awakeTHERE WILL BE SPOILERS.
Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.) I will be DELETING all comments containing spoilers which have been left on other posts. No one gets to spoil people here without a label.
You can also start a discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.
Have fun, and try not to bleed on the carpet.
September 3 2014, 04:45:59 UTC 2 years ago
1. Massive revelations with teasing gaps in them.
2. Toby bleeds a lot.
3. The Luidaeg is awesome, also massive revelations with teasing gaps in them.
4. Toby bleeds a lot.
5. Massive revelations with teasing gaps in them.
6. Toby gets cleaned up.
7. Toby bleeds a lot.
8. Toby gets cleaned up again.
9. Toby bleeds a lot, also drinks more blood, triggering more massive revelations with teasing gaps in them.
10. Simon Torquill makes a remark about Toby's lack of humanity, thereby chiming uneasily with my musings on how on Earth Toby can still have more blood left to bleed out.
11. Toby bleeds a lot.
12. Book wraps itself up nicely, feeling reassuringly like a story despite all the teasing gaps in all the massive revelations.
But seriously, it's rare -- and weird! -- for a book consisting mostly of revelations given on the one hand and withheld on the other to feel so satisfying. Stories that rely on mystery are often taunting you with what they are withholding in a way that can make the wait for more information unbearable on the one hand, and the payoff slightly disappointing on the other. But this book tells you things, and makes them meaningful, and somehow manages to keep doing this in a way that is perpetually satisfying in terms of what is revealed and perpetually interesting in terms of what is not revealed. The story just keeps coming out like Toby's infinite blood, and never gives the slightest hint of anaemia.
There's so much more to learn! I'm already speculating on the identity of Amandine's mother. Of course, she could have been born like Athena, fully grown from Oberon's head, but I feel like this would imply a wisdom that the other characters are sure she does not have. (I like the Janet-from-Tam-Lin idea mentioned above, though. I think my favourite possibility is that Amandine's mother might have been mortal. It would just seem sort of thematically appropriate). Then, too, there are all Arden's hints from the last book about the Last Among The First, which are sort of glanced at by the storyline but not mentioned by any of the characters directly, and which I will patiently wait to be enlightened on. I also really, really want the disappearance of the Lord and Ladies to be Toby's ultimate case, but I guess we'll have to wait and see if the story is leading there or not.
September 5 2014, 08:00:58 UTC 2 years ago
September 15 2014, 00:16:26 UTC 2 years ago
July 18 2016, 17:26:51 UTC 11 months ago
I was just rereading this thread for answers about something that seems odd back in ALH and this comment made me laugh out loud.