandfather, Maia's awkward but full of decency crush on the opera singer, Maia's behaviour during the kidnapping and forced abdication attempt (where he cares much more about the effect on the children of the chief conspirator than about the political implications) and in the aftermath of the assassination attempt -- I mean, stuff happened, to be sure, but the point of the stuff happening was seeing how Maia reacted or bore up under it and learned from it, and how other people did. I'm not surprised some people apparently complain not enough happened in the book, but it was enough for me, because I tend to prefer character-driven stories to plot-driven ones anyway. The one bit of plot that genuinely surprised me was the twist that, while Tethimar had intended the Wisdom of Choharo flight to be a trial run with a fake incendiary device, so that the assassination would take place after Tethimar's wedding to Vedero, Shulivar premeditatedly betrayed him and killed the emperor right then, propelling Maia onto the throne. "Miscommunication" didn't make a lot of sense as an explanation, and Shulivar with his weidly calm, prophetic incadescence was both interesting and creepy (and I really liked that the three revolutionaries/saboteurs Maia speaks to all have different reactions, one grovelling, one viewing it as a glorious blow for freedom, and Shulivar playing a longer-term and subtler game for incremental but real improvements.
The worldbuilding was something I found a bit of a barrier -- there's a list of characters in the back and a note on names, but the spelling of the names is quite impenetrable, so even looking up stuff is hard -- but not enough of one to interfere with my enjoyment, as you can just infer stuff from context or not worry about it too much, and in the last 10 pages or so, the names finally started making an intuitive sort of sense. But there is some really interesting cultural stuff here. The one that I found most interesting was a linguistic quirk -- the full use of second person informal and formal (thou and you; which led to informal language that reminded me a lot of Kay Brightmore in Melusine, actually, but that is neither here nor there), and also first person formal and informal (represented by "we" and "I"). It was a convention that proved remarkably easy to get used to -- I found myself occasionally thinking in first person formal while reading the book -- and the shifts to first person and second person familiar worked really well for me for relationship and situation transition markers -- totally worth the linguistic gimmick. The masculine names ending in -a and -it/-et and feminine names ending in -o tripped me up for a long time, because -a is a feminine ending in Russian/Italian and -it/-et in Hebrew, and -o is a masculine ending in Italian, and it was all backwards... There are also a lot of neat elvish and goblin words, which all seem to make sense although I confess I mostly skimmed them, and some linguistic geekery about obsolete words still being used in other cultures. There are non-linguistic cultural trappings, too, gemstone rings and long hair in braids for everyone, and the significance of colors in clothing, and samovars, and obsession with horses, and signs of cultural fashions changing over time, like bows vs curtsies and religion going in and out of style, and so on. And also, it's neat to see another industrial age fantasy, with airships and clockmakers and mentioned factories and other non-medieval things. Oh, and one bit I really loved was how the pale-skinned elves kept blushing all over the place -- you generally don't get that with elves, but it makes perfect sense that a nation that fair-skinned would be very prone to coloring. On a similar note, the expressive ears, dipping and flattening and drooping and so on, is not exactly new in fantasy, but was very well integrated into the emotional coloring here, I thought.
At some point, probably when the revolutionaries came along, I started really wanting to see a crossover with Dragaera, because two very regimented, but very differently regimented ~elven societies, one with complete gender equality and the other with pretty much total subjugation of women. I would be very curious to know what Shulivar and Cawti and her bunch would have to say to each other (the woman, I feel like, would be more at home with the Red Lotus philosophy, since that's fresh in my mind). And Maia could probably use a sympathetic listener in Zerika.
Some quotes:
"the pounding headache came from tension, from the constant, half-crippled feeling of having to make decisions without sufficient inforation with an always incomplete understanding of the situations, the motivations, the possible reprecussions."
"'He [Setheris] had no right to say such a thing to you,' Idra said, with the same indignation with which he had championed his sisters' right to be loved by their grandfather."
"Even with the progress he'd made, he still understood half or less of the Corazhas' debates, and asking questions was only getting harder -- he felt as if he were accusing Berenar with his ignorance."
"Veklevezhek [...] it is a goblin word, and it means to decide what to do about a prisoner by staking him below the tide-line while you argue.[...] We know that the Corazhas frequently practices veklevezhek, for if they cannot agree whether to hear a matter -- the matter goes unheard."
Mais to Csevet: "It has never once occurred to us to doubt your loyalty. Nor do we do so now. [...] Were you part of Lord Chavar's plot, it would have been much better executed."
Csehiro, on empress Csoru: "On our first introduction -- for as we are the same age as Csoru, all but a handful of months, and named after her dead mother, so it was considered our fate to be her beloved friend -- we lasted slightly less than ten minutes before we hit her. Now, of course, that we are an adult, we can hold out for nearly an hour."
Maia, being summoned to Osmerrem Danivaran's deathbed: "There was a horrible, jolting moment when first he couldn't remember who Osmerrem Danivaran was or why he cared about her death and then *did* remember and was hit with grief like a stone to the chest."
"Lord Berenar says Osmer Orimar [in charge of couriers] was concealing dishonesty of some considerable scope from Chavar."
"Gracious," said Csevet. "We would not have thought he had the intelligence."
"It does not seem to have been very difficult."
"Ah," said Csevet.
Idra on his mother: "Mother would not be [...] what she is if she had ever had something given her that was a burden equal to her strength." (this also made me think of Cersei)
I was very glad to see that this book was nominated for Yuletide, because where it leaves off really does cry out for fic. Hopefully YT will produce some -- I'm looking forward to reading it already!
P.S. ikel89, look who's a fan :)
P.P.S. I'm using this icon because I don't have a more generic "elves" or "crazy bloodthirsty maniacs" icon, but that reminds me that Hawk comes out in 24 hours!