Reading roundup: Tomek #1, Taltos reread
58. Alfred Szklarski, Tomek in the Land of Kangaroos (more or less) -- OK, so first of all, sorry all the people who voted in my "childhood favorite" poll -- I, uh, ended up reading a book that wasn't even on the list -- but I had a very good reason! In such a supremely random turn of events that I couldn't ignore it, bearshorty (who is also a Soviet ex-pat) commented on my Antwerp Zoo picture post, which has a picture of okapi in it, that she's always liked okapis since encountering them in the Tomek books she loved as a child. Then aletheiafelinea chimed in to ask if these were the Alfred Szklarski Tomek books, and I did a little dance of joy, because I *also* loved these books as a child, but could never remember anything about them except the main characters name (and even that I wasn't 100% certain of). (Even if I had remembered the author's name, I never would've figured out how to spell it properly in Polish either... XP) And from that bearshorty's father tracked down the books in Russian, and she shared them with me, and here we are. So that's preamble #1.
Preamble #2 is how I met these books in the first place, and it was through my White Knight (nephew of my father's best friend and my puppy love, see here). He had, I think, the full collection then published, or at least a bunch of them, and would lend them to me, and then we would play at the events of them. (I was annoyed that, as the younger girl, I had to be Sally, but anyway.)
Now, actual impressions:
- I remember virtually nothing of what happens -- none of the plot (though once I get to certain things, they seem vaguely familiar), none of the characters except Tomek himself (and more on that below), none of the setup (I had completely forgotten why Tomek's father was traipsing about th world -- it's because he's a Polish revolutionary/resistance activist who had to escape Poland to avoid being sent to Siberia but the Russian czar's regime.
- It is so weird to see how the way Tomek reads to me has changed XD I was 10-11 when I read these books last time. Tomek is 14, which was a cool older age at the time. Now, it's the age of my *kids*, and, uh, he comes across accordingly. I remembered him having awesome adventures and expertly shooting stuff and experiencing the world. I did NOT remember him taking his father's jokes about having to shoot game for their provisions so earnestly, or worrying that he didn't actually know what to do with a gun, or being disappointed when grown-ups were falling asleep around him right and left, or deciding he wanted to be just like Smuga and worrying whether that meant he had to have seconds at dinner. Actually, in his excitement and curiosity and hero-worship, he comes across as a younger kid to me -- present-day teenagers have gotten all jaded, I guess. I also did not remember him being scared this much of the time. I'm sure he'll grow out of it in later books, as he gains adventuring experience, and that's probably why I don't remember it, but it was an unexpected discovery on this reread.
- Actually, I'd also completely forgotten that these books were not solely from Tomek's POV but that you sometimes get the grown-ups' view of him (and of things in general, but mostly of him). I guess the book is technically written in omniscient, but not very balanced omniscient -- it feels like Tomek's POV most of the time with occasional deviations. On a related note, it's so weird to me how blase Tomek's father is about the various dangers Tomek finds himself in. Not always -- he freaks out when he wakes up at the farm and discovers Tomek is not in bed, but apparently almost dying in a sandstorm is not a big deal? all's well that ends well?
- Smuga (the hunter-adventurer) and Novitski (the bo'sun) make fun friend and mentor figures for Tomek. Smuga is definitely my favorite character (and probably was originally, too, though I can no longer remember it for sure) -- scarred and cynical and self-sacrificing and all that. Nowicki's manner of speaking started grating on my nerves after a while, though -- this supercharged mixture of sailor vocabulary, slangy friendliness, and proverbs stuck in wherever they could possibly go. But in his quieter moments, like when he quietly hugs Tomek after Sally is found, I still like him, too.
- The writing is, ahaha, very different from the YA my kids grew up with, let's say. These are really fun books, still, but the pacing is really weird, as stretches of time go by in a paragraph and then things slow down so that Tomek and Bentley can have a conversation about the early Australian explorers for 20 very educational pages. There is a lot of repetition of factual information to make it stick more, like the long lists of Australian animals, and a lot of call-and-response sort of stuff where Tomek asks a question about an idiom or a bit of history, and then one of the grown-ups explains it to him, and then Tomek says, "Oh, you mean [restated learnings from the grown-up's explanation]?", and the grown-up says, "That's right, Tomek! Now you've got it!" It is clunky, of course, but in an endearing sort of way. Tomek's a bit of a show-off, so him volunteering all sort of info he knows definitely feels in character, and he's also insatiably curious, so the Q&A format also sort of works. And the formulaic ending to most of the infodumps that keeps saying "with this fascinating conversation, time passed very quickly", or the other trend of somebody wrapping up the infodump with a 'back to reality' non-sequitur, like, "So you see, X kangaroos are much more dangerous than Y kangaroos. Now, time for lunch!" XP
- The footnotes are really odd... I think some of them they were probably added by the Russian translator/editor? Because while some of them provide a lot of additional information (even beyond the info-dumps the book already contains in the dialogue), like the years of birth/death for various people being mentioned, the height of mountains, the length of the equator, some of them are fairly pointless, like footnoting "Zaliv-Botani" as "Botanicheskij Zaliv" (no shit!). And some are WORSE than pointless, because they provide the same information that's provided in the text but in history book terms, without the build-up or drama, like the ones about the early Australian explorers. This was a really weird choice...
- I also keep noticing things that I really wasn't paying any attention to as a kid, I bet. Like the focus on Polish explorers, for instance -- clearly I hadn't been paying attention to that because I couldn't remember which non-Russian Eastern Bloc country these books were from. (For instance, I had no idea and never would've guessed that Tarnagulla is apparently a twisted version of "Czarnogora"! -- though google hasn't turned up any corroboration of this claim except a few Polish websites I can't read...) And the maybe surprising, for a book set in 1902 (though written considerably later, of course), enlightenment of Tomek and the good guys sympathizing with the aborigines and the way they'd been treated by the white colonists -- but I'm sure it was all part of indictment of capitalism and the rotten West that had allowed these books to be translated in Soviet times.
- It was really weird to read about Australia in Cyrillic. Like, the names were all funny-looking, and a lot of the animal names I had to keep mentally translating from English, like wallabee, wombat, kookaburra, etc. Also, "koala" apparently ne sklonyaetsya and is masculine? I've always just treated it as a feminine noun... It is also weird to read about things that I had not seen when I first read this book and now have an actual real-life visual for, like Vienna and eucalyptus trees (which are all over the place here) and various Australian critters, which they didn't have in the zoo I grew up with but which are plentiful in the zoo here and in Antwerp.
Anybody else on my flist familiar with these books?
bingo: reread of childhood favorite, book set on a continent I've never been to (challenge mode: in Australia)
59. Steven Brust, Taltos (reread for the Nth time) -- I was in need of some comfort reading and missing Morrolan Dragaera, so I started reading a bit of Taltos before bed, and also the Morrolan bits of Lord of Castle Black (mysteriously, the Paarfi books are on the Kindle match program, and I guess even the used one I bought from Amazon Marketplace count as me having bought hard copies, so I couldn't resist getting a version of LoCB that I could carry around with me everywhere). Anyway, I'm not going to count LoCB because I'm only reading about 25% of it, but Taltos I'm reading all the way through, without even skipping the introductory spell bits, so that one counts. So I kinda ended up liveblogging the whole book? Spoilers, including for other Dragaera books.
I tried not to duplicate observations/quotes from previous reads, 2011 and in 2007 (which is apparently when I started shipping Vlad/Morrolan? I feel like that's been in the case forever, but I guess till then I just fangirled Morrolan individually? Huh...). Also, huh, I guess I'm on a 4 year cadence with Taltos rereads? I'm actually not surprised to discover a certain periodicity... (I am surprised to realize that I first read the Paarfi books that long ago -- it feels much more recent to me...)
- When visiting Castle Black, Vlad notices a psi print of an Eastern scene (which he recognizes as an Eastern landscape because he's seen the East through Noish-Pa's eyes as part of his witch training) -- I wonder if Morrolan imported it or if one of his witches painted it or what... I would like to think that it's the landscape around Blackchapel rather than some random bit of scenery...
- It never stops being amusing to me that Vlad's first words about Morrolan are "Bit of a show-off then" (upon Kragar reminding him about the floating castle). Soon to be followed by "Pretentious bastard" and "pompous, supercilious jongleur".
- It also never stops being amusing to me how during the first interview with Vlad, Sethra does all the talking while Morrolan is rolling his eyes and making disparaging noises in the background like a sulky teenager. Hush, dear, grown-ups are talking. XP
- Vlad thinks Tukko is a Tsalmoth (but then, he thinks Fentor is a Tsalmoth, too...)
- Eastners celebrate birthdays, but Dragaerans presumably celebrate the parents on the anniversary of a child's birth (which actually kind of makes sense... and especially makes sense for a longer-lived people who don't seem to have a lot of children, I suppose)
- Vlad asks Sethra why the charade and why couldn't they have just come to him. Sethra explains she can't leave Dzur Mountain at the moment.
"I gestured towards Morrolan. 'And him?'
'I wanted to see you myself.' She smiled a little. 'Which is just as well, since I might have had some trouble convincing him to walk into a Jhereg's place of business.'
Morrolan snorted."
Now, I first noticed this because Morrolan not only walks into a Jhereg's place of business but actually *asks* Vlad to see his office in Dragon and then sits there while Vlad clowns around. I guess there's a huge difference between "random Jhereg Sethra needs for business dealings" and "Jhereg whom I have decided is my buddy". But the other thing that jumps out at me in retrospect is that Sethra's "real" reason of wanting to see Vlad for herself is at least semi-bogus, since she already knows him perfectly well as Kiera. Is this Sethra trying to play the game fairly and not take advantage of things Kiera knows but she doesn't? Or is the excuse just BS, plain and simple?
- According to Sethra, most wizards are Athyra or Dzur. Athyra is no surprise, but Dzur is interesting! Is that just because of the Lavodes? I don't think we've met any non-Lavodes Dzur sorcerers, have we? Other than that, I think the only wizards we've met are Dragonlords actually (Morrolan, Sethra the Younger, presumably Adron would qualify), but I guess they're more an exception than the rule?
- It's really interesting just how hard-pressed Morrolan is in fighting Loraan magically -- sweat on his forehead as he holds him off, being thrown around, having to brace himself against a wall. He's got Blackwand, which is pretty formidable against the Jenoine, and he's a wizard apparently good enough for Court Wizard status just a couple of years later (though possibly that was a political appointment rather than a meritocratic one -- there is all that confusion over Kosadr and Morrolan and are they Court Wizards concurrently or what), and yet Loraan pretty clearly has the advantage. I wonder how much of that is the "wizard in his keep" advantage and what form that takes -- accumulated spells? having to fight against wards/magical booby traps as well as Loraan's active magic? It's hard to tell from the kind of fight they're doing, but they do seem to be going direclty against each other more than anything... Or is Loraan just that good? Or is Morrolan's strength as a wizard in other things? Or, hmm, does Morrolan receive a serious power-up from from the blood of the goddess that Vlad injects him with at the end? I mean, he's obviously no slouch even before, but maybe not THAT great?
- I keep forgetting that when Vlad and Morrolan almost get into a fight on the steps of Dzur Mountain, Morrolan doesn't actually draw Blackwand, and Vlad doesn't actually touch any of his squirreled away hardware, he just thinks about it, and Morrolan just takes a step out of knife range and looks at him. It's such an action-charged scene, I keep forgetting that very little action actually happens and the rest of it is mostly in Vlad's head. That's actually a very neat trick.
- I'm amused/gratified by just how impressed Vlad is with the effect of Morrolan with Blackwand:
The door burst open and Dragaerans started pouring through. About a zillion of them, give or take a few. [...] I looked at their broadswords and longswords as I drew my cute little rapier. I sighed.
"No, Vlad," said Morrolan. [he's now decided, out of the blue, that they are on first-name basis, apparently] "Get the staff. I'll hold them."
"But--"
Morrolan drew his sword, which assaulted my mind by its very presence and the room seemed to darken. [...] It was small for a longsword , and it seemed to absorb light from the room. [...]
Our eyes locked for a moment. "I'll hold them," he repeated.
I stood there, staring, for perhaps a second, then snapped back. "I can't get it [the staff] out of--"
"Right," he said and glanced around the room. If you're wondering about the guards during this whole exchange, they were stopped in the doorway, staring at Morrolan's sword and, I suppose, trying to work up the courage to attack. Morrolan's eyes came to rest on the pedestal on which one end of the golden chain rested, the other end hanging, coiled, in midair.
"Try that," said Morrolan. [...]
I paused long enough to look at the tableau of guards and Morrolan. All of their eyes were riveted on that blade.
Perhaps their courage would have failed them and they wouldn't have attacked, I don't know. But while they were considering, Morrolan charged.
- On that note also, I wonder what it is Morrolan recognizes in Spellbreaker, that he advises Vlad to try to use it to get the staff out of stasis or wards or whatever.
- Back at Dzur Mountain after the Loraan fight: "Loiosh spent his time hissing at Morrolan and being generally jumpy. [...] Morrolan kept glancing at Loiosh, as if he didn't quite know what to make of him. I rather enjoyed that." I wonder why Morrolan seems puzzled by Loiosh, at least to Vlad's eye... He seemed perfectly used to the Warlock's familiars, and I'm sure lots of his witches have some of their own. Is he just surprised that Vlad had chosen a jhereg? That seems unlikely, given that M himself chose a Morganti sword, because of course he can't do anything like a normal person. It seems more plausible that Vlad is just reading Morrolan wrong, but then what is M actually thinking? Or is Loiosh as unusual a familiar as Vlad is a witch, and thus deserving of wonder?
- On the scene where Sethra brings Vlad over to have klava with honey with her and Morrolan before talking shop: "If the whole thing was a scheme to put me in a better mood for helping them, I can only say it worked. I found it, at least, far preferable to the last idea they'd come up with." Interesting thing about that is that I had just read the bit in LoCB where Morrolan shows up at Dzur Mountain to demand tribute from Sethra. There's a bit there about how after a while he warms up to Sethra enough (despite her laughing at him pretty much the whole time) to share a meal with her, which is something, by Eastern tradition, that you do not do with your enemies. Vlad doesn't think of it in those terms -- it doesn't even seem like Vlad has the same tradition (plus Paarfi might've just been making it up, too; what the hell does he know about Easterners).
- So why does Vlad have Morrolan meet him in the Easterner's ghetto for their little fieldtrip to Deathgate Falls? Just out of contrariness? But "I think he enjoyed being the only Dragaeran in the place, too" (he would). And "he hadn't known that Ferenk's existed". (I wonder if Morrolan later sent somebody to buy up half the guy's cellars, or if he has his own sources of stuff like this directly from the East...)
- What is Kragar's story, anyway? ("That was my deal when I agreed to work for Nielar -- that I never had to give an order.") And I'd actually forgotten how adamant he was about this. All the more impressive how well he's been holding Vlad's territory together between Phoenix and Hawk.
- At Deathgate: "Morrolan cut back on the length of his strides so he woldn't keep getting ahead of me." (As someone who is pretty constantly being left behind by people with longer strides than me, I find this very aww.)
- "We rested under the open sky that night, which sounds romantic but wasn't" -- suuure, Vlad :P. Also, the same paragraph contains the vital information that Morrolan doesn't snore. Also: "It was, I have to say, hard to stay hostile to the man next to me, if only because the day was nice and the walk so pleasant."
- Who wants to bet that Morrolan having them drinking tea from invisible glasses -- rather than teleporting/materializing a normal glass -- was just totally showing off.
- I used to mostly skim the cat-centaurs episode, because it's so random, but I read it a bit more carefully this time, and one thing that jumped out at me is that Vlad introduces himself to them with his full name ("My name is Vlad Taltos") while Morrolan just says, "I am Morrolan." This is before Mist introduces herself, so I wonder if Morrolan knows cat-centaur conventions and is going with a single name (no noble title or family name), or what. Does he know these particular cat-centaurs from the prior visit he claims (though it does seem unlikely that it was during Zerika's descent, as he claims, unless Zerika came a second time...) I do wonder if he and Mist's tribe have met before, because Mist does this ritual "touch my spear" thing with Vlad but not with Morrolan, which seems to imply to me they've already done it on an earlier occasion. And/or does he just default to fairly informal outside of Dragaeran society? Anyway, his whole behaviour with the cat-centaurs is like the opposite of pompous (even though Vlad thinks his and Mist's parting speech is a bit formal and pompous anyway), which is interesting, given that Vlad required two whole synonyms for that word to describe him at their first meeting.
- The pedestals. Morrolan looks wistful (Vlad thinks) looking at the Dzur one. Vlad asks if he knows "any Dzurlords who've come this way" and Morrolan answers Sethra -- but there's no reason for him to be wistful about Sethra (she says herself she died before the Interregnum, so he never knew her before she came this way). It seems pretty certain that he must be thinking about Tazendra, and just not wanting to talk about it, and is thus giving Vlad a factually true and unhelpful answer (after all, Sethra is the only Dzurlord (or whatever she is) he presently knows who came this way, since Tazendra is dead...) Then at the Dragon pedestal: ""Morrolan paused there for some moments, and I backed up and gave him room for whatever he was feeling. His hand was white where he gripped the staff". I wonder who he's thinking about here. The fact that his closest relatives (Rollondar, his brother, Adron, presumably his mother as well) never got to make the trip to Deathgate, because most of them were consumed by the sea of amorphia in the Disaster? Or are there some Dragonlords that he's been sufficiently close with who have made the trip? And finally, the ahtyra: "Morrolan tied one end of his rope around this pedestal which some might think in poor taste, I don't know." I'm gonna choose to take this as a fuck-you to Loraan, tbh.
- "The water was very cold. My teeth started chattering, and I saw that Morrolan's were, too, but I was too cold to be pleased about it." And just a few pages later: "I sat up and looked at Morrolan; he seemed even more exhausted than I. He was also very wet, as I was, and he was shivering as much as I, which I took a perverse pleasure in noting." (oh look, Vlad has recovered his schadenfreude, I was worried there for a minute) "Presently he caught me looking at him. I suppose he guessed some of my thoughts, because he scowled at me. He sat up, and I noticed his hands twitching as another scowl crossed his features. 'Sorcery doesn't work here,' he remarked." Poor baby, missing his magic :P
- On a related note, how much do I want bickery hurt/comfort fic of the two of them during their life-changing fieldtrip? Huddling for warmth when there's no sorcery to warm up with, recovering from the aftereffects of the right-hand turns on the path, Morrolan taking care of Vlad after they finally get back out...
- Morrolan says "I was given a book to guide me through the Paths." and "It's a family inheritance." Really? Where from? And how did he obtain it? Seems like the sort of thing that would come from Adron if anyone...
- Morrolan is sure shrugging a lot, even well before this starts really getting on Vlad's nerves. The curious thing is that I'm also rereading bits of LoCB, as I mentioned, and he is shrugging all over the place there, too. I wondered if it's a personal tic of sorts (and if it's something SKZB got from his roleplaying friend, because it seems like an odd tic to just make up for someone). And then they meet Aliera and she shrugs the same way, so I guess it's actually a family trait: "She shreugged, a kind of one-shoulder-and-tilt-of-the-head thing that was almost identical to Morrolan's."
- One of the neat things for me about the flashbacks of Vlad joining the Organization is seeing the restaranteur's kid in him as he goes about his first jobs -- learning to sharpen a dagger to a point to stick in a target's eye rather than sharpening the edge to chop vegetables, noticing how badly the restaurant storeroom in which he's hiding is organized. And just young punk Vlad fumbling within the Organization in general, having to be told about where he is not to try to assassiante people (home, place of religion, in front of his family) and fretting about laying low and if he messed up or not by using Loiosh as his distraction. The other awesome thing about young punk Vlad is, of course, Loiosh calling him "Mama" and then switching to "Boss", and just Loiosh volunteering to be his helper and being the sensible one in that duo even back then, as a hatchling.
- I hadn't thought about it before, but, OK, so if Vlad had gone to the Paths of the Dead alone, Sethra could've showed him some easier paths. But because Morrolan is with him, they have to take the Dragonlord Path (because it's the only one Morrolan, as a Dragonlord, is premitted to know). There are 17 arches, so presumably there's a Jhereg one. Is it OK for Vlad to be on the 'wrong' path because him being an Easterner trumps him being a Jhereg? Or is he allowed on the Dragon path because of who he was in his past life?
- The sequential duel thing that Vlad doesn't go for -- I decided to count, and it looks like Morrolan and Vlad each dispatched six of the twelve Dragonlords attacking them, though presumably Morrolan was more orthodox/honorable in his fighting even after it dissolved into a melee. Also, I don't think I've ever noticed this before, but Morrolan's temper has a trigger, and it's Vlad calling him names, apparently. The first time they had their standoff, in Dzur Mountain, Vlad had just called him a bastard, now, in the Paths, Vlad says, "Drop dead, asshole" (and a bunch of other things, but fairly innocuous ones), and at that point Morrolan switched from glaring to: "His face went white and he took a step towards me. 'You never learn, do you?' He raised his sword until it was pointed at me. I held my hand out. 'Killing a man who isn't5 even holding a weapon? That would hardly be honorable, would it?' He glared at me a moment longer, then spat on the ground. 'Let's go,' he said." Now I'll need to keep an eye out for it in future books, because I wonder if Vlad did learn, after this, that while he could get away with a lot, calling Morrolan things like that to his face is not a good idea. Too direct an insult to his honor to ignore?
- It takes only one iteration of Vlad's "How can you tell?" (re: 'you are not dead') running gag for Morrolan to figure out that telling him to shut up will do zero good. (But Verra, at least, seems amused by it.)
- The doors in the Halls of Judgement "slowly and majestically swung open for us, with an assumed grandeur that seemed to work on me even though I was aware of it. 'Stole one of your tricks,' I told Morrolan. 'It is effective, is it not?' 'Yeah.'" Of course, now I know Morrolan stole the idea from Sethra c.LoCB. And I wonder if Sethra got the idea from the Halls of Judgement, since she would have visited them by that point, or if the Lords of Judgement got the idea from her. Frankly, the latter seems more likely, knowing Sethra's attitude about the gods.
- What the hell is Baritt's problem, anyway? Morrolan seems surprised by his attitude ("By this time I'd recovered enough to appreciate someone being contemptuous of Morrolan. Morrolan, on the other hand, didn't appreciate it at all. He drew himself up and said, 'My lord, if I have done something to offend you--'" I guess Baritt is pretty pissed about being dead, and if Aliera's return was somehow implicated in that (via Dragon Council politics?) could be blaming Morrolan for it... Also, why the hell can he apparently use sorcery in the Halls of Judgement (actually managing to shut up Vlad)? Is he on his way to reemerging as an undead or something? It's very weird... Also: "Morrolan bowed [to Verra and Barlan], but not as low as he had to Baritt. I didn't try to figure it out". No, really, what is it between Baritt and Morrolan? By Dragon, Morrolan doesn't seem to like him all that much, or at least doesn't appear overly heartbroken over his death, but that could be colored by Baritt being a jerk to him during Taltos, so I'm not sure that's indicative of anything.
- It's so interesting to me that Morrolan's justification to the dragon and the gods for why Aliera needs to be restored is "she is the Dragon Heir". It's not like there is something special about that role, and in fact, while Aliera is dead, there is a perfectly good Dragon Heir available, in his own person. Does he expect nobody to know that? Or is it just that it sounds better than "I need her to be Empress so that I can be Warlord"... (Doylistically, I'm pretty sure that Brust hadn't decided yet that Morrolan was Dragon Heir before Aliera turned up, not only due to the reasoning Morrolan gives to the gods, but also, they're kinda close to the potential theoretical end of the Phoenix reign at this point -- timeline puts Taltos at 239 post-Interregnum, only 50 years away from 289 P.I., which is the soonest the Cycle could turn -- with no handoff to another Phoenix possible since Zerika is the only surviving Phoenix, so I would think that the Dragon Heir would be better known even to random laypeople, but Vlad and Kragar talk about Morrolan as Zerika's buddy with the floating castle, not Dragon Heir... But it's much more interesting to think about these things Watsonianly.)
- OK, how is it that Morrolan can't remember Zerika's parents' names?? I mean, OK, Zerika never actually knew them, growing up with a Dragonlord family, but still! She's a close friend of his... that's weird.
- Verra asks Vlad and Morrolan their names. But... surely she and Morrolan have met before? Or is that just part of the formality in meeting in the Halls of Judgement that the petitioners have to introduce themselves? Or is he introducing himself to Barlan? Or is it time weirdness and so it's possible that he is meeting Verra for the first time? Or are meetings outside of the Halls of Judgement meetings with manifestations/avatars of the gods and thus don't really count?
- Interesting, so Kieron is brown-haired. Wonder where the golden hair of the e'Kieron line comes from, then.
- Vlad sure goes through a lot of girlfriends before Cawti... Sheila at 16 (the gold digger), Jeanine and Constance, whom he was two-timing, after his first kill (so, around 17), followed by Mara (gorgeous blonde with the nasty wit), Ibronka after the Morganti killing, and during the time of the book he's sleeping with Szandi. Also, apparently Kragar and Vlad double-date, and Vlad "discovered that a meal at Valabar's is one of the world's greatest aphrodisiacs."
- Valabar's is the first restaurant in the empire, and predates Adrilankha being a capital.
- Aliera, describing what happened to her from the Disaster till she wakes up: "Then someone shouted my name -- I thought at the time it was my mother." I actually really love Morrolan and Aliera's understated conversation here: "Aliera nodded, and I saw a tear in her eye. She said very quietly, 'It is the reign of a reborn Phoenix, isn't it?' Morrolan nodded, seeming to understand." :((
- Morrolan filling in Aliera on Interregnum and post-Interregnum events: "'Zerika, of the House of the Phoenix, retrieved the Orb, which somehow landed here, in the Paths of the Dead. She was allowed to return with it. I helped her,' he added." Oh honey, of course you did. (But, it's weird. I mean, Morrolan did definitely help Zerika in her subsequent adventures in Empire reunification, but according to Paarfi had zero to do with her recovering of the Orb or anything leading up to it. I mean there are the Epileptic Trees type speculations here, but really... This is one of the few things he outright tells Vlad during their journey; it is the *only* thing he tells Aliera that involves him directly -- it seems pretty important to him that people know this about him, which seems rather at odds with Morrolan's apparent general 'I will not lower myself to justifying my actions' MO as described by Teldra in Issola. Over on that page, the most plausible suggestions to me are actually "Paarfi is plain making stuff up and Morrolan was actually there" (maybe instead of Kytraan?) or the Verra's Window hypothesis, wherein he was there but nobody else was aware of this. I mean, I have no idea WHY either of those things would be true, but they seem less far-fetched than the other options...
- "I don't know of any case of a Jhereg testifying to the Empire against the Jhereg and surviving, yet there are still fools who try. 'I'm different,' they say. 'I've got a plan. No one will be able to touch me; I'm protected.' Or maybe it isn't even that well thought out, maybe it's just that they're unable to believe in their own mortaligy. Or else they figure that the amount of money the Empire is paying them makes it worth the risk. || But never mind, that isn't my problem." (God, he does irony so beautifully, considering this is Taltos and written just before Phoenix. I also find it interesting that of the possible motivations Vlad considers for snitching on the Jhereg are greed and arrogance, basically, and his own subsequent motivation doesn't even occur to him as a possibility.
- It costs 2,500 imperials to have someone killed and 10,000 imperials to kill someone Morganti. Sethra offers Vlad 7,000 to steal the staff. Also of note, Vlad "offers" Sethra and Morrolan 1,500 imperials for the "job" of killing Quoin. So not only is he insulting them with the farce of pretending to pay them for an assassination, he's also not paying them nearly enough :P
- It really jumped out at me this readthrough how much time Vlad spends looking at Morrolan's face here. Like, he reports his expression or lack thereof in pretty much every situation. I mean, OK, it doesn't have to have a shippy explanation, because Morrolan is the only familiar thing in the Paths of the Dead, a place where Vlad reeeeally doesn't belong, but it's very noticeable. In fact, he even remarks on it when he *doesn't* look over at Morrolan, when they first meet Kieron: "I wondered what Morrolan thought of him [Kieron], but I couldn't take my eyes off the Dragonlord's face to check Morrolan's expression."
- You know, whatever else, I've got to admire Aliera's sheer chutzpah in the face of absolutely everybody, starting with gods and ending with Kieron the Conqueror. Especially considering she was barely able to stand for a good chunk of her interactions, and has just learned of the death (and infamy) of her father and the entire world she has known.
- Also, Baritt and Aliera don't recognize each other when they meet. I found that a bit odd, since surely Baritt is old enough that he must've been alive prior to the Interregnum and must've known Adron the Dragon Heir? Maybe he hadn't met Aliera since she was staying on the country estates... He does seem to recognize the name quickly enough, and she his. And his cryptic "I crave a favor. If you scuceed, and I am still alive, don't visit me. I don't think I could stand it." I guess people speculate based on this, and based on Aliera giving the eulogy at his funeral, that they'd been betrothed -- but apparently without ever meeting?
- Verra says "Perhaps he can become undead, and leave that way. There are those who have managed this." I wonder if Morrolan a) entertained that possiblity when wandering around the Halls with Aliera and Vlad, and b) considered that this may be an option prior to agreeing to come with Vlad in the first place.
- Verra says Zerika was able to leave "because the Imperial Orb has power even here". That is interesting... How does that manifest, since sorcery (which relies on the Orb) doesn't work there? Or does some of it manage, and that's why Baritt could apparently use magic? Verra also says, "there are imperial rules against the undead holding official imperial positions" -- Emperor or Heir, I presume? Since wasn't Sethra Lavode Warlord in her undead state already? Or was that all pre-Interregnum?
- I don't think I'd ever noticed before that Vlad seems to seriously consider letting Morrolan help him with the witchcraft spell, and the reason he gives for not doing so is that he had only one kelsch leaf left, and "If you help, who will carry us both out?", which Morrolan seems to accept as good sense.
- I kind of love that Morrolan's response to Vlad's instructions to "Bare your arm" -- when he's holding a vial of unfamiliar liquid that he got gods know from where -- is "Which one?" I mean, Vlad is probably past answering frivolous questions like "Why?" but I still find it amusing. I bet Vlad did too, in retrospect. (Morrolan does hesitate a bit when Vlad is holding a knife and tells him to come closer.)
Quotes:
"I was being rescued. Oh, rapture."
Morrolan: "Those were wilder times" [during the Interregnum]
Vlad: "Do you miss them?"
He shrugged. "Sometimes."
"We were walking through swirling fog, which was merely annoying until I realized that there was no perceptible air movement to cause the fog to swirl. I pointed this out to Morrolan, who said, 'Shut up.' || I smiled, then smiled a little more as the end of a bare tree branch smacked him in the face."
M: "We will appear before the Lords of Judgement and ask them to restor my cousin."
Vlad: "Do we have any good reason why they should?"
M: "Our nerve for asking."
"I discovered, to my disgust, that I really didn't want to leave Morrolan there."
CSRB update:
Mix'n'Match: BLACKOUT! (3/6 challenges)
Reread of childhood favorite: Tomek in the Land of Kangaroos
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
School requirement you missed: Ulysses
+ CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list: Geek Love
Book with nameless protagonist: Rebecca
Book where I watched movie first: Divergent
Author's first language isn't English: Gromyko, God Krysy: Putnitsa
Non-fiction book: Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Book set before 1900: The Duchess War
Book heavily featuring animals: God Krysy, Gromyko (CHALLENGE MODE: book heavily featuring rodents)
Collection of short stories: Love is Hell
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book with a protagonist with a disability: Wonder
Rec from friend or media: Mistborn
Book with a female protagonist: Akata Witch
Book set in a place you've wanted to visit for a long time: Guardian of the Dead (New Zealand)
Book written by someone famous for things other than writing: Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist)
Funny book: A Blink of the Screen
Book with an author or protagonist of color: Smek for President
Book given to you as a gift: Republic of Thieves
Free Space: Hidden (Alex Verus #5)
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book with queer author or protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Book by an author I've never read before: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
[Other cards]
Random: BINGO (from last time) (6 bingos, 22/25 squares, 6/7 challenges)
Book set in Australia: Tomek in the Land of Kangaroos (CHALLENGE MODE); (not counting this one for "reread of childhood favorite on this card, 'cos that seems like cheating to check off a square and an unrelated challenge with the same book)
Book with antonyms in the title: North and South
Book with more than two protagonists: Stranger
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
+ CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list: Geek Love
Book where I watched movie first: Divergent
Book your parent/child loves: Looking for Alaska
Book heavily featuring food -- Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Book with a plant in the title: Tsvetok Kamalejnika, Gromyko
Book heavily featuring animals: God Krysy, Gromyko (CHALLENGE MODE: book heavily featuring rodents)
Book without magical creatures: The Duchess War
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book heavily featuring kids (CHALLENGE MODE: from a child's POV): Wonder
Book set on a continent you've never been to: Akata Witch (Africa)
Book from friends or media: Mistborn
Book set in a place you've wanted to visit for a long time: Guardian of the Dead (New Zealand)
Book written by someone famous for things other than writing: Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist)
Book by an author who shares the first letter of your last name (challenge mode: author who shares your initials): Smek for President, by Adam Rex
Free Space: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Book by queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Book with queer protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
No changes to the Serious Bingo (3 bingos, 20/25 squares, 2/7 challenges), so not posting the card, but the list is here for ease of tracking:
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
School requirement you missed: Ulysses
Rec from friend or media (CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list): Geek Love
Book with nameless protagonist: Rebecca
Book by an author you've never read before: Jennifer Lee, Fortune Cookie chronicles
Book not in English: Tsvetok Kamalejnika, Gromyko
Book set before 1900: The Duchess War (Courtney Milan)
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book with a protagonist with a physical disability: Wonder
Book by an author of color: Akata Witch
Book with a protagonist with a mental/social disability: Prisoner
Book with a female protagonist: Guardian of the Dead
Short story collection: A Blink of the Screen
Non-fiction book: Musicophilia
Books with a protagonist of color: Smek for President
Free Space: Point of Knives
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book given to you as a gift: Wool (birthday present from my friend R)
Book with red cover: Benedict Jacka, Hidden
Book by a queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Preamble #2 is how I met these books in the first place, and it was through my White Knight (nephew of my father's best friend and my puppy love, see here). He had, I think, the full collection then published, or at least a bunch of them, and would lend them to me, and then we would play at the events of them. (I was annoyed that, as the younger girl, I had to be Sally, but anyway.)
Now, actual impressions:
- I remember virtually nothing of what happens -- none of the plot (though once I get to certain things, they seem vaguely familiar), none of the characters except Tomek himself (and more on that below), none of the setup (I had completely forgotten why Tomek's father was traipsing about th world -- it's because he's a Polish revolutionary/resistance activist who had to escape Poland to avoid being sent to Siberia but the Russian czar's regime.
- It is so weird to see how the way Tomek reads to me has changed XD I was 10-11 when I read these books last time. Tomek is 14, which was a cool older age at the time. Now, it's the age of my *kids*, and, uh, he comes across accordingly. I remembered him having awesome adventures and expertly shooting stuff and experiencing the world. I did NOT remember him taking his father's jokes about having to shoot game for their provisions so earnestly, or worrying that he didn't actually know what to do with a gun, or being disappointed when grown-ups were falling asleep around him right and left, or deciding he wanted to be just like Smuga and worrying whether that meant he had to have seconds at dinner. Actually, in his excitement and curiosity and hero-worship, he comes across as a younger kid to me -- present-day teenagers have gotten all jaded, I guess. I also did not remember him being scared this much of the time. I'm sure he'll grow out of it in later books, as he gains adventuring experience, and that's probably why I don't remember it, but it was an unexpected discovery on this reread.
- Actually, I'd also completely forgotten that these books were not solely from Tomek's POV but that you sometimes get the grown-ups' view of him (and of things in general, but mostly of him). I guess the book is technically written in omniscient, but not very balanced omniscient -- it feels like Tomek's POV most of the time with occasional deviations. On a related note, it's so weird to me how blase Tomek's father is about the various dangers Tomek finds himself in. Not always -- he freaks out when he wakes up at the farm and discovers Tomek is not in bed, but apparently almost dying in a sandstorm is not a big deal? all's well that ends well?
- Smuga (the hunter-adventurer) and Novitski (the bo'sun) make fun friend and mentor figures for Tomek. Smuga is definitely my favorite character (and probably was originally, too, though I can no longer remember it for sure) -- scarred and cynical and self-sacrificing and all that. Nowicki's manner of speaking started grating on my nerves after a while, though -- this supercharged mixture of sailor vocabulary, slangy friendliness, and proverbs stuck in wherever they could possibly go. But in his quieter moments, like when he quietly hugs Tomek after Sally is found, I still like him, too.
- The writing is, ahaha, very different from the YA my kids grew up with, let's say. These are really fun books, still, but the pacing is really weird, as stretches of time go by in a paragraph and then things slow down so that Tomek and Bentley can have a conversation about the early Australian explorers for 20 very educational pages. There is a lot of repetition of factual information to make it stick more, like the long lists of Australian animals, and a lot of call-and-response sort of stuff where Tomek asks a question about an idiom or a bit of history, and then one of the grown-ups explains it to him, and then Tomek says, "Oh, you mean [restated learnings from the grown-up's explanation]?", and the grown-up says, "That's right, Tomek! Now you've got it!" It is clunky, of course, but in an endearing sort of way. Tomek's a bit of a show-off, so him volunteering all sort of info he knows definitely feels in character, and he's also insatiably curious, so the Q&A format also sort of works. And the formulaic ending to most of the infodumps that keeps saying "with this fascinating conversation, time passed very quickly", or the other trend of somebody wrapping up the infodump with a 'back to reality' non-sequitur, like, "So you see, X kangaroos are much more dangerous than Y kangaroos. Now, time for lunch!" XP
- The footnotes are really odd... I think some of them they were probably added by the Russian translator/editor? Because while some of them provide a lot of additional information (even beyond the info-dumps the book already contains in the dialogue), like the years of birth/death for various people being mentioned, the height of mountains, the length of the equator, some of them are fairly pointless, like footnoting "Zaliv-Botani" as "Botanicheskij Zaliv" (no shit!). And some are WORSE than pointless, because they provide the same information that's provided in the text but in history book terms, without the build-up or drama, like the ones about the early Australian explorers. This was a really weird choice...
- I also keep noticing things that I really wasn't paying any attention to as a kid, I bet. Like the focus on Polish explorers, for instance -- clearly I hadn't been paying attention to that because I couldn't remember which non-Russian Eastern Bloc country these books were from. (For instance, I had no idea and never would've guessed that Tarnagulla is apparently a twisted version of "Czarnogora"! -- though google hasn't turned up any corroboration of this claim except a few Polish websites I can't read...) And the maybe surprising, for a book set in 1902 (though written considerably later, of course), enlightenment of Tomek and the good guys sympathizing with the aborigines and the way they'd been treated by the white colonists -- but I'm sure it was all part of indictment of capitalism and the rotten West that had allowed these books to be translated in Soviet times.
- It was really weird to read about Australia in Cyrillic. Like, the names were all funny-looking, and a lot of the animal names I had to keep mentally translating from English, like wallabee, wombat, kookaburra, etc. Also, "koala" apparently ne sklonyaetsya and is masculine? I've always just treated it as a feminine noun... It is also weird to read about things that I had not seen when I first read this book and now have an actual real-life visual for, like Vienna and eucalyptus trees (which are all over the place here) and various Australian critters, which they didn't have in the zoo I grew up with but which are plentiful in the zoo here and in Antwerp.
Anybody else on my flist familiar with these books?
bingo: reread of childhood favorite, book set on a continent I've never been to (challenge mode: in Australia)
59. Steven Brust, Taltos (reread for the Nth time) -- I was in need of some comfort reading and missing Morrolan Dragaera, so I started reading a bit of Taltos before bed, and also the Morrolan bits of Lord of Castle Black (mysteriously, the Paarfi books are on the Kindle match program, and I guess even the used one I bought from Amazon Marketplace count as me having bought hard copies, so I couldn't resist getting a version of LoCB that I could carry around with me everywhere). Anyway, I'm not going to count LoCB because I'm only reading about 25% of it, but Taltos I'm reading all the way through, without even skipping the introductory spell bits, so that one counts. So I kinda ended up liveblogging the whole book? Spoilers, including for other Dragaera books.
I tried not to duplicate observations/quotes from previous reads, 2011 and in 2007 (which is apparently when I started shipping Vlad/Morrolan? I feel like that's been in the case forever, but I guess till then I just fangirled Morrolan individually? Huh...). Also, huh, I guess I'm on a 4 year cadence with Taltos rereads? I'm actually not surprised to discover a certain periodicity... (I am surprised to realize that I first read the Paarfi books that long ago -- it feels much more recent to me...)
- When visiting Castle Black, Vlad notices a psi print of an Eastern scene (which he recognizes as an Eastern landscape because he's seen the East through Noish-Pa's eyes as part of his witch training) -- I wonder if Morrolan imported it or if one of his witches painted it or what... I would like to think that it's the landscape around Blackchapel rather than some random bit of scenery...
- It never stops being amusing to me that Vlad's first words about Morrolan are "Bit of a show-off then" (upon Kragar reminding him about the floating castle). Soon to be followed by "Pretentious bastard" and "pompous, supercilious jongleur".
- It also never stops being amusing to me how during the first interview with Vlad, Sethra does all the talking while Morrolan is rolling his eyes and making disparaging noises in the background like a sulky teenager. Hush, dear, grown-ups are talking. XP
- Vlad thinks Tukko is a Tsalmoth (but then, he thinks Fentor is a Tsalmoth, too...)
- Eastners celebrate birthdays, but Dragaerans presumably celebrate the parents on the anniversary of a child's birth (which actually kind of makes sense... and especially makes sense for a longer-lived people who don't seem to have a lot of children, I suppose)
- Vlad asks Sethra why the charade and why couldn't they have just come to him. Sethra explains she can't leave Dzur Mountain at the moment.
"I gestured towards Morrolan. 'And him?'
'I wanted to see you myself.' She smiled a little. 'Which is just as well, since I might have had some trouble convincing him to walk into a Jhereg's place of business.'
Morrolan snorted."
Now, I first noticed this because Morrolan not only walks into a Jhereg's place of business but actually *asks* Vlad to see his office in Dragon and then sits there while Vlad clowns around. I guess there's a huge difference between "random Jhereg Sethra needs for business dealings" and "Jhereg whom I have decided is my buddy". But the other thing that jumps out at me in retrospect is that Sethra's "real" reason of wanting to see Vlad for herself is at least semi-bogus, since she already knows him perfectly well as Kiera. Is this Sethra trying to play the game fairly and not take advantage of things Kiera knows but she doesn't? Or is the excuse just BS, plain and simple?
- According to Sethra, most wizards are Athyra or Dzur. Athyra is no surprise, but Dzur is interesting! Is that just because of the Lavodes? I don't think we've met any non-Lavodes Dzur sorcerers, have we? Other than that, I think the only wizards we've met are Dragonlords actually (Morrolan, Sethra the Younger, presumably Adron would qualify), but I guess they're more an exception than the rule?
- It's really interesting just how hard-pressed Morrolan is in fighting Loraan magically -- sweat on his forehead as he holds him off, being thrown around, having to brace himself against a wall. He's got Blackwand, which is pretty formidable against the Jenoine, and he's a wizard apparently good enough for Court Wizard status just a couple of years later (though possibly that was a political appointment rather than a meritocratic one -- there is all that confusion over Kosadr and Morrolan and are they Court Wizards concurrently or what), and yet Loraan pretty clearly has the advantage. I wonder how much of that is the "wizard in his keep" advantage and what form that takes -- accumulated spells? having to fight against wards/magical booby traps as well as Loraan's active magic? It's hard to tell from the kind of fight they're doing, but they do seem to be going direclty against each other more than anything... Or is Loraan just that good? Or is Morrolan's strength as a wizard in other things? Or, hmm, does Morrolan receive a serious power-up from from the blood of the goddess that Vlad injects him with at the end? I mean, he's obviously no slouch even before, but maybe not THAT great?
- I keep forgetting that when Vlad and Morrolan almost get into a fight on the steps of Dzur Mountain, Morrolan doesn't actually draw Blackwand, and Vlad doesn't actually touch any of his squirreled away hardware, he just thinks about it, and Morrolan just takes a step out of knife range and looks at him. It's such an action-charged scene, I keep forgetting that very little action actually happens and the rest of it is mostly in Vlad's head. That's actually a very neat trick.
- I'm amused/gratified by just how impressed Vlad is with the effect of Morrolan with Blackwand:
The door burst open and Dragaerans started pouring through. About a zillion of them, give or take a few. [...] I looked at their broadswords and longswords as I drew my cute little rapier. I sighed.
"No, Vlad," said Morrolan. [he's now decided, out of the blue, that they are on first-name basis, apparently] "Get the staff. I'll hold them."
"But--"
Morrolan drew his sword, which assaulted my mind by its very presence and the room seemed to darken. [...] It was small for a longsword , and it seemed to absorb light from the room. [...]
Our eyes locked for a moment. "I'll hold them," he repeated.
I stood there, staring, for perhaps a second, then snapped back. "I can't get it [the staff] out of--"
"Right," he said and glanced around the room. If you're wondering about the guards during this whole exchange, they were stopped in the doorway, staring at Morrolan's sword and, I suppose, trying to work up the courage to attack. Morrolan's eyes came to rest on the pedestal on which one end of the golden chain rested, the other end hanging, coiled, in midair.
"Try that," said Morrolan. [...]
I paused long enough to look at the tableau of guards and Morrolan. All of their eyes were riveted on that blade.
Perhaps their courage would have failed them and they wouldn't have attacked, I don't know. But while they were considering, Morrolan charged.
- On that note also, I wonder what it is Morrolan recognizes in Spellbreaker, that he advises Vlad to try to use it to get the staff out of stasis or wards or whatever.
- Back at Dzur Mountain after the Loraan fight: "Loiosh spent his time hissing at Morrolan and being generally jumpy. [...] Morrolan kept glancing at Loiosh, as if he didn't quite know what to make of him. I rather enjoyed that." I wonder why Morrolan seems puzzled by Loiosh, at least to Vlad's eye... He seemed perfectly used to the Warlock's familiars, and I'm sure lots of his witches have some of their own. Is he just surprised that Vlad had chosen a jhereg? That seems unlikely, given that M himself chose a Morganti sword, because of course he can't do anything like a normal person. It seems more plausible that Vlad is just reading Morrolan wrong, but then what is M actually thinking? Or is Loiosh as unusual a familiar as Vlad is a witch, and thus deserving of wonder?
- On the scene where Sethra brings Vlad over to have klava with honey with her and Morrolan before talking shop: "If the whole thing was a scheme to put me in a better mood for helping them, I can only say it worked. I found it, at least, far preferable to the last idea they'd come up with." Interesting thing about that is that I had just read the bit in LoCB where Morrolan shows up at Dzur Mountain to demand tribute from Sethra. There's a bit there about how after a while he warms up to Sethra enough (despite her laughing at him pretty much the whole time) to share a meal with her, which is something, by Eastern tradition, that you do not do with your enemies. Vlad doesn't think of it in those terms -- it doesn't even seem like Vlad has the same tradition (plus Paarfi might've just been making it up, too; what the hell does he know about Easterners).
- So why does Vlad have Morrolan meet him in the Easterner's ghetto for their little fieldtrip to Deathgate Falls? Just out of contrariness? But "I think he enjoyed being the only Dragaeran in the place, too" (he would). And "he hadn't known that Ferenk's existed". (I wonder if Morrolan later sent somebody to buy up half the guy's cellars, or if he has his own sources of stuff like this directly from the East...)
- What is Kragar's story, anyway? ("That was my deal when I agreed to work for Nielar -- that I never had to give an order.") And I'd actually forgotten how adamant he was about this. All the more impressive how well he's been holding Vlad's territory together between Phoenix and Hawk.
- At Deathgate: "Morrolan cut back on the length of his strides so he woldn't keep getting ahead of me." (As someone who is pretty constantly being left behind by people with longer strides than me, I find this very aww.)
- "We rested under the open sky that night, which sounds romantic but wasn't" -- suuure, Vlad :P. Also, the same paragraph contains the vital information that Morrolan doesn't snore. Also: "It was, I have to say, hard to stay hostile to the man next to me, if only because the day was nice and the walk so pleasant."
- Who wants to bet that Morrolan having them drinking tea from invisible glasses -- rather than teleporting/materializing a normal glass -- was just totally showing off.
- I used to mostly skim the cat-centaurs episode, because it's so random, but I read it a bit more carefully this time, and one thing that jumped out at me is that Vlad introduces himself to them with his full name ("My name is Vlad Taltos") while Morrolan just says, "I am Morrolan." This is before Mist introduces herself, so I wonder if Morrolan knows cat-centaur conventions and is going with a single name (no noble title or family name), or what. Does he know these particular cat-centaurs from the prior visit he claims (though it does seem unlikely that it was during Zerika's descent, as he claims, unless Zerika came a second time...) I do wonder if he and Mist's tribe have met before, because Mist does this ritual "touch my spear" thing with Vlad but not with Morrolan, which seems to imply to me they've already done it on an earlier occasion. And/or does he just default to fairly informal outside of Dragaeran society? Anyway, his whole behaviour with the cat-centaurs is like the opposite of pompous (even though Vlad thinks his and Mist's parting speech is a bit formal and pompous anyway), which is interesting, given that Vlad required two whole synonyms for that word to describe him at their first meeting.
- The pedestals. Morrolan looks wistful (Vlad thinks) looking at the Dzur one. Vlad asks if he knows "any Dzurlords who've come this way" and Morrolan answers Sethra -- but there's no reason for him to be wistful about Sethra (she says herself she died before the Interregnum, so he never knew her before she came this way). It seems pretty certain that he must be thinking about Tazendra, and just not wanting to talk about it, and is thus giving Vlad a factually true and unhelpful answer (after all, Sethra is the only Dzurlord (or whatever she is) he presently knows who came this way, since Tazendra is dead...) Then at the Dragon pedestal: ""Morrolan paused there for some moments, and I backed up and gave him room for whatever he was feeling. His hand was white where he gripped the staff". I wonder who he's thinking about here. The fact that his closest relatives (Rollondar, his brother, Adron, presumably his mother as well) never got to make the trip to Deathgate, because most of them were consumed by the sea of amorphia in the Disaster? Or are there some Dragonlords that he's been sufficiently close with who have made the trip? And finally, the ahtyra: "Morrolan tied one end of his rope around this pedestal which some might think in poor taste, I don't know." I'm gonna choose to take this as a fuck-you to Loraan, tbh.
- "The water was very cold. My teeth started chattering, and I saw that Morrolan's were, too, but I was too cold to be pleased about it." And just a few pages later: "I sat up and looked at Morrolan; he seemed even more exhausted than I. He was also very wet, as I was, and he was shivering as much as I, which I took a perverse pleasure in noting." (oh look, Vlad has recovered his schadenfreude, I was worried there for a minute) "Presently he caught me looking at him. I suppose he guessed some of my thoughts, because he scowled at me. He sat up, and I noticed his hands twitching as another scowl crossed his features. 'Sorcery doesn't work here,' he remarked." Poor baby, missing his magic :P
- On a related note, how much do I want bickery hurt/comfort fic of the two of them during their life-changing fieldtrip? Huddling for warmth when there's no sorcery to warm up with, recovering from the aftereffects of the right-hand turns on the path, Morrolan taking care of Vlad after they finally get back out...
- Morrolan says "I was given a book to guide me through the Paths." and "It's a family inheritance." Really? Where from? And how did he obtain it? Seems like the sort of thing that would come from Adron if anyone...
- Morrolan is sure shrugging a lot, even well before this starts really getting on Vlad's nerves. The curious thing is that I'm also rereading bits of LoCB, as I mentioned, and he is shrugging all over the place there, too. I wondered if it's a personal tic of sorts (and if it's something SKZB got from his roleplaying friend, because it seems like an odd tic to just make up for someone). And then they meet Aliera and she shrugs the same way, so I guess it's actually a family trait: "She shreugged, a kind of one-shoulder-and-tilt-of-the-head thing that was almost identical to Morrolan's."
- One of the neat things for me about the flashbacks of Vlad joining the Organization is seeing the restaranteur's kid in him as he goes about his first jobs -- learning to sharpen a dagger to a point to stick in a target's eye rather than sharpening the edge to chop vegetables, noticing how badly the restaurant storeroom in which he's hiding is organized. And just young punk Vlad fumbling within the Organization in general, having to be told about where he is not to try to assassiante people (home, place of religion, in front of his family) and fretting about laying low and if he messed up or not by using Loiosh as his distraction. The other awesome thing about young punk Vlad is, of course, Loiosh calling him "Mama" and then switching to "Boss", and just Loiosh volunteering to be his helper and being the sensible one in that duo even back then, as a hatchling.
- I hadn't thought about it before, but, OK, so if Vlad had gone to the Paths of the Dead alone, Sethra could've showed him some easier paths. But because Morrolan is with him, they have to take the Dragonlord Path (because it's the only one Morrolan, as a Dragonlord, is premitted to know). There are 17 arches, so presumably there's a Jhereg one. Is it OK for Vlad to be on the 'wrong' path because him being an Easterner trumps him being a Jhereg? Or is he allowed on the Dragon path because of who he was in his past life?
- The sequential duel thing that Vlad doesn't go for -- I decided to count, and it looks like Morrolan and Vlad each dispatched six of the twelve Dragonlords attacking them, though presumably Morrolan was more orthodox/honorable in his fighting even after it dissolved into a melee. Also, I don't think I've ever noticed this before, but Morrolan's temper has a trigger, and it's Vlad calling him names, apparently. The first time they had their standoff, in Dzur Mountain, Vlad had just called him a bastard, now, in the Paths, Vlad says, "Drop dead, asshole" (and a bunch of other things, but fairly innocuous ones), and at that point Morrolan switched from glaring to: "His face went white and he took a step towards me. 'You never learn, do you?' He raised his sword until it was pointed at me. I held my hand out. 'Killing a man who isn't5 even holding a weapon? That would hardly be honorable, would it?' He glared at me a moment longer, then spat on the ground. 'Let's go,' he said." Now I'll need to keep an eye out for it in future books, because I wonder if Vlad did learn, after this, that while he could get away with a lot, calling Morrolan things like that to his face is not a good idea. Too direct an insult to his honor to ignore?
- It takes only one iteration of Vlad's "How can you tell?" (re: 'you are not dead') running gag for Morrolan to figure out that telling him to shut up will do zero good. (But Verra, at least, seems amused by it.)
- The doors in the Halls of Judgement "slowly and majestically swung open for us, with an assumed grandeur that seemed to work on me even though I was aware of it. 'Stole one of your tricks,' I told Morrolan. 'It is effective, is it not?' 'Yeah.'" Of course, now I know Morrolan stole the idea from Sethra c.LoCB. And I wonder if Sethra got the idea from the Halls of Judgement, since she would have visited them by that point, or if the Lords of Judgement got the idea from her. Frankly, the latter seems more likely, knowing Sethra's attitude about the gods.
- What the hell is Baritt's problem, anyway? Morrolan seems surprised by his attitude ("By this time I'd recovered enough to appreciate someone being contemptuous of Morrolan. Morrolan, on the other hand, didn't appreciate it at all. He drew himself up and said, 'My lord, if I have done something to offend you--'" I guess Baritt is pretty pissed about being dead, and if Aliera's return was somehow implicated in that (via Dragon Council politics?) could be blaming Morrolan for it... Also, why the hell can he apparently use sorcery in the Halls of Judgement (actually managing to shut up Vlad)? Is he on his way to reemerging as an undead or something? It's very weird... Also: "Morrolan bowed [to Verra and Barlan], but not as low as he had to Baritt. I didn't try to figure it out". No, really, what is it between Baritt and Morrolan? By Dragon, Morrolan doesn't seem to like him all that much, or at least doesn't appear overly heartbroken over his death, but that could be colored by Baritt being a jerk to him during Taltos, so I'm not sure that's indicative of anything.
- It's so interesting to me that Morrolan's justification to the dragon and the gods for why Aliera needs to be restored is "she is the Dragon Heir". It's not like there is something special about that role, and in fact, while Aliera is dead, there is a perfectly good Dragon Heir available, in his own person. Does he expect nobody to know that? Or is it just that it sounds better than "I need her to be Empress so that I can be Warlord"... (Doylistically, I'm pretty sure that Brust hadn't decided yet that Morrolan was Dragon Heir before Aliera turned up, not only due to the reasoning Morrolan gives to the gods, but also, they're kinda close to the potential theoretical end of the Phoenix reign at this point -- timeline puts Taltos at 239 post-Interregnum, only 50 years away from 289 P.I., which is the soonest the Cycle could turn -- with no handoff to another Phoenix possible since Zerika is the only surviving Phoenix, so I would think that the Dragon Heir would be better known even to random laypeople, but Vlad and Kragar talk about Morrolan as Zerika's buddy with the floating castle, not Dragon Heir... But it's much more interesting to think about these things Watsonianly.)
- OK, how is it that Morrolan can't remember Zerika's parents' names?? I mean, OK, Zerika never actually knew them, growing up with a Dragonlord family, but still! She's a close friend of his... that's weird.
- Verra asks Vlad and Morrolan their names. But... surely she and Morrolan have met before? Or is that just part of the formality in meeting in the Halls of Judgement that the petitioners have to introduce themselves? Or is he introducing himself to Barlan? Or is it time weirdness and so it's possible that he is meeting Verra for the first time? Or are meetings outside of the Halls of Judgement meetings with manifestations/avatars of the gods and thus don't really count?
- Interesting, so Kieron is brown-haired. Wonder where the golden hair of the e'Kieron line comes from, then.
- Vlad sure goes through a lot of girlfriends before Cawti... Sheila at 16 (the gold digger), Jeanine and Constance, whom he was two-timing, after his first kill (so, around 17), followed by Mara (gorgeous blonde with the nasty wit), Ibronka after the Morganti killing, and during the time of the book he's sleeping with Szandi. Also, apparently Kragar and Vlad double-date, and Vlad "discovered that a meal at Valabar's is one of the world's greatest aphrodisiacs."
- Valabar's is the first restaurant in the empire, and predates Adrilankha being a capital.
- Aliera, describing what happened to her from the Disaster till she wakes up: "Then someone shouted my name -- I thought at the time it was my mother." I actually really love Morrolan and Aliera's understated conversation here: "Aliera nodded, and I saw a tear in her eye. She said very quietly, 'It is the reign of a reborn Phoenix, isn't it?' Morrolan nodded, seeming to understand." :((
- Morrolan filling in Aliera on Interregnum and post-Interregnum events: "'Zerika, of the House of the Phoenix, retrieved the Orb, which somehow landed here, in the Paths of the Dead. She was allowed to return with it. I helped her,' he added." Oh honey, of course you did. (But, it's weird. I mean, Morrolan did definitely help Zerika in her subsequent adventures in Empire reunification, but according to Paarfi had zero to do with her recovering of the Orb or anything leading up to it. I mean there are the Epileptic Trees type speculations here, but really... This is one of the few things he outright tells Vlad during their journey; it is the *only* thing he tells Aliera that involves him directly -- it seems pretty important to him that people know this about him, which seems rather at odds with Morrolan's apparent general 'I will not lower myself to justifying my actions' MO as described by Teldra in Issola. Over on that page, the most plausible suggestions to me are actually "Paarfi is plain making stuff up and Morrolan was actually there" (maybe instead of Kytraan?) or the Verra's Window hypothesis, wherein he was there but nobody else was aware of this. I mean, I have no idea WHY either of those things would be true, but they seem less far-fetched than the other options...
- "I don't know of any case of a Jhereg testifying to the Empire against the Jhereg and surviving, yet there are still fools who try. 'I'm different,' they say. 'I've got a plan. No one will be able to touch me; I'm protected.' Or maybe it isn't even that well thought out, maybe it's just that they're unable to believe in their own mortaligy. Or else they figure that the amount of money the Empire is paying them makes it worth the risk. || But never mind, that isn't my problem." (God, he does irony so beautifully, considering this is Taltos and written just before Phoenix. I also find it interesting that of the possible motivations Vlad considers for snitching on the Jhereg are greed and arrogance, basically, and his own subsequent motivation doesn't even occur to him as a possibility.
- It costs 2,500 imperials to have someone killed and 10,000 imperials to kill someone Morganti. Sethra offers Vlad 7,000 to steal the staff. Also of note, Vlad "offers" Sethra and Morrolan 1,500 imperials for the "job" of killing Quoin. So not only is he insulting them with the farce of pretending to pay them for an assassination, he's also not paying them nearly enough :P
- It really jumped out at me this readthrough how much time Vlad spends looking at Morrolan's face here. Like, he reports his expression or lack thereof in pretty much every situation. I mean, OK, it doesn't have to have a shippy explanation, because Morrolan is the only familiar thing in the Paths of the Dead, a place where Vlad reeeeally doesn't belong, but it's very noticeable. In fact, he even remarks on it when he *doesn't* look over at Morrolan, when they first meet Kieron: "I wondered what Morrolan thought of him [Kieron], but I couldn't take my eyes off the Dragonlord's face to check Morrolan's expression."
- You know, whatever else, I've got to admire Aliera's sheer chutzpah in the face of absolutely everybody, starting with gods and ending with Kieron the Conqueror. Especially considering she was barely able to stand for a good chunk of her interactions, and has just learned of the death (and infamy) of her father and the entire world she has known.
- Also, Baritt and Aliera don't recognize each other when they meet. I found that a bit odd, since surely Baritt is old enough that he must've been alive prior to the Interregnum and must've known Adron the Dragon Heir? Maybe he hadn't met Aliera since she was staying on the country estates... He does seem to recognize the name quickly enough, and she his. And his cryptic "I crave a favor. If you scuceed, and I am still alive, don't visit me. I don't think I could stand it." I guess people speculate based on this, and based on Aliera giving the eulogy at his funeral, that they'd been betrothed -- but apparently without ever meeting?
- Verra says "Perhaps he can become undead, and leave that way. There are those who have managed this." I wonder if Morrolan a) entertained that possiblity when wandering around the Halls with Aliera and Vlad, and b) considered that this may be an option prior to agreeing to come with Vlad in the first place.
- Verra says Zerika was able to leave "because the Imperial Orb has power even here". That is interesting... How does that manifest, since sorcery (which relies on the Orb) doesn't work there? Or does some of it manage, and that's why Baritt could apparently use magic? Verra also says, "there are imperial rules against the undead holding official imperial positions" -- Emperor or Heir, I presume? Since wasn't Sethra Lavode Warlord in her undead state already? Or was that all pre-Interregnum?
- I don't think I'd ever noticed before that Vlad seems to seriously consider letting Morrolan help him with the witchcraft spell, and the reason he gives for not doing so is that he had only one kelsch leaf left, and "If you help, who will carry us both out?", which Morrolan seems to accept as good sense.
- I kind of love that Morrolan's response to Vlad's instructions to "Bare your arm" -- when he's holding a vial of unfamiliar liquid that he got gods know from where -- is "Which one?" I mean, Vlad is probably past answering frivolous questions like "Why?" but I still find it amusing. I bet Vlad did too, in retrospect. (Morrolan does hesitate a bit when Vlad is holding a knife and tells him to come closer.)
Quotes:
"I was being rescued. Oh, rapture."
Morrolan: "Those were wilder times" [during the Interregnum]
Vlad: "Do you miss them?"
He shrugged. "Sometimes."
"We were walking through swirling fog, which was merely annoying until I realized that there was no perceptible air movement to cause the fog to swirl. I pointed this out to Morrolan, who said, 'Shut up.' || I smiled, then smiled a little more as the end of a bare tree branch smacked him in the face."
M: "We will appear before the Lords of Judgement and ask them to restor my cousin."
Vlad: "Do we have any good reason why they should?"
M: "Our nerve for asking."
"I discovered, to my disgust, that I really didn't want to leave Morrolan there."
CSRB update:
Mix'n'Match: BLACKOUT! (3/6 challenges)
Reread of childhood favorite: Tomek in the Land of Kangaroos
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
School requirement you missed: Ulysses
+ CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list: Geek Love
Book with nameless protagonist: Rebecca
Book where I watched movie first: Divergent
Author's first language isn't English: Gromyko, God Krysy: Putnitsa
Non-fiction book: Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Book set before 1900: The Duchess War
Book heavily featuring animals: God Krysy, Gromyko (CHALLENGE MODE: book heavily featuring rodents)
Collection of short stories: Love is Hell
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book with a protagonist with a disability: Wonder
Rec from friend or media: Mistborn
Book with a female protagonist: Akata Witch
Book set in a place you've wanted to visit for a long time: Guardian of the Dead (New Zealand)
Book written by someone famous for things other than writing: Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist)
Funny book: A Blink of the Screen
Book with an author or protagonist of color: Smek for President
Book given to you as a gift: Republic of Thieves
Free Space: Hidden (Alex Verus #5)
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book with queer author or protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Book by an author I've never read before: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
[Other cards]
Random: BINGO (from last time) (6 bingos, 22/25 squares, 6/7 challenges)
Book set in Australia: Tomek in the Land of Kangaroos (CHALLENGE MODE); (not counting this one for "reread of childhood favorite on this card, 'cos that seems like cheating to check off a square and an unrelated challenge with the same book)
Book with antonyms in the title: North and South
Book with more than two protagonists: Stranger
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
+ CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list: Geek Love
Book where I watched movie first: Divergent
Book your parent/child loves: Looking for Alaska
Book heavily featuring food -- Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Book with a plant in the title: Tsvetok Kamalejnika, Gromyko
Book heavily featuring animals: God Krysy, Gromyko (CHALLENGE MODE: book heavily featuring rodents)
Book without magical creatures: The Duchess War
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book heavily featuring kids (CHALLENGE MODE: from a child's POV): Wonder
Book set on a continent you've never been to: Akata Witch (Africa)
Book from friends or media: Mistborn
Book set in a place you've wanted to visit for a long time: Guardian of the Dead (New Zealand)
Book written by someone famous for things other than writing: Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist)
Book by an author who shares the first letter of your last name (challenge mode: author who shares your initials): Smek for President, by Adam Rex
Free Space: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Book by queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Book with queer protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
No changes to the Serious Bingo (3 bingos, 20/25 squares, 2/7 challenges), so not posting the card, but the list is here for ease of tracking:
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
School requirement you missed: Ulysses
Rec from friend or media (CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list): Geek Love
Book with nameless protagonist: Rebecca
Book by an author you've never read before: Jennifer Lee, Fortune Cookie chronicles
Book not in English: Tsvetok Kamalejnika, Gromyko
Book set before 1900: The Duchess War (Courtney Milan)
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book with a protagonist with a physical disability: Wonder
Book by an author of color: Akata Witch
Book with a protagonist with a mental/social disability: Prisoner
Book with a female protagonist: Guardian of the Dead
Short story collection: A Blink of the Screen
Non-fiction book: Musicophilia
Books with a protagonist of color: Smek for President
Free Space: Point of Knives
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book given to you as a gift: Wool (birthday present from my friend R)
Book with red cover: Benedict Jacka, Hidden
Book by a queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones