THE WINTER LONG open thread!

Awesome as usual.

I was especially impressed by the scene where Jazz is dying and May is freaking out while also trying to explain to Toby how to save her. The way May was talking, and the various kinds of tension in that scene were just right in ways I'm having trouble explaining in words. But it just worked so well.

Also, it was unsettling to see that the Luidaeg is killable, though I was sure, from a broader narrative standpoint, that she wouldn't stay dead, because she clearly has more story left, so of course that meant that Toby would be able to bring her back. After all, there's stuff that needs to happen with the Selkies.

Speaking of the Luidaeg, I also love how she's gotten more and more blatant about making sure Toby knows the rules, prompting her to ask for help a third time, or telling her that she has to say, "I understand" in order to accept the Luidaeg's debt to her. And that scene, in particular, also left me wondering whether the Luidaeg has a specific reason to want to be in Toby's debt, whether there's something (or more than one something) that she'll be able to do at Toby's request that she wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

In general, I was shocked by just how not-shocked I was by most of the revelations in this book. Which is not to say I saw them coming, because I didn't. (Though I think one of my friends mentioned her Eira=Evening theory to me at some point, only I then forgot she'd said it.) It's just that every new piece of information made so much sense that all of them seemed to flow organically from the story, leaving me nodding and going, "oh, of course," even though I hadn't predicted a single one of them. So that was some good foreshadowing.

Also, as a detail person, I was left thinking about how magic smells, and how that smell can change, as it did with Simon. I wonder how that works, and also whether Toby would be able to see past such a change. It also left me wondering how changing the balance of someone's blood might change the smell of their magic. What does Raysel's magic smell like now, I wonder? Especially because it seems to me that both the roses and the hot wax come from her mother's side. (Though I suppose roses also come from her father's firstborn, clearly, and maybe there's some other origin for the hot wax, but I tend to associate candle wax with Blind Michael.)

And the new information about the Selkies got me thinking about how a Selkie without a skin is a merlin, which means they've got a small amount fae blood in them even if they don't get a skin. I was left wondering whether they're descended from a specific race, or just merlins in general, and what accepting a skin does to their magic. After all, Reysel was able to borrow one a few books back without permanent change, but when Toby was a merlin in Chimes at Midnight, the Luidaeg offered her a skin, but said it would change who she was permanently. It also left me wondering what Toby could do for Selkies who hadn't gotten skins, whether she could take what little fae blood they had, and change that balance so that they'd be fully fae without the skins. (Also now wondering whether a Selkie with a skin is kind of like the changeling version of a Roane.)

Lastly, I am noticing more and more the close connection between roses and blood.