It's a very nice Thieves' Guild, yeah. Probably one of my favorite variants of the concept. Partly because, yeah, you do get to see its inner workings. Also Penari has a giant snake and that is beautiful. I love you giant snake. Also no I have remembered my absolute favorite structure. You have a novel which is split into volumes. The volumes are split into books which are split into chapters. Chapters may be further divided into distinct scenes that are separated in some fashion, though not named. For more fun tack a series of appendices onto the back of this hellnovel. I must find the fabled multi-volume novel based book series. Like if the first three books of this series really made up one book which was called book one. I love subdivisions a lot. They are neat and tidy and also make reading more fun for me? I find it hard to read without chapters.
Suddenly everyone and their dog has a boner for Jame and she sat around staring at a wall for hours. Ok then.
The linguist in me is glaring at these damnable apostrophes with resentment. What are you there for. Do you have a purpose. You damn well fucking better have a purpose either grammatically or phonetically or I swear to fucking god I will cry.
Seriously, Jame just does not fucking get why everyone has a boner for her. She's utterly convinced she's not worth looking at and it's pretty clear that sexuality is a 'what's that?' for her until much later on. She's 18 at the start of God Stalk, apparently, but given that she's not legally adult until she's 27, that makes her pretty young. Assuming 27 is their 21 equivalent, she'd be the equivalent of 14 at this point in the story.
Yeah I had assumed she was like 14 or 15 at the most. She certainly is mentally at any rate. Also the people want what's in Jame's pants count has gone up by two and Scramp killed himself. EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES EITHER DIES OR WANTS TO FUCK HER.
Kithra you too??? Will there be any left who doesn't want to fuck Jame by the end of this book? Also building shrine to a dead frog god :D
WE SAVED THE INN BUT DAMNED OUR POLITICAL STAKES. WELL FUCK ME. As an aside Jame is hot and I hate you Morven.
"Oh my god the Shadow Thief is after your ass and it might be that guy who wants to bone you Jame no this is awful." "'k."
Just finished God Stalk. I am both a broken man and an elated one. Also there are appendices including a Tastigonian calendar! EEEEEEEEEEEE.
Little over a fourth of the way into the second book. Tori is my favoritest favorite because he is cute and bad at sleeping and has panic attacks a lot and also he just carries more than he can possibly bear. Marc continues to be great. I love him. He is big. That is the best way I can describe him. He is just. Big. That is Marc. I want hugs from Marc. I am really loving the characters in general. Even the shitlords like Keral. And on that note, Morven told me that it showed in this one that the author was severely depressed when writing it and boy howdy does it. The tone has really gotten dark. Yet it's still funny? There's still those very important moments of humor frequently throughout the story. Like, yes it's hideously depressing thinking about how shit Jame's life must have been with Perimal Darkling but she's wearing Marc's mitten on her foot and an inn keeper called her his "fancy boy". These sorts of things are important and why people who bitch about Puck being out of place in Berserk are wrong. You need someone like Puck around to break the tension. Otherwise it is just too much and it ceases to be fun and just becomes monotonous. This book has a similar sort of thing going on with its tone? It's very depressing and fucked up shit is happening and our characters are not well off mentally. They don't forget to laugh though and they make us laugh. And there's little patches of hope and brightness in the dark. That's important. It's why I like Berserk so much. Because it's not just grim and gritty without a purpose. There's kindness and hope found in it. Same with Monster. Away from that I am really happy to be learning more about the kencyr. You learned things about them in the first book and its appendices, but your only interaction with them were through Jame, Marc, and Ishtier. Which is a pretty limited number of people! The second book seems far more about the kencyr though. As a culture and what not. There's more kencyr characters, kencyr politics is at the forefront, and kencyr cultural ideals and stigmas are really getting the light of day. I really miss Tai Tastigon and its people a lot, but it's really nice to spend time with the kencyrath. Really nice. Partly because they're just so...Interesting. Hodgell in general seems to have a hell of a way with cultures. I might find her language skills questionable and a bit grating, but damn does she ever make up for it with culture, religion, history, and myth. Even smaller cultural groups like the cloudies really shined. When you can make a culture that isn't getting as much light shone on it as the kencyrath are that means shit. That's impressive. Also I said this to Morven over skype but Hodgell has succeeded where many have failed; she made a "if you believe it, it becomes real" theology that I don't hate. Granted, at least part of this is because she's not dealing with "real" gods so to speak. Still I'm very picky about my theologies in fiction, and she's managed to get the "faith equals god" thing to not just not be annoying to me. It's actually something I like and I'm intrigued by for once. Which is interesting because normally I am deathly allergic to those sorts of theologies in fiction, real gods or no.
And the more you learn about the Kencyr the more you are "how the fuck are you people still alive?" and then you realize they're not exactly doing that all that well. How many Highborn are there left? It really can't be that many. Granted the Knorth are worst off with three full-blooded Knorth left but they're a special circumstance, but some of the other Houses are not great in terms of numbers either. There are hundreds of Caineron, quite a lot of Ardeth, probably a fair few Randir though who knows, it's not that we're getting inside Randir to see anytime soon, but I think the Highborn population is probably under five thousand and quite possibly less. Lower bound is probably a thousand but I think that's too low. The Kendar are more populous of course, but still not that many, somewhere about 150-200k? On the other hand population densities at their tech level are lower anyway. Certainly most of the minor Houses have died out; the only ones left are the Min-drear and the Harth, and the Min-drear line is dying out and there aren't too many left at the other either.
Yeah I've been thinking about that while reading. The Highborn don't seem to be doing well at all numbers wise. And try as he might Tori is not preventing the horrible blood feuds. He seems to be aware that they are quite literally destroying their people, but god damn are the Highborn fucking adamant about ending themselves like idiots. Also I am pretty sure cat judge mentioned something to the effect of there not being many Arrin-ken left. The Kendar definitely seem to be the best off numbers wise from what I know, but their place in society is remarkably shit and given how war happy the Kencyr seem to be that...Really doesn't bode well for them. Seeing as they appear to be the warrior class and they have issues with the incredibly shit yondri situation.
Well, basically the most marketable Kencyr skill is warfare and they survive off renting out half their population as mercenaries to rulers all over the place, mostly because Kencyr guards are super honorable and honest and won't stab you in the back and are more trustworthy than their own people.
Well, losing your purpose will do that to a culture. They were kept together by thinking they had a divine purpose and God was on their side even if It left them to do the dirty work. Even if they have done nothing but lose for thirty thousand years.
DAT FOREST. Also politics. DAT BIGOTRY. Clearly I am in for something beautiful once the twins meet again. God. That bigotry.
And onto chapter 7. Given the title the stupid horses are making an appearance? Vile horrible horrible horses. That aren't horses. But are because horses are fucking evil.
