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 7 2014, 07:37:06 UTC 2 years ago
I've been doing a reread of all eight books, looking for clues and such (and damn, we really need a wiki at this point). Toby identifies Marcia as a quarterblood changeling each time she's introduced -- but damn if I can find a mention of just what Marcia is a quarter of. There's a mention of hearth-magic in Book 5, but there's no mention of what fae type she is. Nor can I find a mention of what Marcia's magic smells like (if someone spots it, please let me know).
And then in this book, we have Marcia being unaffected by Evening's knockout spell. My current theory is that Marcia is someone strong masquerading as someone weak -- and it's the perfect disguise, really. Faerie is so biased against changelings, who would possibly pretend to be a quarterblood, and willingly give up access to the majority of their power? (Someone who really needs to hide. Someone very patient. Someone with a very good reason.) And quarterbloods dies so quickly, in comparison to the rest of Faerie -- they could switch identities whenever they needed to.
September 7 2014, 12:30:01 UTC 2 years ago
I initially thought of Marcia as a Firstborn in disguise partly because of the Luidaeg and her shapeshifting. An illusion certainly doesn't seem like it would pass Toby's notice, but maybe a really well-done shapeshift could. Nevertheless I do think it's a bit off that Toby, with her skillset, wouldn't notice that much power--I can readily believe other faeries dismissing Marcia immediately since she's a changeling, but Toby wouldn't do that.
As for August, I did have a bit more thinking about it and since Toby was able to make herself less fae (with the goblin fruit) I figure it's somewhat feasible for August to have done it to herself, under some really messed up circumstances (similar to Toby's goblin fruit). Someone abducted her, made her do that, and eventually, there she was. But my problem here then, is that with fae blood as thin as she has, she has to be visibly older than Toby--and she doesn't come across to me as older (I don't quite remember if her age/visible age is ever explicitly mentioned?). Of course, if she's been transformed to quarter blood fairly recently (elf-shot, then she got out of it, and is less fae as a result/shortly after, etc) then that would make sense.
September 7 2014, 17:29:42 UTC 2 years ago
September 8 2014, 02:46:58 UTC 2 years ago