I'm a debutante...

[archdyadove.livejournal.com]

Firstly, I want to say hello!! I've only been reading all of your wonderful posts and looking at your beautiful fan art on sounis for less than a year, but it seems like much longer. I made myself a livejournal just because of this! I read The Thief late last year, and instantly fell in love. It was too amazing to keep quiet about, so I told my mom all about it at a Greek restaurant, which is unintentionally fitting. Later the two of us ganged up on my brother and made him read the whole series, too. Of course, he loved it.
Secondly, I (and my mother) have a query: Why is Gen taking so much medicine in CoK? He complains, pretty much the whole book long, about how the two doctors are always badgering him with various brews and concoctions. Is he supposed to be sick, or still injured, or are we paying too much attention to something that doesn't merit such scrutiny? Sorry if this is a silly question, or if it's been asked before, but we've really been wondering.
Also, I just wanted to say that this community is one of the nicest ones I've come across, for any book. You are all so supportive and creative, helping each other stand the drought between installments of Eugenides.

Comments

[tiegirl.livejournal.com]

Hello, and welcome! I love this community too, and also joined livejournal just for this. I am only associated with one other fan site, on Facebook, and this one is much nicer, I have to say.
Way to go on spreading the mwt love!

Here's what I think about your question: I think ACoK takes place during KoA, until Sophos is actually in Attolia. When he gets to Attolia, I think it's basically very soon after Gen was nearly assassinated.

Of course, that's just my guess, and mwt is devious and cruel, making us wait and NOT TELLING us anything, so I'm probably wrong.




(Just kidding, mwt! Well, you are devious. I'm not taking that back.)

[brandy-painter.livejournal.com]

I know he has been injured a lot but I can not think what would be wrong with him that require so much fuss and medicine. I honestly think it is a cover for something else. I have some thoughts on that. Several actually but nothing to back them up. MWT is so tricksy it could be anything. Or he could genuinely be in bad shape. MWT doesn't waste words on things that don't matter somehow so I do think it merits scrutiny. Everyone's conclusions are going to be different though because this is Gen and it is too hard to figure him out.

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

My theory is that it is both a serious injury AND a red herring. Why? Because Gen is tricksy and it may be advantageous for his enemies to believe he is too incapacitated for nefarious scheming. (Forgetting, of course, that Gen doesn't give up. Not after prison, not after losing limbs, not even when he believes the distance between rooftops is beyond him. He always jumps.) Also, in KoA, I forget which character makes the point that Gen's hyberbole (complaining loud and excessively about his wound) is to make everyone who knows him believe that he really can't be all that seriously injured. He lies and exaggerates, right? When he really falls and breaks something, he crawls quietly back to his library to lick his wounds, right? But Gen lies to himself, remember, and now he has Irene's love and sanity to think of, and however many opportunistic barons waiting for him to trip. Perhaps even Gen doesn't really know just how bad he's hurt, torn between presenting a strong front and the tendency to be verbally petulant over something as small as a hang nail.

Which leads me to the question: Is Gen a pathological liar? (Sorry. All the Gatsby buzz of late has me psychoanalyzing fictional characters...)

[archdyadove.livejournal.com]

good points, all around...
it's true that there's no way to really know what mwt is thinking, or gen for that matter, until the next book comes out, and even then...
these books are some of the few that i find something new in each time i re-read them. I can never predict what's going to happen, but after it's happened, it makes perfect sense. I think that "illness as a cover" is the most likely theory, but who knows? I can't wait to be surprised.

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

Welcome! Your username is interesting, would you mind explaining its etymology for us? ;-) Just curious.

As to whether Gen is sick, I think part of why its such a big deal is that the Eddisian and Attolian physicians are rivals and each wants to prove that they know how to take care of him best--so it isn't so much about his sickness/injury as it is about the physicians trying to prove they know how to take care of whatever might be wrong with him.

That said, Gen did mention (if I remember right) that he summoned Galen to see him when he came to Attolia with Eddis, and thats what sparked the whole rivalry in the first place. Gen claims that he didn't think that it would cause them to be rivals... and as we know, Gen never lies.

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

There are no antibiotics. He had life threatening and debilitating infections following his injuries in TT and KoA. In QoA Ornon says his health was broken after Attolia cut off his hand. Eugenides is getting over an assassination attempt. I imagine the Attolian physician, Petrus, is anxious that he not die on his "watch" partly because he is a good physician who takes his job seriously, but also from professional jealousy (Eugenides came through the other problems with Eddis's Galen's help) and because having a king die on you can be a life threatening event for the physicians of kings' if someone (like Attolia) thinks you should have done more.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

This is what I thought, too. I worry about our Gen because of Ornon's comment about Gen's health being broken. Who knows what kind of permanent effects his serious injuries might have? Galen is super-protective, and Petrus is in the hot seat as far as making Gen better. However, it's not like Gen to sit around in the sun drinking nasty wine with herbs, no matter how much someone else thinks he should. I hope he is not seriously ill.

Welcome, archdyadove!

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

But the, there's the part at the end of QoA where the goddess heals the pain in Gen's arm where the cuff goes. So if they want to fix up his health, presumably they could. (And after all, even though he was seriously seriously *seriously* injured by the attempted assassination, he didn't die and seemed to be up and doing rather quickly afterwards).

Two more weeks of school, and just over two weeks till I head off to Germany for eight days or so...

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

15 more days for me! Not that I'm counting...

Has your kitten found a home?

Maybe the only time the gods fix Gen up if he screams at them and demands answers. He may do that a lot, though.

[archdyadove.livejournal.com]

It is true that poor Gen gets beat up a lot, and never really shows it. And I don't even want to think about what would happen if he died in Attolia. Ahh, scary.

My name is a conglomeration of word-sounds that feel good together. In between trips to the library, I'd make up my own stories to keep myself entertained, and Archdyadove was the last name of one of those characters. It's stuck with me, I guess.