Linkies...

[finding-further.livejournal.com]

I ran across a couple of recent links I thought y'all might be interested in. This one is a review of CoK (and the rest of the series) at the Fantasy Literature site, and this one is a really interesting discussion of theophany in mwt's books. Cool stuff.

Comments

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

These are great links! I loved reading both of them, especially the theophany one. Very interesting.

Re: charlotte's post, one thing I noticed was that the reviewer at Fantasy Literature had some misconceptions about how long they'd been in love.

She said, I just can’t believe that these two people have been secretly in love with each other since childhood. And another line about how Irene started loving Gen in TT yet still cut his hand off in Queen and still loved him afterwards---which I thought was a big misreading.

I wouldn't have believed that if I'd read it that way, either. But in my version of this series (the one that lives in my head), Gen has loved/worshipped-from-afar/creeped on Irene since his grandfather was alive, although I wouldn't say he realized it until he was old enough to know what "love" meant.

But before the queen cut off his hand, it was an entirely one-sided, unrequited relationship. Nowhere does it say that Irene also liked him as a kid. She met him face-to-face for the first time in TT and (at least this is how I read it) didn't start falling in love until thinking he'd died in Ephrata.

Even after she cut off his hand, it just made her feel guilty. Hearing him cry (after the hand-cut, not the prison in TT) opened her up to emotional change, but the love came later. For me, at least.

[sgwordy.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with your interpretation here.

I also love the "creeped on" descriptor! Awesome.

[coyul.livejournal.com]

I got the impression that we were watching her fall in love with him throughout the book but she didn't realize until Ephrata.

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

I sort of agree. I actually think she says something like that to herself at Ephrata---that she had been a fool to fall in love with someone she'd made into an enemy, and was only just now realizing it.

But the way I see it, it's not love if you don't even know what the emotion feels like. For me, she could only love him after she'd figured out that loving him was possible, which happened at Ephrata. So I think technically I'm doing a little retrospective editing to what she actually thinks, but it's because I think what she was thinking was incorrect. But my interpretation is very idiosyncratic.