A RED-ROSE CHAIN open thread!: seanan

A RED-ROSE CHAIN open thread!

To celebrate the release of A Red-Rose Chain, here. Have an open thread to discuss the book. Judging by the comments I'm seeing, some of you have had time, and I'd really, really rather book discussion (sometimes including spoilers) didn't crop up on other posts.

THERE 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.

scamander360

September 2 2015, 04:04:00 UTC 1 year ago

New comment

Lots of fun stuff here. (I loved this book!) No sane monarch outside the Mists is ever going to let Toby through their gates ever, ever again. And if Arden's neighbors start misbehaving, now all she has to do is threaten to send Toby to do diplomacy at them.

Unless someone steals his body, Arden's brother Prince Nolan should definitely be awake in the next book. I could see everyone deciding to let Rayseline sleep on, but Simon stands a good shot of being awoken. The Simon/Toby relationship was my favorite part of The Winter Long, so I'm really hoping he wakes up soon.

I was surprised that Eira's magic didn't smell like a literal winter rose.

I was also surprised at how sane Ceres seemed. I'd been assuming that Luna's craziness came in large part from being a mixture of Maeve and Titania, especially since Rayseline's Blodynbryd-self (during her Choice) seemed like such a psycho.

One thing confused me: in The Winter Long, the Luidaeg tells Toby, "My father denied [Eira]. And her mother bound me. I was forbidden to spread lies—literally forbidden." But here, Toby says the Luidaeg's "tone of voice was one of the few deceptions she had left, thanks to her big sister geasing her to always tell the truth." Slip up, is Toby misremembering, or does the first part somehow not mean "Titania bound me and forbade me to spread lies"?

lysystratae

September 3 2015, 15:05:32 UTC 1 year ago

Regarding Luidaeg and lying - she cannot lie, her words must be true. That doesn't mean she can't use her tone of voice or body language to misdirect; I can say "this tastes like almonds", and based on my tone of voice and body language you can assume whether I think that's a good thing, a weird thing, a bad thing, or something so awful you've insulted my ancestors and I'm now going to kill you. As long as it did taste like almonds to me, I haven't violated the rules of the binding - and yet I can still deceive you, by making you think I hate almonds when I don't.
Or, make you think I'm a horrid scary woman who will eat your face for calling me :)

September 3 2015, 16:46:55 UTC 1 year ago

Yes, that was very clear. What confused me was the question of WHO bound the Luidaeg to prevent her from lying. In "A Red Rose Chain", Toby indicates that it was directly done by Eira, but in "The Winter Long", the Luidaeg seemed to really clearly identify Titania as the one who did it.