Katherine > Recent Status Updates

Why is this female author writing such an odious male protagonist?
Calladine cheats on his on-again-off-again girlfriend with no thought for her feelings and only regrets how it might affect his job.

And can only assume it's Durrant's internalised misogyny that has the narration comment on every woman's appearance and judging those who are overweight and/or don't wear stylish clothes or haircuts, including Bayliss!

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
No wonder the case didn't get solved during the initial investigation

I'm pretty sure I know who the murderer is
and we haven't even started the modern-day cold case investigation yet

Why does Schama insist on presenting events through the prism of Bonaparte?

The fact that something happened in the year of his birth is irrelevant to the narrative of the French Revolution and it was probably pretty irrelevant to baby Napoleon.
The only thing these little comments do is prefigure Napoleonic France as though it was the inevitable result of everything that happened in 1789, which is balderdash.

Last time I read this, I was still missing Spain but I knew next-to-nothing about the Spanish Civil War.

I was also younger than Odelle, had never held an office job and was much more recently out of my last romantic relationship.

So, I'm definitely noticing and resonating with different things.

I'd forgotten how rich and enveloping this book is from the very start

This is going decidedly better than The Final Empire - I don't actively hate any of it so far.

But I do feel like I'm watching events go by without any reason to care. Perhaps I just don't gel with the narration style.

I still think I liked Warbreaker better - I was intrigued by the god-king, sympathetic to his young bride and exasperated but entertained by the male POV. More feeling than I've got from this one!

"She’d been trained by stern nurses and tutors to hold her tongue"
you don't need to TELL me this while you're in the midst of showing her polite reticence

I do not care that your schmancy sword doesn't "cut living flesh; it severed the soul itself", Mr Sanderson. I don't need to know that there are multiple types of 'lashing' or what each one does; magic can just be magic.

"When he died, he was sent back, no choice. When he survived the Desolation, he was supposed to go back as well."

So, he's a video game character
cool, cool

"Cromwell's biographer's don't describe him as scheming to get power"
Nolan has definitely mentioned David Loades earlier – did she miss his biography? I gave up because of how much Loades seemed to hate his subject

I'm not sure I buy Anne as religious zealot but everything else stacks up

OK, I was right about the perpetrator of the non-lethal violence but I'm beginning to warm to a different suspect for the murder, which would better explain the trigger for events.

I have a speculation of who the murderer might be but it would very much be "least likely suspect" and would require some of the violence to have been perpetrated by someone other than the killer.

I love working out who the victim will be from the introductions to the other characters

The Internet as the place that sates my obsessions is utterly relatable, though

Another mind-boggling point of divergence: I feel awkward Googling celebrities, who have consented to being in the public eye and employ someone to curate their online presence.

It wouldn't occur to me to Google a random stranger.

This is a fascinating but bizarre read

I'm 5 months younger than Marie, grew up in an early-adopter household and share almost none of her experiences.
I had an MSN account, I think, but I never joined MySpace and didn't try Tumblr until last year. I did join Facebook at 15 but, from the beginning, my mother was there.

And, then, at 21, I became a teacher and locked my security settings down tight.

Good grief, the gender essentialism is galling!

Honestly, Conan Doyle did a better job of the penniless man falling for an heiress and restraining himself in The Sign of The Four

"much more fitting for a modern monarch" – seriously?!

Weir just had Henry describe the Pope as infallible, which NO ONE believed until the 1870s!

What is the point in transcribing the speech about not wanting riches but glory & immortality that can be found in any history book or with am easy internet search?

If you're writing a novel, tell me the story of how that speech came to be.

This is shaping up to be like an Agatha Christie but with the psychology of a modern thriller and the insight of multiple POVs.

So, this is what a May-December romance is meant to feel like. Yuck.

Ye gads!
Now we have a randy 13-year-old thinking about Catalina having sex with his brother. And no sign of Henry's well-documented good manners or hyperchondria.

Already infuriated!
Is it really necessary for Weir to exposition-dump quite so heavily, when she's already written 6 books in this series, covering the same time period?!

Also, 11-year-old Harry doesn't sound like a child, talks about people around him as though he knows the future and is apparently unfamiliar with Tudor funeral practices.

moderately interesting Great Man history of the UK and France with regular comparisons to WWII and Stalin's Russia

Why not frame it in the 20th century and retell the older history when it's relevant, thematically, rather than trying to squeeze an espionage angle into every recognisable era of Western history? That might also have given space for the history of spying in Asia!