Aedan Lake > Recent Status Updates

There's so much I love about this book but I cannot stress enough how much I love the recurring background detail of all the skeletons going about their business.
Why don't more books have skeletons?

We think of the ancient civilisations as starting points, yet the Parthenon mimicked that which came long before (the Temple of Hatshepsut predates it by a thousand years). Even the architectural fashion of kitsch is ancient, with the Romans importing mock pyramids after the conquest of Egypt.

"One vote, and our entire system of government is wrecked?"
Feeling that.

Rebus has a BB King ringtone :(

It's not that I'm not enjoying this, but I think that in a parallel universe where this wasn't written with a love triangle I am enjoying it more.

Fuck it, I'm just giving this five stars now to save the effort later. No one is better than Barker.

"This was a disagreement over prices?" "Just what do you think a war is?"

"Companies claimed to be highly responsive, Jennifer thought, but you only had to chase a screaming man through their offices to realize it wasn't true."

...
Braven Tooth is a genius.

Skulldeath \m/

"We're invading Lether from tavern to tavern?"
"Aye."
"Hellian, I hate to say this, but that's kind of clever."
"Aye. And that way we can eat real cooked food, too. It's the civilized way of conductin' war. Hellian's way."

"I wonder if this is how domestication first began. Not banding together in a hunt for prey, but in an elimination of rival predators" and "If you wish to find irony, Quick Ben, know that we then hunted until most of our prey was extinct. And our allies then starved - those that did not surrender to our stewardship."

"Perfunctory notes to their widows: Your husbands failed in their responsibilities. No death-pensions will be forthcoming. Leave the family residences of the Palace Guard immediately - barring your eldest child who is now Indebted to the estate of the Chancellor." And THAT is how you write a Kick the Dog moment.

"'Oh Hood's balls,' Stormy groaned."
"Oh Hood's balls" is pretty much the only appropriate reaction to the last 100 or so pages. Wow.

Notwithstanding that the preceding section was a beautifully-written sequence of delicious and unexpected teases, I'm still convinced that the main point of it is to get us shipping Icarium and Mappo even harder than we already are.

Was that section the first Cotillion POV we've had? Want more plz.

Teens React To 'Tell Laura I Love Her':
"What's metaphysical? George says.
Too big a word for this song, her father says."

"'Some more leaves, please. Don't skimp on the sauce or whatever it is.'
'Right the second time.'
'Whatever it is? You don't know?'
'No master. It just leaked out. Maybe from the leaves, maybe from something else. It reminds one of-'
'Tanneries?'
'Yes, that's it exactly. Well done.'
'I just had a thought.'
'Please, master, do not pursue that thought.'
'It keeps coming back.'
'The thought?'
'No, the supper.'

Papa Sengar knew what he was doing. If you want your firstborn son to be valued by a ruler who styles himself 'Warlock King', *of course* you name him Fear.

Love the title story: "It's so human, to turn and catch the eye of your companion on a return journey, to share a moment's terror that everything you know will have changed."

"People would far rather believe a lurid lie than a sorry string of accidents. Would far rather believe the world is full of evil than full of bad luck, selfishness and stupidity."

I'm amazed at how funny these books manage to be amid all the earth-shattering drama and tragedy. Not just the banter and gambling schemes of the Malazan soldiers, but pure slapstick in the middle of the battles (at least the ones where the sappers get to play with their explosives).

"There is the unpleasant ring of truth to your words, Onrack." "I am generally unpleasant, Trull Sengar."

What. In just a few pages this has gone from "who are *these* new guys?" to "holy crap, this is insane and fantastic." Steven Erikson: doing Loads and Loads of Characters right since 1999.

“You can see, perhaps, how the Radchaai conception of the universe as being God itself might seem the same as the Tanmind concept of the Black. You might also see why it seemed a bit odd, to Radchaai ears, to hear someone who believed gravity wells were the land of the dead call people superstitious for worshiping a lizard.”

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this book, but it wasn't 'Flexible Sandy' and all the (brilliant, to this Slacktivist reader) swipes at 'Left Behind'. Particularly nice touch that the antichrist figure in the 'Gone' series resembles Tony Blair.