Lisa Feld > Recent Status Updates

Better and better.

Really enjoying the richness of this book, great character moments, interesting interactions; well worth reading.

Overall, I like this book so much better than the previous two. But several times, the writer clearly moved scenes around and forgot to change continuity to match, so Jamie and Claire are talking about X’s enjoyment of a book out of the blue before getting a copy themselves, and a character is namedropped as courting and only later do we get a scene where he is introduced by name and begins doing so.

Really good part here, particularly for Bree and Roger’s stories.

Okay, the wedding and its aftermath was quite good.

And after the battle, a long stretch where four or five characters are all badly injured to the point of delirium, have sickbed conversations with their nearest and dearest, and eventually recover enough to visit each other’s sickbeds.

Got a good, long stretch of interesting plot, but now we're in the midst of a long battle, so lots of mess and confusion, trying to find people who aren't where they're supposed to be, running into other people by mistake, and trying not to get killed in the process.

I’m deeply amused that things have (at least temporarily) gotten more goal oriented and less passive by means of Bree taking over the story—she’s normally one of the characters given shortest shrift. But things are sailing along and I’m curious to see what happens next.

I'm more than a quarter of the way through the book, and so far, literally every plot and subplot can be summed up as, "A series of huge misunderstandings and epic bad luck diverts the POV character from either getting where they're going or letting anyone know where they are." There are some interesting and long-awaited conversations and surprise guest stars, but I'm still waiting for actual plot.

This is a solid, interesting read, with a lot of helpful research, but I'm amused at the blind spots created by sexism. Bless the hearts of these scholars who knew that men and women both served in the temples 25% of the year and somehow leapt to the conclusion that the women were just there as arm candy for the gods instead of considering that maybe they had their own realms of responsibility.

I’m trying to get through this, but the pattern is so repetitive that it could be a quarter of the length and still get the endless Spy vs. Spy vibe across. I keep waiting to see if there’s a kicker that’s going to break the pattern.