Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: busy
  • Music: Liz Nickrenz, "Yes, Virginia."

CHAOS CHOREOGRAPHY open thread!

To celebrate the release of Chaos Choreography, 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: chaos choreography, cheese and cake, discussion post, incryptid
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  • 71 comments
...go 3 levels up... Expand

bree_ramsey314

March 4 2016, 23:06:42 UTC 1 year ago

I think, maybe, that much of what Verity and the rest interpret as instability, and perhaps a less than complete hold on sanity, is simply a generation gap, of sorts. All they know of Fran is stories, so they can't see just how much like her mother Alice is. Fran was always in favor of the direct, guns a-blazing and knives a-flying approach to solving problems, and that's something Alice seems to share.

Then there's the fact that she's spent much of the last few decades, not out of touch with reality, but rather in touch with a much different, darker reality. Also I'd imagine that what Verity and her siblings feel about Alice has to have been influenced greatly by Kevin, who has ample reason to feel some serious resentment towards his mother. Even with that influence, however, it's clear that Verity loves Alice very much.

Your last comment is very tantalizing. This would be an excellent time for Thomas to reappear, wouldn't it? His knowledge of the Covenant is many decades out of date, but in this case I don't see that as being a big issue, as the Covenant seems to be very set in its ways. The technology they employ may have changed but the basic tactics haven't, which is ultimately why they'll lose. The Price family, and the cryptids they work to protect, know nature's most basic rule quite well ... the inability to adapt leads to only one end, extinction.

dragonsong

March 7 2016, 14:44:22 UTC 1 year ago

I feel that Alice knows her kids resent her somewhat. My heart broke when she said she'd promised to be better than her mother, but the only thing she was better at was leaving. Just... Oh Alice.

bree_ramsey314

March 7 2016, 23:21:57 UTC 1 year ago

That was a heart wrenching moment, especially because of how Fran left. She didn't make a choice, she just got careless. That was what hit me so hard about her death, it was so pedestrian. She was a fearsome, capable woman but she didn't die facing some great threat but rather in familiar territory she had traversed countless times. In the end it was that familiarity that did her in, I think.

What really hit me about it was what she told Mary at her grave, "I just didn't look where I was goin'." It brought back memories of something that happened to me several years ago. I was jogging along a highway I had jogged on hundreds of times, dressed in bright, high visibility clothes and running against traffic, which was sparse. The car was traveling in the same direction I was, and crossed the center line and struck me from behind. I don't remember the accident, just waking up in the hospital in a lot of pain. I'm sure I must have heard the car coming, and since it was on the opposite side of the road I didn't worry about it. If I had just turned to look behind me, maybe I would have noticed it was behaving erratically. But I didn't, so I spent most of the next year in a wheelchair. I was very fortunate I didn't die, because the driver never stopped, and to this day I don't know whether it was a result of intoxication, fatigue or distraction, because they were never caught.

So I can well imagine what Fran thought in her final moments, "Why didn't I just look?" I'm sure she must have felt, profoundly, that she had failed everyone she loved, especially Alice, but I think the bravest thing she ever did was choosing to move on. As she said, if she stayed, she'd have been doing it for herself, not for them. Alice, however, was very much alive when she chose to leave her children in the care of others. I love her, and I'm not going to judge her decision, but I think Kevin and Jane have a right to feel some resentment. That doesn't mean they don't love her, and the fact that Kevin sent her to back Verity up shows that he isn't afraid to entrust the safety of his children to her.

dragonsong

March 8 2016, 16:40:27 UTC 1 year ago

Wow, thank you for that. There's SO much heartbreak in this family, and so many hard choices that have been made. Seanan does an amazing job making them so... Real. These are decisions and events that real people face that are made so much harder by their family's situation.