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Bea wrote: "Barry wrote: "Ok finished.

The ending was somewhat ... unexpected and slightly disappointing, after building up an intriguing court politics and very original magic system and cultures.

Itani

1..."
Yeap, I mean at that point there were four different options, imo:
(view spoiler)[
1. You kill Heshai and/or his andat and eliminate the potential for the Khai to take revenge militarily against the Galts. But this doesn't eliminate the fact that the Galts would keep on trying.

2. You kill Amat, and eliminate the potential that the Khai would be persuaded to attack the Galts. Also doesn't eliminate the threat that the Galts could keep trying.

3. You kill Wilsin and inadvertently discover his supposed confession letter, case closed. Perhaps, the Khai would let it go after that.

4. You send away / kill Maj and significantly weaken Amat's case.

So, killing Heshai basically as a favor to Seedless seemed useless and cruel. In fact, by doing so, Itani basically weakened the Khai's position so much that it could invite invasion from the Galts, which would result in countless deaths anyway.

In the beginning I expected Itani to somehow discover a different way to control the andat, without accepting the harsh lessons of the school and the Dai-kvo. And I still expect him to develop into that guy. But, like I said him killing Heshai didn't really align well with his personality so far.

So, if Itani's goal was to prevent deaths and war, #3 would seem to be the most ideal option.

I also want to say, if you want to get rid of Heshai and/or the andat, there are probably easier ways than a convoluted plan involving abortions. He's drunk every night. Just do what Itani eventually did. Hire Torish Wite for andat sake and be done with it ...

The Khai, despite knowing the importance of Heshai and the andat, didn't seem to particularly care about their safeties. Despite the fact that Heshai was a well-known drunk, who visited unsavory parts of the city. Furthermore, Heshai didn't seem like a guy who knows any self-defense techniques.

So, hiring a killer should be easy. (hide spoiler)]

Barry wrote: "Bea wrote: "Barry wrote: "Ok finished.

The ending was somewhat ... unexpected and slightly disappointing, after building up an intriguing court politics and very original magic system and cultures..."

I guess we'll see what the repercussions are soon. Or I hope so. I'm not really sure where the story is going.

You're right though. (view spoiler)[There were a lot of options to take care of the situation that didn't involve destroying a country. (hide spoiler)]

Barry wrote: "Siobhan wrote: "Barry wrote: "End of Ch 14

Wilsin "

I feel like you have a really good grasp on this world of Poets and Andats and I'm just really not there yet haha.

RE Liat: [spoilers removed]..."

They're all really good questions. I hope we get more explanation too. I think we will. :)

Kaitlyn wrote: "i really enjoyed this book can't wait to see if there will be others"

Not sure if this was posted in the wrong thread? The series is finished, we're reading the second book now :)

I am still reading A Betrayal in Winter. So far I find it has more blood in its veins than Book 1.
Found it a slog to finish Shadow in Summer and couldn’t put my finger on why. I had no complaints AND there was so much to love. I suppose it was because it was hardly a happy book? I appreciate variations in mood and tone, heck, even sentence length but here…this book…everyone in it was so miserable all the time, yes? Abercrombie knows to switch it up, I was thinking. So do Lawrence and Martin and Erikson.
I liked the technicals of DA’s craft (more on this later) but found it hard to care about these chars, their motivations…they all seemed so, soooo bloodless. Even a bustle and din of Saraykhet reached me muffled�
This book…reading it I felt so tired. Like I were swimming thru a grey fug…I suppose people with acute starvation and/or dying limbs feel like this…they look at the place where it is supposed to hurt and wonder why it no longer does. I suppose this is because “it� has been starved of nutrition too long.

ALLBOOK CHAR ARCS
(view spoiler)[
When the baby dropped out of that poor simplistic Maj…here is the thing…I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the tropey ending image of “our hero with a broken heart� sailing away from the fallen city either.
Because Otah…our poignant stoic protag with the commonplace name…tell what does he do that is so damn heroic? What does this git DO except *snort* always get disillusioned and leave the place? He left his school, he left his uuuuuh “friends”…the only time he even felt alive to me…a human of breathing passions...was when he was strangling that poor made for tragedy character Heshai. And even that was impersonal.
Enough has been said about Liat I think, across all the old threads so I won’t add…except BK2 PREDICTION SPOILER (view spoiler)[ I wonder if she will resurface, baggage in tow and ambition glossed over, when Otah becomes (very reluctantly) the Khai Machi since I suspect this is how Book 2 will play out. Abraham spare her the embarrassment of flogging the dead horse� (hide spoiler)]
Also I didn’t care about Heshai and Maati and the whole damn bunch of them. I WAS dimly surprised that there is still some tenacity, some survival instinct, some life left in that old dog Wilsin AND dimly outraged when Amat was beaten and had to swallow her pride for greater reasons…Amat and Seedless were prolly my fave chars in this volume. I was kinda sorry to see Seedless go because I will miss his acidic philosophies but thassit.
So I was astonished at the place I have gotten to…that I am able to be this callous and I didn’t know why I couldn’t bring myself to care anymore. I dunno…what is wrong with me, Siobhan???? Because I am ALSO the person who woke screaming several nights in a row when the two Jag oorphans were stuck for eternity in the Rent. That’s too vague, nameless and unspecified to be a spoiler…I’ve had to pause on that one�
(hide spoiler)]

I went on ALL our old LPQ threads, day before yest. I read each comment and I dunno how but some of the greyness went away from this series…simply from the effect of influence…because you are all my friends and I love how you loved it…Finbar’s right…BRs do make all things better.
I made a list. Here is what I liked all along:
FULLBOOK TECHNICALS
(view spoiler)[
1. I liked the show not tell, esp in the unfolding of the Liat-Itani-Maati arc.
2. I MOST loved the sparseness of the prose so forgive me for getting a little gushy here. There is a…something??? power in economy� you can feel when there are vast reserves held in check, when you know there is much more held back than given. For me that sense of a banked fire or the sheer tonnage swirling behind a dam is conveyed, its the ultimate mental turn on.
So when Erikson BoTF 2 DG +Tigana nonplot comparative + cheesy song lyrics (view spoiler)[ emblematically saved the two dogs to show that “the heart will go on and on� I almost went a little crazed with joy. I was ready to forgive him anything, any amount of pain simply because he is so capable of producing beauty. And I remember thinking it took GGKay (tiresomely) almost the whole of Tigana to explore this theme of memory and remembrance and yada yada. (hide spoiler)] Anyway, I enjoyed how DA can do this too. For example, when he described Seedless� voice as “honey and ashes”…I stopped and was staring at the page…because…how to improve on this? Three throwaway words. Fukkin� perfection!

3. The man is certainly sparse enough with his prose but he ALSO has enough of an evolved aesthetic sense to know the value of ornament purely for itself. I really appreciated that the gestures are part of the CULTURE of the world and not the magic system. I like that in this world the magic is a painstaking effort of craft, rather than puffs and bangs and smoke. I normally like my magic to be mystically diffuse and undefinable rather than a rigid set of rules and laws (Rowling the exception BECAUSE) but any magic drawn from words will appeal to alla us readers I think. The andat=slave thing is not a new idea...not for anyone who has seen Aladdin or love A Thousand & One Nights…heh�phenomenal cosmic powaaaaarrr��
All this seem like they were conscious decisions. Very long ago, I had feared the gestures would be cartoon-y like exaggerated sephamore…that I’d be put off by them…how baseless and foolish most of our fears turn out to be, no? And how ineffably dear the people become who reassure us with such a light hand even when we are being pure stupid. We balk at charity but are extremely greedy for any gifts of the heart. Certainly we are neither deaf nor blind. On;y sometimes lost for words…hard to believe tho this may be.
(hide spoiler)]

Ohk…I hope y’all don’t think I wrote that pointless essay simply because I am in love with the sound of my own voice/complete attention slu+/thread stealer or something. Shutting up and sitting on it has never been a problem. And I know I am very late, too late perhaps to add value for any of you currently moving thru the series.
Truth is…I am swimming against the current here. A current of my own forging, I admit. I have made it a habit of staying away and somehow contracted that problem of reading the books but not making any comments on the thread. Here’s the thing…it get worse with time. It gets easy, too easy to leave, to keep leaving, to never look back. Or to stay quiet and passive…to become another of the ones who never post anything. But with this post, I am fighting it because I experienced firsthamd how all your posts literally breathed life and colour into this series for me and I want to do the same for someone else.
+ this is the second time I have faced the choice of running from this place or not. I don’t know WHAT it is about here…keep asking myself…I suppose it is only that you…all of you…everyone here has so much more HEART than is found in the common way? So this one’s not just to get me back in the habit of being in BRs again. These posts were also Thank Yous, and Gratefuls to each one of you who come here and participate, leave spoilers for everybody�
+ Also SO WHAT if I am that total cheesemite who comes to threads and updates them weeks and months later? So what if I made a complete ass of myself here yet again?
Boggart save me on the day I lose this ability to be comfortable with my own Riddonkulus�

For the person who had the question about the honorifics: here is how far I have reached and my reasoning could be faulty. KVO is used to address teachers, superiors and the like. CHA is a bit formal for business associates (Niit-cha, Amat-cha) and KYA is informal and has a bit of affection in it (Maati-kya etc)�
Ok I think I have held y’all hostage to sheer pretyped randomness for long enough!!!

Thank you for all your thoughts, Zaara! Always a pleasure to read.
I think a few of us have had similar feelings on this series, especially books 1 and 2. Like there's so much good about them, it's undeniable, but there's also something about them that just didn’t grip me. It felt like a bit of a chore to get through the first few hundred pages, then the end finally sped up.
Totally agree with you on the characters. (view spoiler)[I don't think they're very good people, and I don't even think they're redeemable people. I struggle to care about them for that reason. (hide spoiler)]

Glad you're catching up Zaara :) I think the characters are where my biggest problem is in this series. (view spoiler)[So many good things about the book to like but without a character to really root for it takes the enjoyment down a notch. (hide spoiler)]

Thanks you two, for coming back for me...I will just quietly read the rest of the series...I'll only post if there's something I absolutely need to share...