TaT Re-read Starts Today!

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

We're re-read Thick as Thieves here on sounis this month to celebrate the first anniversary of its release. Click HERE for the reading schedule and more info on how you can participate.

This week we're reading CHAPTERS 1-3 (p1-85)* 85 pages total or approximately the first 2 hours and 10 minutes of the audio narration if you're listening.

Revist Kamet's aquaphobia, Costis speaking Mede like an over-sized child, Laela's deceptive pallor, escaping the Namreen on a slow moving river boat that's on fire, and Kamet as an apathetic caravan guard.

This particular re-read will be a little more interactive, as we're asking each participant to make their own post each week for discussing the book(s) rather then follow a lead. Feel free to also use the comment section of this post to discuss. If you don't have anything to say one particular week, just skip on to the next.

In case you wanted to revist the initial TaT discussions from 2017, you can find that HERE.

Happy reading!

*page numbers are from the 2017 hardcover edition.

Comments

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

I was so excited to read this again!

Just finished chapter one and a few things already...

(1) Kamet saying crooked men assume others are crooked is a nice call back to Helen's philanders assume others are philandering in QoA.

(2) Do the imbalanced accounts and Rakra have something to do with Nahuseresh's possible disloyalty to his brother, Naheelid? The missing money could be going to nefarious dealings.

(3) Ah, another reason Ornon came along... He must've met Kamet during or prior to QoA, and was the one to point him out to Costis. Costis wouldn't know what he looked like.

Costis has clearly watched Kamet for some time. How else did he magically appear at the perfect moment to tell him to meet at the docks?

(4) Kamet refers to Eddis, Attolia, Sounis as city states. Does that mean the only large cities are the capitals and everything else is small towns and farming viliages?

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

I was actually rereading TaT when I remembered that I hadn't looked at Sounis for months and saw that you were doing a group re-read. I've gone back to the beginning to do a more careful read, since I was doing a good-parts-version skipping along hitting the parts I liked best harder and skimming the rest. Here's my take on your ideas.
1. Good catch.
2. Given that we're talking about mwt here, anything is possible, but I would have thought the money needed for a major political plot would have been great enough that it would have raised major alarm bells in Kamet's mind instead of the this-bears-careful-watching attitude he seems to project.
3. This seems plausible. I've got some additional ideas about Ornon, but they seem to fit better in discussing later events, so I'll hold onto the thought 'til the next section.
4. I've always thought of Eddis as a city state. It's smaller than the other two and, even on our lovely new maps, there is no mention of any population center larger than a village other than Eddis. I'm not so sure about the other two. They are larger and have multiple population centers, many of them controlled by barons at least nominally loyal to a sovereign, so I never really thought about them as city states. I suppose from the Mede point of view they might be. Or maybe I just don't understand the concept of city states.

Unrelated question: Eddis has barons, too. She says so in QoA. What do they do except lead parts of her army? We never hear about this bit or that bit of Eddis belonging to the demesne of some baron.

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

4: I looked up the meaning of city state and got...

A sovereign state consisting of an autonomous city with its dependencies.

Autononmous basically means independent. Attolia, Sounis; Eddis are all independent soveriegn state and mostly centered around their capital city that bears the same name as the country. My guess is that Kamet is calling them city states, because they are not controlled by any of the surrounding empires or greater powers. Not necessarily because there is only one metropolis.

I think all of Helen's ministers are barons or members of her massive extended family. So, they work in the government, I guess? Look after the sheep? XD

In traditional fedual systems, barons looked after the peasants farming their land. So, they are probably mostly looking after farms, villiages, and those timber and mining opporations on their land.

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I like the definition you found better than the one I found! This makes Kamet's comment make perfect sense.

Boating

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

I have question for someone who knows more about boating than I. Why would it be perfectly natural for a small riverboat to go up river at night, but be practically unheard of for it to go down river at night?

RE: Boating

[drollittle.livejournal.com]

Maybe because going down river implies going out to sea and they usually wouldn’t start a journey at night?

Re: Boating

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

I got the impression it was more of a city planning thing. Boats folliwing shipping lanes usually go a certain direction at a certain time to avoid bumping into one another. In this case, people going up river leave during the PM and people going down river leave during the AM.

Since Ianna-Ir is the capital city of the Mede Empire, it must have very busy waterways. From Kamet's commentary, the river seems to be their primary method of transporting goods in and out of the city and travel.

I lived next to a river most of my childhood, and I've never heard of any particular reason to not boat down river at night other then getting lost and bumping into other boats. :)

RE: Re: Boating

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This seems logical, although personally I think they are nuts for traveling at night. Other boats may be lit and avoidable, but what about samdbars?

Re: Boating

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

Ah, sandbars! I was thinking the same thing. However if the Ianna river is very deep, sandbars may not be a concern.

The part of the river I lived on was a few miles below a dam and therefore very low at times. There were tons of sandbars, but I'd still see people out there on boats at night with flashlights. Crazy people! XD Above the dam, where it was deeper, there weren't any sandbars, therefore it was much safer to boat at night.

BTW, on Lake Superior there's an infamous sandbar that has wrecked multiply ships that were trying to harbor at night. It's so easy to run into a sandbar in the dark!

[drollittle.livejournal.com]

Ornon may have gone to Mede as ambassador just because he is a good ambassador and Costis conveniently fit into his traveling group and then split off for his own mission. If Costis was part of the guard in Attolia or Ephrata while Kamet was there, he would likely know Kamet by sight. (There’s a fun fanfic about Ornon during TaT by Transposable_Element).

Goofy theory: what if the bad actors for the cheap production of Immakuk and Ennikar were actually Immakuk and Ennikar? And that’s how Costis recognized them later?

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

Do you think Costis saw Kamet duirng QoA? He didn't serve in the inner palace, so I assumed they wouldn't have crossed paths.

EKKK! Those two playing themselves is definitely something they would do. XD

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I'll admit to being thrilled at seeing Ornon as ambassador. He's clever and one of the few people Eugenides can trust implicitly. I assumed he and Costis were told what to do (steal Kamet) and how to do it, and they worked out the details of Costis finding Kamet once they got there. Knowing Gen, every little detail was worked out in advance. And then Immakuk and Ennikar kept helping them out, too.

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

Wow, I never thought of this. It would explain why the actor who played Ennikar resembled the real Ennikar, when it seems unlikely he otherwise would.

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

I love how Immakuk just strolls into the inn after setting all those boats on fire. XD I guess that was one way to help Costis and Kamet avoid dectection by the Namreen...