jordanliketheriver’s Reviews > The Slantwise Histories: Collected Stories > Status Update

“I am no berserker; I have never fought for fury or bloodlust. But for the first time, I imagine how it would feel. To unhitch my reason, to unleash the terrible animal of my body, which has spent centuries learning nothing but violence.”

Fuuuuuuck man.

“I would rather move a coward than mourn a legend.” (😭)

“You were centuries of warfare condensed into a single body, your memories folded over themselves, beaten and quenched like fine steel in the water of the pool.”

“The taste of asphalt and oil filled my mouth, a dead world on my tongue.”

“I was raised in the church, wasn’t I? That’s how a believer proves his love: blindly, on his knees.”

“I decided I would find the answer, no matter the cost. I was a knight, wasn’t I? That’s how a knight proves his love: on a pile of corpses.”

“But she’d been willing to kill for me, and so she must have loved me, after all. As I loved May, as Sir John loved his wife, as God loved the world: with blood on our hands.”

“Finch always said there were certain places where it was easier to tell stories, and to hear them: around a fire at night, in the mist at dawn, on a porch at dusk. In-between places, balanced on the border between familiar and strange.”

“I still keep a pack beneath my bed, just in case…Everything I need to survive. May knew what I was; she’d found my pack when we were kids. Shed only asked if I would take her with me when I ran. And I said yes—easily, honestly—because by then she had become one of the things I needed to survive.”

“Her mouth had tasted like lightning, after, bright and urgent.”

“She’d straitened up from slicing the stalks and shaded her eyes and seen Leslie for the very first time, drawn by the early-evening sun like some ancient idol made of muscle and sweat and white teeth flashing. It wasn’t falling in love so much as falling into place, perfectly, and seeing the whole future in the shape of his shoulders and knowing it was full of hurt but knowing, too, that it was worth it.”

“I know I didn’t cheat him, not really. Mr. Death always wins in the end. But sometimes—if you’re stubborn and sad and tired as fuck of the way things go—you can win a hand or two.”