The first time I read the part in the temple/maze, I was in the back seat of a car at night, and the driver didn’t want the light on. I couldn’t bear to stop reading, so I read it all by the light of my watch. If there is a creepier or more awesome way to read these scenes, I don’t know what it is.
I used to work in my college’s theatre as an electrician, and one day I was working in the building pretty much alone. I went to the basement, opened a door and propped it open with a 20 pound weight. Next time I went down…it had swung itself shut. My first thought? “Do you think there’s some…body in there with you?” Agh!
Favorite lines: “I pointed out that he’d been no help at the ford. He pointed out that I had climbed a tree. I pointed out that I had no sword. He offered to give me his, point first.” “Dammit, what are you doing all night?” “Tripping over pry bars.” I told him. “Where’s my breakfast?” “We’ll go together, Gen,” the Magus said. “No.” “Gen, I won’t leave you again.” Awwww… “Oh,” she said in irritation and perfect understanding. “It’s you, Eugenides.” “I cannot tell you how sick I have been of cheap wine and of being dirty….Of having BUGS in my hair…” For some reason, I love that Gen is grossed out by bugs. “Thank you, thief.” “You’re welcome, my queen.”
I love: Getting to see Eugenides in his element, first in the maze where we see how truly adept he is at his trade and his intense stubbornness, and then in the escape from Attolia when he cuts all the crap and leads them to safety. This is the real Eugenides, not just Gen the gutter rat thief, and damn is our boy GOOD! The incidental magic. This isn’t a magical world, but a real one where the gods only very occasionally appear. I appreciate this subtlety, and while I also like books with magical worlds, I like how MWT works the extraordinary into the ordinary so lightly. When the magus hugs Eugenides like a son. It makes me happy inside. The scene where Eugenides gets mad when the magus tries to take the ring. I feel like he is showing some of his true stubborn nature here, and the character is showing his real person-hood. Why does he get so mad? I don’t know, and I don’t think he does either. But sometimes, as humans, we grab hold of things and don’t want to let them go. The ring is never mentioned again, but it was important to him in that moment for whatever reason. (side note, MWT has said that she likes to hide references to her favorite books in her own books. She said that there is an object in TT that is word for word identical to one found in The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. I’m pretty sure this ring is it. It also appears in The Lantern Bearers.) Last discussion I talked about the “one relative” Eugenides loved. Reading it as Eugenides writing the book for Eddis, I think this is really sweet. He’s putting his affection for her here, in writing, knowing that she will read it. I love these two.
Questions: Why does God Eugenides say that Gen has not offended the gods, and to take the stone? Is it because he is stealing the stone for the sake of his country and his queen? Did any Thieves in former times have the gods’ permission? How does Eugenides go from this: “Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn’t force me to enter her service” to loving her in the next book? He had, at this point, already seen her dancing under the orange trees, and then in QoA he says that he learned all about her he could to see if she was really the fiend he had heard—was this after TT or before? At this point in TT, did he only know about her from the stories he’d heard? Since MWT wasn’t planning on writing another book, when she started thinking about it do you think she was just like, “hey, how about I have Eugenides fall in love with that character we saw for two pages? Yeah, that sounds like a great idea!” I mean, I love these plot twists, don’t get me wrong, but as a writer, how do you come up with this sort of stuff?
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Date: 1/30/10 01:32 am (UTC)The first time I read the part in the temple/maze, I was in the back seat of a car at night, and the driver didn’t want the light on. I couldn’t bear to stop reading, so I read it all by the light of my watch. If there is a creepier or more awesome way to read these scenes, I don’t know what it is.
I used to work in my college’s theatre as an electrician, and one day I was working in the building pretty much alone. I went to the basement, opened a door and propped it open with a 20 pound weight. Next time I went down…it had swung itself shut. My first thought? “Do you think there’s some…body in there with you?” Agh!
Favorite lines:
“I pointed out that he’d been no help at the ford. He pointed out that I had climbed a tree. I pointed out that I had no sword. He offered to give me his, point first.”
“Dammit, what are you doing all night?” “Tripping over pry bars.” I told him. “Where’s my breakfast?”
“We’ll go together, Gen,” the Magus said. “No.” “Gen, I won’t leave you again.” Awwww…
“Oh,” she said in irritation and perfect understanding. “It’s you, Eugenides.”
“I cannot tell you how sick I have been of cheap wine and of being dirty….Of having BUGS in my hair…” For some reason, I love that Gen is grossed out by bugs.
“Thank you, thief.” “You’re welcome, my queen.”
I love:
Getting to see Eugenides in his element, first in the maze where we see how truly adept he is at his trade and his intense stubbornness, and then in the escape from Attolia when he cuts all the crap and leads them to safety. This is the real Eugenides, not just Gen the gutter rat thief, and damn is our boy GOOD!
The incidental magic. This isn’t a magical world, but a real one where the gods only very occasionally appear. I appreciate this subtlety, and while I also like books with magical worlds, I like how MWT works the extraordinary into the ordinary so lightly.
When the magus hugs Eugenides like a son. It makes me happy inside.
The scene where Eugenides gets mad when the magus tries to take the ring. I feel like he is showing some of his true stubborn nature here, and the character is showing his real person-hood. Why does he get so mad? I don’t know, and I don’t think he does either. But sometimes, as humans, we grab hold of things and don’t want to let them go. The ring is never mentioned again, but it was important to him in that moment for whatever reason. (side note, MWT has said that she likes to hide references to her favorite books in her own books. She said that there is an object in TT that is word for word identical to one found in The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. I’m pretty sure this ring is it. It also appears in The Lantern Bearers.)
Last discussion I talked about the “one relative” Eugenides loved. Reading it as Eugenides writing the book for Eddis, I think this is really sweet. He’s putting his affection for her here, in writing, knowing that she will read it. I love these two.
Questions:
Why does God Eugenides say that Gen has not offended the gods, and to take the stone? Is it because he is stealing the stone for the sake of his country and his queen? Did any Thieves in former times have the gods’ permission?
How does Eugenides go from this: “Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn’t force me to enter her service” to loving her in the next book? He had, at this point, already seen her dancing under the orange trees, and then in QoA he says that he learned all about her he could to see if she was really the fiend he had heard—was this after TT or before? At this point in TT, did he only know about her from the stories he’d heard?
Since MWT wasn’t planning on writing another book, when she started thinking about it do you think she was just like, “hey, how about I have Eugenides fall in love with that character we saw for two pages? Yeah, that sounds like a great idea!” I mean, I love these plot twists, don’t get me wrong, but as a writer, how do you come up with this sort of stuff?