Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: awake
  • Music: Thomas wandering around the room, chirping.

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.
Tags: a red-rose chain, discussion post, toby daye
  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    Help
  • 172 comments
...go 4 levels up... Expand

M Reed

September 3 2015, 19:21:34 UTC 1 year ago

The problem is that everyone in Silences (well, associated with the court, anyway) /already knows/ that he is responsible for the elf-shot cure -- thus, the whole "I don't want to be a hero" think at the end of the book. And the mere fact that a cure /exists/ will be immediately obvious to anyone who is aware of the political situation in Silences, and I would imagine that would be everyone (a pending war between courts is the kind of thing that everyone would know about, and the fact that it was averted by overthrowing the reigning monarch would be highly newsworthy itself).

From /Toby's/ POV, it would be ideal for Walther to disappear into protective custody for the remainder of his life to limit access to the cure -- but that's a really lousy outcome from Walther. Remember, he's going for tenure, and I don't think that's compatible with Fae protective custody. :)

alexcansmile

September 3 2015, 19:33:28 UTC 1 year ago

I think that was a lot of the point of this book though - pretty much everyone was oblivious to what was going on in Silences. And since Silences is pretty loyal to Walther if he asked them to keep quiet I believe most of them would. Sure the existence of a cure will get out, but the Fae are pretty good at secrets, so I don't think it would be an impossible thing for them to keep it a secret.

And I disagree about your point of tenure being incompatible with Fae protective custody. Chelsea's mom (I forget her name atm) seems to be able to teach and stay safe within Sylvester's halls pretty easily.

bree_ramsey314

September 3 2015, 20:44:53 UTC 1 year ago

I think locking Walther away would be bad on many levels, but allow me to play Devil's Advocate (cause it tickles me). Bridget's 'protective custody' is for the sake of Faerie, not her. She's under a geas that won't let her expose Faerie, so she is free to keep teaching. Walther would be hiding from those who would want to kidnap or murder him, and one way to make that easier for such nefarious types would be to, oh, be predictable and accessible, like someone going to teach classes regularly.

alexcansmile

September 3 2015, 20:50:16 UTC 1 year ago

I think people are conflating "protection" with being locked away. I'm suggesting a security team a la Secret Service, not Walther being locked away in a knowe. A security detail as he lives his life pretty normally otherwise.

M Reed

September 3 2015, 21:21:16 UTC 1 year ago

Someone living with a protective detail from the secret service (for non-US readers, this is the department that is best known for providing bodyguards for the US president) is /not/ by any stretch of the definition living a normal life. For example, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/conde-nast-traveler/restaurants-with-secret-service_b_2552187.html.

And I wouldn't be confident that this level of security would be sufficient to deter threats from opponents with glamour, shape shifting, and teleportation abilities, although I'm not sure if being locked in a knowe would help with these concerns either.

In regards to Bridget, nobody is /specifically/ targeting her -- practically speaking, it is likely that very few people even know that she exists. To the degree that a threat exists at all, though, there isn't any effective way of nullifying the risk -- the threat is intrinsic to the knowledge she has of the Fae and I believe it was explicitly stated that the only way to remove the knowledge would be to kill her. In Walther's case, though, widely disseminating knowledge of the cure would minimize the number of people with an interest in killing, kidnapping, or threatening him.