TaT Re-read: Week 3

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

And the re-read continues! This week we're reading Chapters 7-10 (p182-296)* 88 pages total or approximately 2 hours of the audio narration if you're listening. We're really getting into the good stuff now! Reading schedule is HERE if you need it along with more information on how you can participate if you're just joining us.

Revisit easier than expected mountain climbing, unwise love affairs, cheery pot tinning, talk like a ghost day, and Costis pulling a WWED (what would Eugenides do). Also, if you're interested... I found a video of a pot being tinned over a fire in India. It's very cool to see and is so close to how it's described in the book.

Happy reading!

*pages numbers are from the 2017 hardcover edition

Comments

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

We get our first glimpse of Gen the Boot Boy here. It seems extremely risky, to me, that Gen strolled around the Attolian palace as he did. I guess he was so cocky at that point he figured he'd never get caught. Irene was one of the few people who'd ever seen him before and no one really looks carefully at a servant, right?

It was also interesting to learn more about free servants, indentured servants, and slaves in the different kingdoms.

And, one of my favorite parts of the book! Costis can sing and the womenfolk ogle him while he tins the pot and swears. It really does prove that old theory that Costis is a hunk.

When Costis falls into the well, Kamet gives us that image of a wine cup, tipping and spilling. That's familiar to us from QoA, when Gen is locked in a room in Ephrata and Irene fears he's dead.

Questions and comments

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

1.You're interested in language in an earlier post, Lady Jane. Do you think Hemke’s family spoke the Medes’ language? Kamet seems to be interpreting and translating everything. Yet when they cross the Taymets, Kamet says that they mostly speak the same language as the Mede in Zaboar.

2. Kamet describes the “indentured boy” in Attolia’s kitchens as hiding to avoid stirring vats of urine in the laundry. I had known that urine was used as a mordant in dying, but not in laundry, so I found this very nice Smithsonian Magazine article on this and related subjects: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/from-gunpowder-to-teeth-whitener-the-science-behind-historic-uses-of-urine-442390/

3. When Kamet describes the giant jars the potter was delivering, was I the only one that thought about Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves?

I LOVE the Costis Tinning scene!!!

[11rod88staff11.livejournal.com]

I love how he sings while he tins, and the women watching him are enthralled. I LOVE that he warns them that it "might not be pretty." I LOVE when he *shrugs* (as he always does) when the matriarch points out the drips of tin on the side of it. I LOVE how Kamet realizes that Costis actually has a colorful vocabulary, knowing "curses in 5 languages."

There was almost this sensual, masculine aura to this scene where Costis was fully on display in his evolved power.