Of cannon and commas and other misdirection

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that when I read QoA, I didn't realize that the cannon the Eddisians took with them on their way to steal the queen were wooden until Eugenides told Attolia so. I am comforted by the belief that this was deliberate misdirection by the author rather than me being egregiously stupid. I was just re-reading that part again, and noticed how tricky a comma can be.

The book says, "Those in the rear struggled with block and tackle, roughly squared wooden beams, wooden carriages and cannon." Which of course means "wooden carriages and wooden cannon." If it had said "wooden carriages, and cannon," it wouldn't have. But when reading through it for the first time I didn't even notice the absence of the comma, and automatically assumed that cannon = metal. Brilliant writing! Brilliant, sneaky, writing!

Speaking of misdirection: Since I read QoA last of the three, I knew what happened. Somebody who read the books in the proper order, please tell me: in the scene where Eugenides proposes stealing the Queen of Attolia, did you get the idea through most of the discussion that what he was planning was to kill her? Until the very end when Eddis said, "All right, go and steal the queen of Attolia? (And I still can't quite figure out if he announced in open Council, "By the way, I want to marry her because I love her." Or did Eddis just figure it out for herself?)

I spend a lot of my re-reading time smacking myself in the head and saying, "Well, of course! How obvious! How could I have missed that?"

Leslie