#also this is my redemption after having said that fit's love language is gift giving

[hidedino]

my dissection of q!fit and q!pac's love languages how they lead to q!fit's insecurities.

pac's love language is gift giving. we could've observed this since the day of their first unofficial date when he'd given a rose to fit, albeit the whole idea was prompted by richas. but as their relationship had progressed, pac started showing this tendency more by himself. he kept confirming to fit that he was free to come and take anything from his storage system and also seemed happier than ever when fit had given him the wand he'd accidentally broken or the trident he didn't own until that point. even during the days leading up to the the confession pac was clearly very excited about fit giving him his leftover egg quest cookies and food on multiple occasions. and of course, there was the prison when pac kept giving fit roses or food items whenever he saw him. pac loves showing people how much he loves them by giving them items which he carefully chooses. he also feels overjoyed whenever he receives anything from fit, no matter what its value is because to him those gifts are the biggest affirmation of fit's love for him. and this is where fit's problem arrises.

fit's love language are positive affirmations. of course, he always gives a lot of support to all his friends, but even more so to pac. you can watch segments of compilations which are just 10 clips of fit shouting out every possible compliment at pac during a fight. he always throws in some whenever he hears pac self-deprecating himself or whenever he gets a chance to.

and then pac throws compliments back at him and suddenly he panics and laughts it off. because fit isn't used to receiving any positive affirmations and it pulls out his instincts of guarding himself from vulnerabilities. he becomes embarrassed and shy and turns them back at pac instead of accepting them.

so why does it seem like fit spends so much time by gathering and putting thought into every gift for pac when that isn't even his main love language? insecurities.

because he loves pac more than he loves himself. so he feeds into pac's love language like the amazing partner he is, but doesn't allow himself to let pac do the same.

one thing that had really struck me yesterday was how fit had mentioned he felt bad for not having given pac better gifts than pac got for him. he sees himself unworthy of pac's love because he feels like he can't prove to both himself and pac that he's good enough for him. he's unable to admit to himself that he doesn't need to compete for pac's love and that anything he does for pac only serves to make pac fall further in love with him.

so yes, sure, pac himself is quite insecure and fit is a great match for him in this regard as he naturally seeks to give him unprompted reassurance. but are we talking enough about fit's facade and how his emotional repression is still affecting him?

[theydeservedasoftepilogue]

Performativity and the Power of Collective Belief

Today marks the one-year anniversary that glorious, beautiful, triumphant, deeply human scene in which Jaime Lannister asks his beloved, Brienne of Tarth, to kneel so he can give her the one gift she truly covets – knighthood. A standout scene in what is overall a standout episode, it is inarguably the pinnacle of Game of Throne’s (otherwise abysmal) 8th season and arguably the pinnacle of the series as a whole. Certainly I was never as moved or captivated by anything this show has laid before me.

And I – and my fellow Braime shippers – were not alone. Multiple entertainment outlets wrote extended commentary on this episode, often praising this scene in particular. No real wonder. It is viscerally exhilarating, organic, beautifully acted, one of the few TV moments I could without hesitation describe as perfect.

But why?

On one level it seems obvious. It completes Brienne and Jaime’s unique character arcs – her pursuit of knighthood and his pursuit of redemption – while also overtly affirming the deep love they feel for one another. Granted, Jaime’s arc is a little more complex than Brienne’s, for he has always been a mixed bag of noble and misguided deeds. But regardless of his moral grey, Jaime has always found and heeded his better angels when Brienne was there to light the way. His total surrender of Cersei for the Lady of Tarth felt like the necessary end to his personal journey (the final two episodes notwithstanding).

However, I think this scene goes even deeper than these two characters and their particular arcs (both individual and shared). In addition to being a phenomenal consummation of their storylines, this scene also manages to be a perfect microcosm of what Game of Thrones was always trying to theorize and imagine, namely, how can social systems be made fairer, more just, more humane, more attentive and adaptable to the needs of those who must operate in and through them?

At the risk of stating what should be obvious, Game of Thrones is a story about power, and how power works. What made it better than a great many of its imitators was the far more varied and nuanced ways it took on its examination of power. It looked at how a huge range of social phenomenon overlap and intersect in the production and reproduction of power, including: • Wealth • Social networks • Kinship systems • Gender/sex/sexuality/reproduction • Name and reputation • Violence and militarism • Legal systems • Nationalism and tribalism • Tradition • Land and material resources • Religion/spirituality • Labor • Language • And more

Whatever else might be said of this show and its failings, it deeply understood that power is multi-faceted, diffuse, varied, complex, and tied to a huge range of interlocking socio-cultural systems that supersede all the individuals who operate within them.  

Humans require social systems to function. They allow us to, as anthropologists would say, create shared meaning, make decisions, divide up labor, meet our collective and individual needs, and yes, even give us pleasure. We cannot just do without social systems, nor would we want to.

But social systems also have a tendency to become calcified and perverted, used by some to exploit and abuse others. Social systems often start out as tools but are frequently repurposed as weapons in the hands of those who find ways to use them to unfair advantage, often perpetuating that unfair advantage over time.

When Game of Thrones begins, we are dropped into a world where this is the core conflict at hand. Deeply unjust and dysfunctional manifestations of power have taken hold, leaving those in charge of running the world deeply inferior to the task. An issue that becomes all the more salient as it becomes clear that Westeros, and the world at large, is facing down an existential threat from the White Walkers.

And that’s part of the point. Humans can and do face problems that cannot be solved at the level of individual action. We need systems and structures for survival. After all, winter is coming.

The arcs of characters like Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, and Lord Varys, are about asking – can the systems themselves be made better, made more just, made to truly help more than they harm? Can we have the tool without allowing it to become a weapon? And if so, how?

Game of Thrones has never been a particularly optimistic show, and I would argue this is valid. Humans are good at corrupting power, and it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. But I would also argue it does not behoove us to surrender to despair, because the belief that power is inherently unjust helps power stay unjust, the belief that it is unmovable is part of what keeps it unmovable.

Enter our heroes, facing down the Long Night, a seemingly hopeless battle in which there is likely no victory or survival. They sit by a fire, enjoying each other’s company as they contemplate their immanent doom. When Tormund – an outsider to the realms of men – asks why Brienne – an outsider to the realm of manhood – cannot be a knight, she explains, “Women can’t be knights.” The two social systems are in conflict, mutually exclusive. Why? Tradition.

In that moment, Jaime Lannister takes up the power he holds to make other knights, a power the social systems of Westeros have conferred to him by virtue of his wealth and name and kinship and gender and tradition, and he remakes the system with one performative* act. He re-renders the social systems of knighthood and gender by taking up the tools of which the act – the knighting ceremony – is composed and deploying them anew.

Power IS movable. Systems can be remade, and remade for the better.

The act is small, local, confined essentially to the people in the room. But it takes hold and confers nonetheless, partly because the other people in the room (symbolic of society as a whole) uphold and affirm it. They acknowledge it as real, which is what makes it ‘real,’ and therefore powerful – which is the fundamental secret of all social systems. They have the power they have because of collective belief, because we all ACT as if their power is real.

Gender and knighthood, like all social systems, are socially constructed, made by humans and able to be remade by them as we see fit. Part of the way unjust social systems perpetuate themselves is by generating the illusion that they are inevitable, natural, unchangeable, unmovable. When Jaime knights Brienne, the story affirms this fundamental, and fundamentally optimistic, truth about power – it can be remade.

What has always been does not always have to be.

Power can be reborn a female knight in shining armor because no social system is truly unmovable. Most of what is required is for us to acknowledge that the rules governing the systems that govern us are arbitrary, historically contingent, able to be rewritten through the ultimate tool of power we always carry with us – collective belief.

*This refers to the concept of performativity coined by linguist J.L. Austin in his work How to Do Things with Words, and popularized by gender theorist Judith Butler, most primarily in her work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. This essay is particularly indebted to Bulter’s work, as well as that of Foucault (whose theories of power are unparalled).

[catholiccom-blog]

Was Mary Free from Labor Pangs?

In the wake of the first (human) sin of Adam and Eve, God spoke directly to our original parents and indirectly to all mankind concerning some of the far-reaching consequences of that sin: physical death and disorder would be the lot of all mankind until the end of time. Indeed, in some sense, all of creation was changed for the worse as a result of this cataclysmic sin. But for our purpose, we want to focus on Genesis 3:16 and one particular effect of original sin:

To the woman [the Lord God] said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.”

Scripture teaches that as a result of original sin, God would “greatly multiply” the pangs of labor not only for Eve, but for all women. Many Fathers of the Church and theologians down through the centuries deemed it fitting that Mary alone would be exempt from such pains as a sign of her unique holiness. Thus, Mary’s freedom from the pains of labor is one of many reasons for belief in the Immaculate Conception of our Lady.

The Church has taught this as well on the level of the Ordinary Magisterium, but not with the same degree of authority with which it has taught Mary remained an “intact” virgin in giving birth to Jesus. However, we should note the fact that it has been taught on the level of the Ordinary Magisterium and that it was taught by many fathers of the Church. This is significant.

Although there is certainly no argument from necessity here, and this teaching is a matter of legitimate debate in the Church today, I argue it to be most fitting as a sign of hope for the entire body of Christ. All can see in this unique gift to Mary a sign of the ultimate deliverance from all bodily pain and suffering that awaits the Church through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Mary we see the fullness of the grace of Easter incarnated in a real human person. Analogous to God preserving the Mother of God in virginal integrity in giving birth to our Lord, Mary demonstrates in a more profound way both the truth of the Immaculate Conception and the saving power of Christ in preserving her from this effect of original sin.

Moreover, when we consider Mary in one of her many titles demonstrating her sinlessness—“the beginning of the new creation”—how fitting indeed is it that the “new creation” would be inaugurated without the pains of childbirth—one of the principle effects of sin in the first creation.

But more to the point, what evidence do we have for this belief? We can examine it from two sources: Scripture, and the teaching of the Catholic Church as it is communicated to the faithful through both Magisterial teaching and in the Liturgy.

Sacred Scripture

Isaiah 66

In a chapter laden with references to the coming of the New Covenant, or “the new heavens and the new earth” as we see in Isaiah 66:22—a text referenced in Revelation 21:1—we find this startling prophecy:

Listen, an uproar from the city! A voice from the temple! The voice of the Lord, rendering recompense to his enemies! Before she was in labor she gave birth; before her pain came upon her she was delivered of a son. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?

Not only do we find many of the Fathers of the Church referencing this text as referring to the miraculous birthing of Christ, but we find it difficult to apply it in its fullest sense to anything else.

Luke 2:7

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Some critics will say the fact that Mary “brought forth” Jesus would mean she experienced labor pains. Not necessarily. The teaching that claims Mary was freed from labor pains would agree Mary brought forth Jesus, but miraculously aided by God. There would be no reason not to use the language of Mary having brought forth Jesus.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas (who references St. Jerome), Mary being depicted as “wrapping” and then “laying” Christ in a manger is an indicator that she did not endure the normal pains of labor. Even in our day, doctors or nurses would do this kind of work. In the first century, it would be a mid-wife. Yet the Bible seems to indicate Mary did this by herself.

Magisterial Teaching

Though this teaching has never been the object of a formal definition of the Church and therefore is not infallible, the Catechism of the Council of Trent gives perhaps the clearest example of the general understanding of the Church through centuries past:

But as the Conception itself transcends the order of nature, so also the birth of our Lord . . . just as the rays of the sun penetrate without breaking or injuring in the least the solid substance of glass, so after a like but more exalted manner did Jesus Christ come forth from his mother’s womb without injury to her maternal virginity.

From Eve we are born children of wrath; from Mary we have received Jesus Christ. . . . To Eve it was said: In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Mary was exempt from this law, for preserving her virginal integrity inviolate she brought forth Jesus . . . without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of pain.

It seems fitting: Eve’s sin is causally linked to labor pain. The New Eve was uniquely free from the sin of Eve and did not experience that pain. Indeed, I argue it would seem contrary to our sense of Jesus and Mary as the “New Adam” and the “New Eve.” And—as I said above—it would not seem right to inaugurate this great and glorious covenant by experiencing pains that were the result of failure in the Old.

Pope Alexander III (1169)

[Mary] indeed conceived without shame, gave birth without pain, and went hence without corruption, according to the word of the angel, or rather (the word) of God through the angel, so that she should be proved to be full, not merely half filled, with grace and (so that) God her Son should faithfully fulfill the ancient commandment that he had formerly given, namely, to treat one’s father and mother with honor.

The Liturgical Tradition

The Church at prayer, both East and West, reveals a common understanding of Mary having been freed from labor pains. In the Mass of “Mary at the Foot of the Cross II,” celebrated in the Latin Rite before the 1969 reform of the liturgy, the Church prayed:

In your divine wisdom, you planned the redemption of the human race, and decreed that the new Eve should stand by the cross of the new Adam: as she became his mother by the power of the Holy Spirit, so, by a new gift of your love, she was to be a partner in his passion, and she who had given him birth without the pains of childbirth was to endure the greatest of pains in bringing forth to new life the family of your Church.

And also in the Byzantine liturgy, from the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord God and Savior, Jesus Christ and from the Synaxis of the Theotokos, Tone 2:

Behold! The Image of the Father and his unchangeable eternity has taken the form of a servant. Without suffering he has come forth to us from an all-pure Virgin, and yet he has remained unchanged. He is true God as he was before, and he has taken on himself what he had not been, becoming man out of his love for all. Therefore, let us raise our voices in hymns, singing: O God, born of the Virgin, have mercy on us.

The liturgy of the Church has always been an exemplary tool of catechetics and moral certitude theologically as well as the primary instrument of our spiritual nourishment in Christ. Thus, the fact that the Church asks its children to affirm Mary’s freedom from the pangs of labor in liturgical prayer at Mass is a testimony as to the authority of this teaching of the Church.

For more on this, check out my book, “Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines”

[muffinworry]

Thoughts on A Darker Shade of Magic

Thoughts on A Darker Shade of Magic (full of spoilers):

 ***

I have such mixed feelings about this book. I tore through it, made about 5 of my friends read it, made my first ever cosplay for it, and, and yet…

 It’s hard to think of another book that’s frustrated me quite like this one. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a light, brisk read through an engaging fantasy world. My problem with it, though, is really that it could have been so much more. It’s a case of a beautiful setting and interesting characters, rather let down by rather simplistic writing and /plot.

 The setting:

Four separate Londons: Grey (our London, c. 1819), Red (a healthy magic empire), White (starving and corrupt) and Black (lost and long-forgotten). Only the almost-extinct Antari magicians can travel between them. Our hero Kell is a young Antari, adopted into the royal family of Red London, and with no memory of his early years. He carries correspondence between the Grey, Red and White thrones (I’ll come to that in a minute), and has a bad habit of smuggling magical curiosities between the worlds, for a price. He promises his foster brother Rhy that he’ll stop before he gets into trouble, but of course he can’t resist one last delivery, which goes horribly wrong. He crosses paths with Lila, a clever street thief from Grey London, and together they have to make things right before all four worlds are destroyed.

 Schwab clearly loves London – our London – and the decision to set the story in the Regency period is a novel one. I can’t remember reading Georgian fantasy before. The image of Mad King George in his royal cell, writing letters to another world that nobody else believes in, is such a compelling one.  So why, with that great set-up, does Schwab ditch any further investigation of Regency London? Another review pointed out that our Grey London character, Lila, could come straight from modern America. Her language and thoughts are entirely modern. There doesn’t seem to be much reason for the historical setting, except the costumes and sword fighting. It’s a pity.

 Above all, I wanted more politics in the book, and more sense of the worlds we’re travelling through. It feels like such a wasted opportunity. It could have been a sprawling epic. To set the book in Regency London, at a time when England has just lost its American colony, and the French revolution is still fresh in peoples’ minds, at a time when the old order is being overthrown, and the idea of monarchy itself is being questioned, that’s fascinating to me. Why not take that as the backdrop, and contrast it with Prince Rhy, heir to a 1000-year-old empire, now at risk because he happens not to have been born with strong magic.

 Let us really feel Rhy’s desperation, his need to prove himself and his fear of letting everyone down, that drives him to accept White London’s dangerous gift in the first place. And White London, where there’s no such thing as a dynasty, where the throne changes hands with violence every few years – show us the innovative ways that its citizens have evolved to make do without magic. Give me a White London that was forced to develop technology at a much faster rate because it couldn’t rely on its scarce magical resources. For that matter, what does religion look like, in a world where every new ruler promises to free the people, to bring back the magic? Where the people are desperate to believe, even though they’ve seen fraud after fraud? Red London abandoned White, centuries ago, and left them to starve, and White is understandably furious and sees themselves as entitled to take reparations in whatever way they can. There’s a lot that could have been written there about colonialism and empire, and the plundering of natural resources that leads to war. The book could have been a meditation on power and politics, and what it means to sit on a throne.

 And against this backdrop of worlds in upheaval, you have a story of family and love and sacrifice. This is where the book is stronger.

 The characters

 Kell is the central character, the one whose point of view anchors the book. As an Antari, his rare magic makes him a target, a threat, or a prize for everybody, from his adoptive parents, to the villains. Kell is fairly well fleshed out: he’s good-hearted, but he has a temper; he can’t resist showing off at times, he’s prone to self-pity, he makes some very questionable decisions, and he can be violent, even cruel. He loves his family but feels trapped and used by them too, with some justification (and what a great scene where Lila scornfully tells him that at least he grew up with a roof over his head).

 Prince Rhy, Kell’s brother, seems to be many readers’ favourite, and it’s easy to see why. He’s just immensely appealing; a charming flirt who nevertheless wants to do right by his kingdom, and worries intensely that he may not be up to the job. He wants to Kell to settle down, to stop risking himself, to fit better in into the royal family. At the beginning of the book, Kell is chafing at his family bonds; by the end, he’s longing for them. Rhy and Kell love each other, despite their flaws and it’s written so sincerely, that by the time Rhy is in danger, it’s utterly believable that Kell would sacrifice himself to save his brother.

 Delilah (Lila) Bard, the street thief from Grey London, suffers from a case of “I’m not like those other girls.” She scorns dresses and corsets, and yearns to be a pirate. She’s rash and outspoken, confident that she’ll win in every situation, and spends most of the book exasperating everyone she comes into contact with. Rather a cliché. I can see why many readers find her insufferable. Personally, I think she has just enough charm to get away with it, but only just. My biggest problem, like I said above, is that she doesn’t seem at all connected to 1800s London. More worryingly, she’s the only female character given POV chapters, and the book sorely needs more women interacting. As @danceny pointed out in their review, the Queen, Kell’s foster mother, says virtually nothing in the entire series. (For that matter, what’s the role of women, as a whole, in Red and White London societies?)

 Lila also responsible for this line that made me grit my teeth:

 “Tell me, do you underestimate everyone, or just me? Is it because I’m a girl?”

 Note that at the time, Kell is trying to persuade her not to fight Astrid, who is not only female, but also older and much more powerful than Lila. It’s a nonsensical outburst from the streetwise Lila, and feels like an example of Schwab trying to prove how not-sexist her hero Kell is, rather than building a comprehensively egalitarian world.

 So Lila reads less like a strong female character and more like a Strong Female Character ™ but I will say that her primary motivation is to get her own ship, and while she undergoes some character growth, she stays focused on her goal, and the book doesn’t derail on a forced romantic plot, for which I’m eternally grateful.

 Athos and Astrid Dane, the twin rulers of White London and absolute monsters, whose only redeeming quality is their fierce love for each other. I would have liked more about their relationship, and how it could be contrasted with Kell and Rhy’s.

 Disclaimer: I was reading about Les Enfants Terribles right before I read ADSOM, and Kerry Greenwood’s description of Jean and Jeanne Bourgoint as “Doomed, inseparable, morphine-slender and golden" definitely coloured how I saw the Danes. I don’t know if Schwab intended it, but right from the beginning, I assumed that the Dane twins are dying, that the cancerous magic they have to use to hold onto the throne is rotting them from the inside out, and that’s why they’re so desperate to break through to healthy Red London.

 It’s a testament to Schwab that she created a pair of villains who drink blood and tile their palace with the bones of their enemies, and still manage to be frightening instead of laughably over the top. I’ll be honest: I love how much fun they have in the book. In every single appearance, they’re having the time of their lives. I love a gleefully unrepentant villain. The scene where they get Kell drunk is horrifying and hilarious.

 Holland, the only other Antari (that we know of...), is a servant of the White throne, and we find out later, is actually soul-bound to obey Athos Dane. If the Danes are glorious monsters, Holland is the other kind of villain, the one with the tragic backstory and the possibility of redemption. We get Holland’s history through Kell, and we don’t really know much about Holland’s own thoughts and feelings. He exists to hinder Kell and Lila, and to be a living warning to Kell about the dangers of power and ambition. It’s a another good moment when Kell finally sees himself through Holland’s eyes, and realizes just how young and naïve he must seem to the other Antari.

 Magic

 Hmmm. I really like the idea of magic as a sentient natural resource that can be compelled, or pleaded with. The scene where Kell has to beg the magic to open a door for him is great (and highlights the importance of the word please). Magic as a dangerous commodity, a bit like nuclear energy, something that has to be handled with great care, something that society is founded on. It makes a great deal of sense in the book, which is why the reveal in Book Two was a bit disappointing to me, but I’ll talk about that in another review.

Plotholes

 I’d love it if anyone would like to clarify these, because it’s entirely possible that I missed out on something, but, plotholes that threw me while I was reading:

 -       The Coup

-       Kell in White London

-       What was in those letters

 The Coup: What exactly is the Danes’ plan? And why doesn’t it have more fallout?

 So. The twins find a broken stone from Black London, and realize that they can use it to tear down the doors between the worlds and seize the Red throne. Half of it needs to go to Red London, to do that. They don’t want to send Holland because if he’s caught, it’ll be obvious that it’s their plot, so they trick Kell into carrying it home with him. Fine. So far so good.

 But.

 Why then, do they immediately send Holland after Kell, to murder and set fire to Red London while he chases Kell in the world’s least subtle chase? Astrid already has Rhy under her control; why send Holland at all? 

 For that matter, Kell is convinced that it can’t be the Danes who slipped him the stone, because as power-hungry as they are, they’d surely never let go of it, which is a good point, so how are the Danes unaffected by the stone?  Kell and Lila are both terribly tempted by it, but the greedy and possessive twins aren’t?

 Finally, the coup fails, but not before Astrid compromises the entire royal family and half the nobility at the ball, and the palace guards. Combined with the black magic plague, this should have terrible ramifications for the stability of Red London society and politics. Yet by the end of the book, it seems to have been largely hushed up.

 Kell in White London:

 The timeline seems off here. Kell is 22(?) or thereabouts? He’s been to White London several times; he met Holland and the old king before the Danes took the throne. But the Danes have been in power for nearly 8 years (in a world where the throne usually changes hands every 1-2 years, per canon).  Was Maxim really sending his young teenage son to run his errands in a warzone?  And when Astrid sees Kell, she says “let me see how you’ve grown,” which would make sense if she hasn’t seen him for years, but Kell’s been there often enough that the populace knows him, and we know there’s a regular correspondence between White and Red London. It’s a small point, but it brings me to my biggest issue, which is,

 The Letters:

 What is in that correspondence between the thrones? We’re told that the letters to Grey London are simple formalities, due to George III’s failing health, but the ones between Red and White London are “constant and involved” and leave King Maxim worried and stressed. People (apart from Kell and Holland) can’t travel between the worlds, nor can goods, so what, exactly, is there to talk about? Why does Maxim even bother to correspond with the murderous and borderline insane twins? What do they write about?  Inquiring minds want to know.

 The Writing

 So. Love and sacrifice, freedom vs. safety, and the cost of power, are the themes of the book. They’re never really explored in-depth, though, and the book reads more as older YA than as an adult novel. A more literary book would have strengthened these themes, and shown rather than told us about them. The jumping between characters’ POVs is unsettling because so many minor characters get chapters of their own, and it feels unnecessary, like it’s a crutch to get information to the reader that we should really be inferring through the main characters, Kell and Lila. I’ll also note again that Lila is the only female character to get her own POV (where is my Astrid chapter??). The characters tend to explain their motivations out loud, in simplistic language, and their actions tend to be predictable.

 I think, on balance, the characters are just charming enough to get away with this, but others have disagreed, and I understand why.

 The writing is lovely at times; at others, it made me grit my teeth in annoyance. There are some subtle bits I enjoyed on second reading (“Rhy” sipping tea while waiting for Kell to wake up, and wearing a mask instead of his usual crown) but for the most part, the language is simplistic and repetitive. 

 What Schwab does very well is write visual scenes. A few things I can’t wait to see in a tv adaptation:

 -       The blood-red Thames

-       The “stone forest” in White London

-       The scene in the Grey London pub, with Kell showing off for Ned

-       Lila and Astrid fighting, both in Regency men’s clothes, one in black, one in white

-       The soiled cathedral of White London’s castle, all vaulting marble beauty and bloodstains.

-       The masquerade scene because I am such a sucker for a masquerade ball

-       The costumes, oh my goodness

-        Kell’s coat

Anyway. A few scattered thoughts. I didn’t mean to ramble on quite this much. It’s a good book, I have a soft spot for it, and I’m looking forward to reading the third when it comes out in February. I just think that it could have been so much more.

[reece75gordon-blog]

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