Three years since The Stone Key, that’s short for Carmody. Let’s hope that The Red Queen is in final edits. I wonder if the nine year publication gap between The Keeping Place and The Stone Key was her trying to stuff everything into that?

I wanted to get these down before reading other people.

Disconnected thoughts:

Carmody is clearly winding things up, so for the first time, I really believe she can finish the series with the next book. Plots wound up now: Domick’s, Kella’s, Angina’s (and I think Miky’s too although I don’t expect that she dies), I think the governance of the Land and Obernewtyn give or take details. Most of the remaining plots are pretty clearly tied up with the Red Queen’s land: the slavery plot, Gilaine’s and Lidgebaby’s plots, Jakoby’s plot, Matthew’s plot, Dragon’s plot and of course Elspeth’s and Ariel’s plot. Mind you, that’s still a lot of plot.

I will be glad to find out how old Lidgebaby is now, because I find the series very difficult to count time in. I guess it’s about ten years now since Obernewtyn? Lidge will perhaps be eight or so if that’s right.

I’m glad Carmody managed to work her way out of the “you will leave everything you love” trap with Dameon’s solution about it not specifying what the people she loves will choose to do then. (Although choice is not the right word, it’s really what Cassandra and Atthis decided needs to happen.) Purely narratively, Elspeth+beasts do not a very interesting party make. The beasts’ self-completeness doesn’t generate a lot of conflict, and Elspeth is inclined to brooding endlessly. It would be 700 pages of her sulking and them ticking her off constantly. She needs a team of variously petty, grieving, skilled, sulking, catty humans.

Carmody is good at generating vivid secondary characters. Maybe too good, it leads to plot explosion. But Analivia and Ahmedri are worthy new additions.

I really struggled with the journeying aspect of the book. It was nice to see Carmody taking care to show everyone’s skill and experience in expeditions, but much of it was frankly dull nonetheless and it reduced a lot of the character interactions to “we need to find water/food/somewhere less radioactive to sleep/somewhere with less killer bats” (that’s Maslow’s hierachy of needs, right?) which is realistic but not gripping. I would much rather have been at sea with the minor characters taking care of navigation and setting sail, and more time for interpersonal tensions to play out. And even then, maybe half the pages.

It’s interesting that Elspeth is quite fond of Cassy, given her massive ambivalence and at times hostility to Maryon and Atthis, both of whom are perhaps lesser futuretellers (given what a distance Cassy was working at). It may help how much Cassy suffered for the plot too, in fact considerably more than Elspeth has. Neither Atthis nor Maryon has had to go through anything like it.

This book is not as rapey as the previous one (in this universe, rape probably is in inverse correlation to the physical distance of the point-of-view from Ariel at any given time), but still with the rape.

I very much doubt that narratively anyone is going to push back on Atthis’s various harms, most notably now organising Dragon’s capture and assaults. Well, other than Elspeth in her own head.

Speaking of beasts and their actions, Maruman’s seliga saved Dragon for Elspeth’s quest, but saved Rushton from his own death wish for Elspeth. Which is very very Maruman. The book’s sweetest note.

Memo to Rushton: your low opinion of your own Talent is becoming increasingly petty. It’s clearly very powerful, and unique in type, probably meaning that you share status with Elspeth, Dragon, Atthis, Gavyn-Rasial and Maruman as one of the series’ more mentally unique and powerful characters. (And interestingly, you, like Maruman and Gavyn-Rasial, are unnoticed as such by Obernewtyn, which instead of course makes use of your also unique levels of charisma and leadership skill. I suspect that Obernewtyn’s neat and increasingly ill-fitting guild system is causing a lot of very powerful talents to be under-identified, particularly but clearly not only in beasts.)

Memo to Rushton #2: given this, stop displaying your Talent only in order to carry out your own death wishes. The series is running out of people strong enough to save you.

Memo to Rushton #3: I suspect that you’re in luck, and that your Talent is essential to Elspeth’s quest at some point. After that, no more whining about poor Talent.

Why is Rasial mis-gendered twice (referred to as “he/him”) in my edition? That seems a clumsy error.

I think at this point I’d rather not see Matthew/Dragon (although not a lot of details were added about his manipulation of Dragon, they aren’t flattering to Matthew), although I think Carmody is going there. At least she’s making him put some serious work into Matthew’s redemption before Dragon sees him again. Years as a slave, rebel and leader far from everyone he loves and everything that supported his more selfish moments? It’s a decent redemption arc as they go. In fact I love a redemption arc, except that you only get one chance at the girl/boy/other. Post-redemption, you need to find another one.

This is apparently a rather unusual opinion in the fandom, but I continue to favour Elspeth/Rushton over Elspeth/Dameon. I tend to go for the pairings with the clear spark of sexual attraction and mischief. Dameon is very kind, but very solemn. Elspeth/Dameon would be the least smiley love affair of all time.

That said, Rushton’s life to date would be vast improvement without Elspeth/Rushton. And his attraction to Selmar before that, too. He wouldn’t agree though, or rather, he doesn’t believe in life without Elspeth/Rushton.

I wonder a bit about the mechanics of consensual sex here: does a full mind-merge and memory dump occur every time two people have sex? This was implied in The Farseekers to some extent too, but if so, how on earth did Domick keep secrets from Kella?