Status Updates From The Maid and the Crocodile

Her being the child from the first book is such a good way of connecting her to the council! Seeing this night from both perspectives is equally fun and sad. They were both feeling a lot of negative emotions in that interaction, but only one of them got punished for it. I wouldn't be surprised if they had been in the bush at the same time since that's where they both travelled after the events of that festival).

This whole section was so striking. I guess the normative way in which the queer relationships were represented in the duology led me to believe that it was an overall queer-normative world, but I see that this was because we were seeing things from the pov of those with the privilege to love who they want.

I'm loving to get to see this side of the people of this world. We know that Tar never wanted to be a god to the people and actively struggled with the weight that such expectations and devotion placed of her, but here we see the face of that devotion. The lesson from the end of the duology, that you can't control how or why people love you, rings very true in the aftermath of Tar's feats.

I'm so incredibly curious about what happened in her past to give her these feelings towards the Anointed Ones. I'm also curious to see how it gets resolved once she realizes the Crocodiles and Ye Eun's connection to them (don't even get me started on that whole thing cause I'm cheesing so hard at how connected we are to them in this story).

I don't know why it never occured to me that the practice of sacrificing lives could have gone beyond the redemptors. In such a pious and patriarchal society, I can only imagine how many young girls and women were sacrificed in the name of appeasing one god or another.
A tale as old as time, yet never looses the impact in it's cruelty. Cause what is a woman if not a vessel for the men around her?

I'm excited to get into this story because, unlike the books in the duology, this is my first time reading it. I'm picking up on the influence of traditional African storytelling traditions. This was prevalent all throughout the duology, but it's even more so here because our MC's voice is speaking to the audience as a storyteller. It's very Anansesem in that way. I really hope this keeps up for the whole book.

This book has so much potential but the romance parts ruin it for me.

The romance parts are so cringe