Sarah Connell > Recent Status Updates

“he couldn't fight them with a sword, like Rowan, or with a bow, like Arvin. Maybe he wasn't any better with words than he was with a sword or a bow, but he wouldn't die if he tried and failed at it. Which he might, with a sword or a bow. "Right."

She clapped him on the shoulder, like he'd seen
the militia do with each other. "Good man. You start on one end, I'll start on the other"

“From here, the lights of the town looked small— not distant, exactly, but one and one and one, each alone. Down below, among the trees, the lights of torches flickered from their own sputtering and flickered more when people passed in front of them. Everything you could see twinkled, but everything you could feel was solid, like the ground beneath your feet that seemed exactly perfect.”

“Way up, little clouds moved, dashing across the winking stars and showing one Guidestar, then the other, then neither. The air was exactly the best temperature: cool enough to feel but not any cooler.”

“The bathhouse was noisy. Belinda had brought the twins, and Ivy had brought Tarlie, who was too young to be much good, but old enough to complain in words. Old Galer had brought little Anna, and she was all right, quiet and hardworking, but be was a chore, always grumping how people had it sott now, not like in his day. Which you wouldn't think should be a complaint, rightly speaking, but he made it one.”

“She didn't talk all during lunch, and neither did Steffie. Because if be said anything, it would be about what she'd said last night, and somehow he didn't want to do that. It had been like he'd gone to a strange land without quite knowing how he'd done it like it was special, maybe magical, and touching it with new words would make it all go away.”

“A pair of ancient divans were…frowsily comfortable, like elderly uncles. Apparently Brewer's was the final repository of much of the town's cast-off furniture… Rowan wondered if everyone present recognized at least one object in the room, and perhaps was made more comfortable because of it. She could not imagine people more harmless.

She felt rather a fool for being armed.”

“in the darkness of the tent at night, she listened to his long, sleeping breaths among the breathing of the other warriors and in the light-spattered brightness of the daytime tent, and they two alone together, his long, angular body a lattice around hers, they had spoken and not spoken, touched and moved...

And this is how people come to believe in ghosts”

“Her short hair looked like it had been trimmed with a knife; and it was a dry, harsh yellow on top, darker under. Her skin was sunburned and weather-rough…close up, you could see that the wrinkles weren't real— just pale lines on darker skin, as if she had spent a long time squinting into long distances against bright sunlight.

She looked like a woman from a land with no shadows.”

Trying to give it the benefit of the doubt…

She loved the shape of this small ship, the segmented curve of the sails. It carried twenty crates full of the dried petals of a certain orchid, the captain had told her, greatly prized in the southern lands as a means to make both perfume and poison. That is what this place is, thought Ephemeral. It is perfume, and it is poison. The scent of the orchids seeped up from the hold until everything was permeated with it.

It’s interesting pitting ‘empire’ vs. ‘rule by immortal super monster’ (i.e. sphynx, gorgon, etc.).

🤣🤣 i can’t get over the sentient, magical book made of crystal who thinks that ppl are types of trees and so makes nests for random pine cones bc it thinks they’ll grow into ppl!

“I’m pretty sure he thinks people are types of trees? He never really saw many trees until this summer and i guess he thinks pine cones are ppl eggs? I’m having a lot of trouble following…”

“When despising something, it is important to cultivate both high minded and low minded reasons to do so. Over the centuries, i’ve found that petty spite is one of the few joys that never fades’

The deep fake scenario is feeling too real.

“he leaned back out to look down on the face of the ghost. The figure was still looking back up at him, he could make out the smooth planes of his face, the darker furrow of his brow. Sebastian thought the figure looked worried, or confused. And then, as he watched, the ghost began to fade away, evaporating like marsh mist. In a handful of seconds, the street was dark once more.”

I knew she was going to rip my heart out in this book. I just thought I’d get at least 100 pgs in first. Alas, this doesn’t bode well for my feels in the next 500 pgs…

Giant octopus overlord ✅

Now Frith stood on the doorstep, looking down across crowded roofs to the sea below. The rains of earlier had cleared swiftly, just as Wydrin had said they would, and now the night sky was a hectic explosion of stars.

Already confused.

Welp. They killed off my fave character so I probably won’t continue the series.

The light coming through the slats lay across his brown skin like bands of gold, and Wydrin experienced the odd tightening of the chest she often felt when [they] were alone. There had been other men, of course, men with whom she had spent pleasant evenings and memorable afternoons, but being with [him] made her fingers itch for her daggers, filled her with an indefinable need to fight, to protect.

Wydrin rose early the next morning, a fat slice of sunshine cutting through the slats, laying a warm hand across her forehead. She expected to find Frith asleep next to her, in the deep death-like sleep of the horribly drunk and soon to be hungover,

‘Augusta said this place was riddled with ghosts,’ whispered Wydrin. ‘I can’t believe the old baggage was right for once.’
Sebastian opened his mouth to answer, and found he could not. The sight of the pale-blue figure had stilled him, thrown a hook in his heart and captured it. There was something about it that was deeply familiar and deeply alien at the same time.

“Galad never counted the cost of doing right, not to himself or anyone else.”

“I could live with you being a sniveling wretch if that was what you were. I take ppl as they are, not as I would like them to be or else I leave them. But that is not what you are, and I will not accept your reasons for playing at them.”

“Rand bloody al’Thor. Fall in love with a man and you ended up doing laundry. Even if it did belong to another man. When she marched into the kitchen to demand a wash tub and hot water, she was snarling every bit as much as Siuan.”