Sarah Connell’s Reviews > The Lost Steersman > Status Update

“She brushed her hands together: green and pink ghosted away like smoke; violet and white tumbled to the ground. The steerswoman closed her eyes and listened. The endless sound of [ocean], now quieter; the sudden cry of a gull, sharp, like a little knife of sound. No sound of demons, no voices or footsteps of humans.”

“The [mooring] line was marked by a sphere of murky yellow glass…Above the tide line there was a small but solid hut…Outside, water barrels crowded against the hut, some in various stages of being reduced to firewood. These last gave Rowan an eerie feeling; there remained here a feeling of work interrupted. Rowan caught herself looking around warily, half expecting someone to suddenly return.”

Glad I’m on vacation bc I can’t put this book down

“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”