Alison Rose’s Reviews > Tower of Thorns > Status Update

Exhausted, beaten down, full of sorrow, and yet so grateful for small things. Perhaps it was at just such times of hardship and sadness that folk noticed the little kindnesses, the brief moments of beauty.

In my book, the vilest&worst was the human monster: a man like Mathuin of Laois, whose actions made clear he was devoid of any good qualities. Compassion, for instance.Kindness. Fairness. Justice. The ability to put himself in someone else's shoes...We all had times when we failed to display those qualities. But they existed in us, provided we could dig deep enough. They seemed entirely lacking in Mathuin

[or Trump]

Her mind's away, off somewhere else. In the past, most likely. Know that feeling. Know it better than I want to, the dark things that never go away, the sunny, precious things that go all too soon.

Hope, she thought, was as easily extinguished as a guttering candle on a day of Spring storm. Over and over she had seen it tremble and die. Yet even now she was making plans again, looking ahead, seeing the way things might unfold. Her capacity to endure astonished her.