The Hourglass Throne
May. 14th, 2023 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasarielThe Hourglass Throne, by K.D. Edwards.
MAJOR SPOILERS, and series-standard TW for sexual assault mention.
Continuing the theme of the Tarot Sequence speedrunning the Dresden Files, this was some real Changes shit right here. The loss of a major character, MAJOR Big Reveals, and a very clear "nothing will ever be the same again" feel. It started out with a "just like old times" job that, of course, quickly develops Implications and spirals out of control until people are throwing chunks of time and space at each other. As usual, I miss the down-n-dirty scrappiness of the early days, but as speedruns go, this one at least was properly momentous.
First off, I'm calling two things now: Lord Tower isn't dead, and Queenie is the woman who keeps appearing to Rune, and also probably the Empress as well.
First things first: I'm absolutely calling no body, no death on Lord Tower. It's always possible that this is a Sirius Black kind of deal (I was DEAD FUCKING CONVINCED that Sirius was going to come back, up until like the last 20 pages or so of Deathly Hallows), and there was that "I watched the light go out of his dark eyes" line, but as far as I can tell, signs point to him being lost within the timestream but not Gone Forever gone. Like, Zurah did have that line about "Someone has died here," but please see Exhibit A: the freshly-Brand-ified body of Evil Vadik, who died 30 seconds or less previously. So my money is on Lord Tower resurfacing towards the end of the second trilogy, Unutterably Altered by having been yeeted into the timestream, and his rehabilitation/trauma will form a significant secondary plot in the final trilogy. He may even take up the mantle of Lord Time, if he's been so Unutterably Altered that he can no longer be Lord Tower and/or if the new Lord/Lady/Liege Tower is doing a decent job. Although, that does raise the question: who *is* going to be the next Lx Tower? His daughter has scarpered, and his son likely just as much a shithead now as he was when Brand kicked his ass twenty years ago. I'm betting on Amelia(/Amalia, because typos continue to be a thing), since the next book is going to be a road trip novel set in the U.S. proper, and that's where she is, but time will tell (no pun intended)...
As for the second prediction, I'm getting hella suspicious of Queenie. We don't even have a full description of her, only that she has a "plain face" and is so helpful that it borders on pathological. She's such a blank slate, character-wise - no personality (beyond bustling and domestic), no backstory, no opinions, no nothing. At first I assumed that this was another Dresden Files corollary, in the form of garden-variety unexamined sexism, wherein KDE realized that Rune and Brand didn't have enough time to cook and do laundry and stuff on top of all their adventures, and created a walking plot device to get all that boring domestic stuff out of the way. But it's now clear that that's very much not how KDE operates; his female characters are as fully-rounded as his male or nonbinary ones, with their own desires and motivations. But Queenie seems so focused on helping or serving others, to the point of servility. At first I just assumed that she was some sort of brownie or other household spirit, and taking care of people was just Her Thing, but she's never been confirmed as such, and she's hung on to Rune & Brand's household long after it became clear that doing so would put her in significant physical danger. She's now the only member of the court without significant offensive or defensive power*, but doesn't seem at all phased by this. So I'm betting something is up, and the increased presence of the river lady in Rune's head + the continuing Highly Significant references to the missing Empress (oh, and also, "Queenie" = "Empress"?), I bet it's going to be her.
* before the last third or so of this book, I would have said that she's the only member of the court over the age of puberty without significant offensive or defensive power, but now Anna can manifest a dragon (or thunderbird, given that KDE is clearly trying to do her Native American heritage justice?), and Corbie can summon a fucking five-ton dinosaur as his familiar, so yeah, she's still the least overtly-powerful member of the gang, even those with a 9 PM bedtime.
Given these predictions, I'm not as sad/worried about Lord Tower's real and/or apparent death as I otherwise might be. I thought that all of his post-death (or "death") scenes were handled pretty well, from everybody's final conversations with him (which were illuminating on a personal level, as well as fitting on a more overarching level, given his status as Secrets Guy), to that last video of him at Corbie's Show and Tell (which, okay, between this and the dinosaur familiar thing, I guess I am coming around to Anna and Corbie after all, because ow my heart). There is that weird sense of "wait, what???" confusion and loss that I'm clearly meant to be feeling - I really don't know how the political landscape of New Atlantis will look, let alone Our Heroes' personal lives, without the Tower Ex Machina to swoop in and save the day just when all seems lost. I also have Concerns about his succession, as mentioned above. Oh, and Mayan! Someone in THM (Lady Moon, I think?) described a Companion's state after the death of their scion as a "living death," so I really really wonder what will happen to Mayan. He clearly doesn't believe that Lord Tower is dead any more than I do, so I foresee some Bad Shit ahead for him. Hopefully with a happy ending when Lord Tower comes back, but that's not a guarantee. Brand did promise Lord Tower that he wouldn't let Mayan follow him into death (which, if Tower does end up being alive the whole time, would make the whole thing very tragically Romeo and Juliet), and Brand doesn't break his promises, so I guess he's sorted for the time being. Oh, and speaking of Brand's last conversation with Lord Tower! It was a genuine bombshell that Rune wasn't the only one to have once been in love with, or at least had a crush on, Lord Tower. It sounds like Lord Tower let Brand down pretty gently, as I'm sure a centuries-old demigod would do with the traumatized twenty-something that he'd rescued, but as Brand mentions, it does give Lord Tower's continued forbearance for Brand giving him shit/talking to him like an equal another dimension. Like, I'm dead certain that Lord Tower did love both Brand and Rune.... just not in the way that Brand clearly wanted (and perhaps still wants??? inconclusive) him to.
One thing I am seriously worried/sad about, though, was Quinn losing his Sight, hopefully temporarily. There were a lot of blinking neon lights pointing towards The Eidolon, a sort of interquel that details Max, Quinn, and Anna's time as prisoners of Lady Time, and is presumably where this happened, so of course I'm going to read it. Plus, Terrible Teens shenanigans. :D Although Quinn is one of my favorite characters, weirdly enough I'm finding that I don't have a lot to say about him - I just intensely enjoy every time he's on the page, from warning everyone about assassins to trying to head off the long-foretold Ferret Prophecy. So just take it as read that he was a Delight here.
The real Oh Shit moment, though, at least for me, was the multiple carriage house reveals. These ranged from the minor but illuminating (oh, so that's why Rune has a bad shoulder D:), to the deeply tragic (they had a talla bond! they had it and then lost it!!!), to the Oh Shit That's REAL Bad (the geas thing). It surprises me not at all that Rune a) blames himself for the whole thing, b) is by far the most concerned with how this would affect Brand if word got out, and c) used to be one of the selfish asshole scions that he now rails against so strongly. I do agree that this would absolutely destroy Brand if he ever finds out...which means that he's going to find out, sooner or later, of course. It does also explain why Rune lost his whole entire shit when Brand has been mind-controlled in the past.
I really liked the Yeats nod in "My entire life, one way or the other, had been a narrowing gyre to that bloody carriage house." "The Second Coming" is one of my very favorite poems, and I thought the reference was a really good way to ground and amplify the menace of the scene. And it was already *plenty* menacing. It was certainly less graphic than Rune's flashbacks from TLS, but it didn't have that "delicately talking around an issue instead of about it" problem from THM.
Here, as in many other cases, may I just say: thank all gods for Addam Saint Nicholas. He remains the most patient and understanding person in the world - even when his boyfriend kind of accidentally proposes shortly after a) vividly reliving his horrific torture, b) threatening suicide, and c) revealing that he has Extra Super Magic powers that will kill him (oh and by they way they're lost in time and these powers are their only way to get home), his reaction is more along the lines of "sure, okay, that sounds lovely :)" than "HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!" I do still worry about what Addam said about “But it would be so easy [for Rune and Brand to leave him behind], because of that we,” when they were all high as balls on the alchemist's magic, though. He's made it very clear that he doesn't feel like he's settling, and that he's exactly where he wants to be, but it's also clear that he's somewhat resigned himself to being on the outside looking in. They do seem to be making strides on that front, in that the Rune&Brand Companion bond seems to be somehow expanding into a Rune&Brand&Addam bond of some sort??? But I am still increasingly seeing Addam as a quietly tragic figure - Rune keeps having to protest that his feelings for Addam are both deep and genuine, and having to promise to make up for this slight or that omission, in a way he never has to do with Brand, because it's perfectly obvious to everyone (and to the people involved not least) that Rune and Brand are passionately and soul-definingly devoted to each other. Hopefully they'll end up in a kind of V-shaped polycule, where Rune&Brand and Rune/Addam co-exist in some sort of Addam/Rune&Brand triumvirate. This seems to be what they're working towards, anyway, especially since Brand was the one to put Addam's engagement ring on his finger.
I really liked Lady Time as a villain. She was...neither subtle nor complex, as KDE villains tend to not be, but as a terrifying monster of unimaginable power and chilling cruelty she does just fine. She was actually supervillainous sometimes almost to the point of comedy - the grandiosity, the bombastic villain speech, the eeeeeeeevil gloating, the insults ("insolent dogs" and "insects" in this day and age, really??) and so on. It did feel a little hokey, but kind of in a good way; KDE was apparently having the time of his life with her, with her color-coordinated henchpersons and her "rise up and obey me, oppressed masses!!!" speeches and all as well as her Genuinely Scary moments. Speaking of which, I really really really liked the coronation gala/Manse sequences - there was such a mounting sense of dread/discomfort/dread again that built up, even while the plot was still advancing in other directions as well. This was where Rune as a narrator really got to shine - it would be pretty impossible to have this sense of "something is wrong"/"everything is fine"/"no something is REALLY wrong"/"what was I worried about?? everything is still fine" with a third-person narrator. The rest of it was all very well and good, but it was the "who are you in the dark" scenes that really stood out to me. Oh, and let's not forget the evil memory-traveling bone-breaking monster; that one was fun too! :D
Vadik/the Serpent and his compatriot Cornelius/the Owl were cut from similar cloth, just on a smaller scale - almost cartoonishly supervillainous in their gimmicks and their sneering, but in a fun way, and without Lady Time's sense of scale. Vadik was a slimy dickhead from beginning to end; oh boy was I ready for Brand to do something...definitive to him after “And I know what it’s like to have you broken and bleeding and begging beneath me.” Cornelius, however, had like one scene to be unsettling and monstrous before his entirely-deserved death. Which I actually found pretty funny, btw, although I'm not sure I was meant to. Like, if you take a regular human who is able to punch at the level of living gods by turning his body into a finely-honed weapon, and then feed him magic that produces a panic response...if he freaks out and kills you with his feet, that one's on you, my dude; you got no one to blame but yourself. XD
So that's three out of nine masked men down, and six to go. It's clear that there's a lot to learn here - for example, it doesn't appear that Lady Time was initially involved in the fall of the Sun Court, but she certainly has taken advantage of it after the fact. And the organization (because it does feel highly organized - more than just a bunch of sick fucks with a grudge, but less so than a formal Court) similarly took the opportunity to ally with her when she showed up, but she's clearly not one of them, although I'm assuming it was them that funded her rejuvenation treatments. The question of exactly who they are, and why they did what they did, from destroying the Sun Court in the first place, to torturing Rune, to leaving him and Brand alive, remains, though. I'm increasingly thinking that it's something to do with his mother and/or the Star Court of which she was a member - we still haven't gotten a reason for his mother's early death (if KDE pulls the "died in childbirth even though advanced medical technology and magic are widely available" thing I will spit acid, but I think he's smarter than that), and there have been some subtle as well as not-so-subtle hints that Lord Star pulled some Real Bad Shit and was imprisoned for it. So maybe Papa Sun (who the fandom discord has apparently named Capri Sun XD) had some hand in Lord Star's fall, and the raid was in revenge and/or to gather the raw materials to jailbreak him? IDK; I guess we'll see.
Dowager Lady Death was more of a surprise; I'm used to powerful, peppery old ladies who neither take nor give a single shit to be pretty unequivocally forces for good. It actually took me a long time to actually accept that this wasn't some sort of double blind, and that she actually was just kind of mean and petty. Like with Geoffrey from TLS and Battle Royalchemy (which, by they way, is a pun so gloriously terribad it's almost Semiautomagic levels, to continue the Dresden parallels), it was an interesting experience to see a character type I usually love played as a villain.
The found family aspects continue to hit just right. I was unexpectedly and powerfully struck by the older Atlanteans' gesture of protection and respect when they found the replica of the carriage house, and they formed a barrier to shield Rune and Brand. Actually, I just really liked that scene in general - Lady Death trying to protect Rune not just as her ally who she needed functional but her younger brother who she was trying to spare needless pain, Brand not being able to do anything but scream, and Addam being very organically included in Rune & Brand's pain rather than standing outside of it. I'm also really coming to like Lady Diana, who was previously kind of a nonentity - she has just as much competence kink as Rune or Brand or Lord Tower, just in a very different way, and I liked how it became very clear that having a seneschal who knows what they're doing is just as important to a functioning court as having fighters. And, of course, learning that Max and Quinn (and later Anna) had been taken by Lady Time was the real Let's Get Dangerous moment.
I also continue to like the other Arcana we've met so far. Lady Death made a good first impression in THM and continued that here; it's good for Rune to have someone he looks up to in a comfortably bickery sort of older sibling way, rather than the august mentorship of Lord Tower. She seems refreshingly down-to-earth/not impressed by Arcana Bullshit, in an almost Sandman!Death kind of way. I was also unexpectedly charmed by Lady Priestess, who comes across as an elementary school secretary who got lost and stumbled into the Convocation building...until you push her and the gloves come off, that is. Her daughter Bethan also seemed refreshingly competent, and competent in a way that reflects well on Lady Priestess. It was also interesting to see how a visibly & physically disabled person navigates Atlantean society, which is apparently...less than fully supportive of those it perceives as weak. Bethan seemed to get by pretty well, but I still think she and Quinn should get together and form the "Discount Us At Your Peril" Club.
Ultimately, it's not High Literature, but damn is it fun. I keep going back and forth on whether this feels like fanfic. The typos never fully go away even though there are both multiple beta readers *and* an editor in the acknowledgements - heck, there are even beta readers! - and it looks like KDE is very engaged with the fandom. On the other hand, it doesn't have that Tumblr House Style that makes me grind my teeth, and although some of the short story collections/novellas were very interested in having earnest conversations about The Importance of Inclusivity, this one... doesn't, because most people don't sit around talking like that. XD So I think I'm coming down on the side of not fanfic, but not rigorously intellectual classical literature, either. What it is, at the end of the day, is fun. I'm eager to see how this whole series stands up on re-reads, though - I definitely recognize that I'm reading them in the first flush of love, if you will, and while there are plenty of things I think are just plain good (the dialogue, the relationships), there are some that I want to take a closer look at and see how they look when everything isn't shiny and new (the prose itself gets the job done, but hasn't knocked my socks off).
So yes, I will be reading The Eidolon and I will be watching KDE's twitter like a hawk for a The Misfit Caravan release date, but I won't be holding my breath, given that THT was only released, like, a year ago. But, point is, soon enough I'll stop yelling at y'all about the Tarot Sequenceand start yelling at y'all about something else.
MAJOR SPOILERS, and series-standard TW for sexual assault mention.
Continuing the theme of the Tarot Sequence speedrunning the Dresden Files, this was some real Changes shit right here. The loss of a major character, MAJOR Big Reveals, and a very clear "nothing will ever be the same again" feel. It started out with a "just like old times" job that, of course, quickly develops Implications and spirals out of control until people are throwing chunks of time and space at each other. As usual, I miss the down-n-dirty scrappiness of the early days, but as speedruns go, this one at least was properly momentous.
First off, I'm calling two things now: Lord Tower isn't dead, and Queenie is the woman who keeps appearing to Rune, and also probably the Empress as well.
First things first: I'm absolutely calling no body, no death on Lord Tower. It's always possible that this is a Sirius Black kind of deal (I was DEAD FUCKING CONVINCED that Sirius was going to come back, up until like the last 20 pages or so of Deathly Hallows), and there was that "I watched the light go out of his dark eyes" line, but as far as I can tell, signs point to him being lost within the timestream but not Gone Forever gone. Like, Zurah did have that line about "Someone has died here," but please see Exhibit A: the freshly-Brand-ified body of Evil Vadik, who died 30 seconds or less previously. So my money is on Lord Tower resurfacing towards the end of the second trilogy, Unutterably Altered by having been yeeted into the timestream, and his rehabilitation/trauma will form a significant secondary plot in the final trilogy. He may even take up the mantle of Lord Time, if he's been so Unutterably Altered that he can no longer be Lord Tower and/or if the new Lord/Lady/Liege Tower is doing a decent job. Although, that does raise the question: who *is* going to be the next Lx Tower? His daughter has scarpered, and his son likely just as much a shithead now as he was when Brand kicked his ass twenty years ago. I'm betting on Amelia(/Amalia, because typos continue to be a thing), since the next book is going to be a road trip novel set in the U.S. proper, and that's where she is, but time will tell (no pun intended)...
As for the second prediction, I'm getting hella suspicious of Queenie. We don't even have a full description of her, only that she has a "plain face" and is so helpful that it borders on pathological. She's such a blank slate, character-wise - no personality (beyond bustling and domestic), no backstory, no opinions, no nothing. At first I assumed that this was another Dresden Files corollary, in the form of garden-variety unexamined sexism, wherein KDE realized that Rune and Brand didn't have enough time to cook and do laundry and stuff on top of all their adventures, and created a walking plot device to get all that boring domestic stuff out of the way. But it's now clear that that's very much not how KDE operates; his female characters are as fully-rounded as his male or nonbinary ones, with their own desires and motivations. But Queenie seems so focused on helping or serving others, to the point of servility. At first I just assumed that she was some sort of brownie or other household spirit, and taking care of people was just Her Thing, but she's never been confirmed as such, and she's hung on to Rune & Brand's household long after it became clear that doing so would put her in significant physical danger. She's now the only member of the court without significant offensive or defensive power*, but doesn't seem at all phased by this. So I'm betting something is up, and the increased presence of the river lady in Rune's head + the continuing Highly Significant references to the missing Empress (oh, and also, "Queenie" = "Empress"?), I bet it's going to be her.
* before the last third or so of this book, I would have said that she's the only member of the court over the age of puberty without significant offensive or defensive power, but now Anna can manifest a dragon (or thunderbird, given that KDE is clearly trying to do her Native American heritage justice?), and Corbie can summon a fucking five-ton dinosaur as his familiar, so yeah, she's still the least overtly-powerful member of the gang, even those with a 9 PM bedtime.
Given these predictions, I'm not as sad/worried about Lord Tower's real and/or apparent death as I otherwise might be. I thought that all of his post-death (or "death") scenes were handled pretty well, from everybody's final conversations with him (which were illuminating on a personal level, as well as fitting on a more overarching level, given his status as Secrets Guy), to that last video of him at Corbie's Show and Tell (which, okay, between this and the dinosaur familiar thing, I guess I am coming around to Anna and Corbie after all, because ow my heart). There is that weird sense of "wait, what???" confusion and loss that I'm clearly meant to be feeling - I really don't know how the political landscape of New Atlantis will look, let alone Our Heroes' personal lives, without the Tower Ex Machina to swoop in and save the day just when all seems lost. I also have Concerns about his succession, as mentioned above. Oh, and Mayan! Someone in THM (Lady Moon, I think?) described a Companion's state after the death of their scion as a "living death," so I really really wonder what will happen to Mayan. He clearly doesn't believe that Lord Tower is dead any more than I do, so I foresee some Bad Shit ahead for him. Hopefully with a happy ending when Lord Tower comes back, but that's not a guarantee. Brand did promise Lord Tower that he wouldn't let Mayan follow him into death (which, if Tower does end up being alive the whole time, would make the whole thing very tragically Romeo and Juliet), and Brand doesn't break his promises, so I guess he's sorted for the time being. Oh, and speaking of Brand's last conversation with Lord Tower! It was a genuine bombshell that Rune wasn't the only one to have once been in love with, or at least had a crush on, Lord Tower. It sounds like Lord Tower let Brand down pretty gently, as I'm sure a centuries-old demigod would do with the traumatized twenty-something that he'd rescued, but as Brand mentions, it does give Lord Tower's continued forbearance for Brand giving him shit/talking to him like an equal another dimension. Like, I'm dead certain that Lord Tower did love both Brand and Rune.... just not in the way that Brand clearly wanted (and perhaps still wants??? inconclusive) him to.
One thing I am seriously worried/sad about, though, was Quinn losing his Sight, hopefully temporarily. There were a lot of blinking neon lights pointing towards The Eidolon, a sort of interquel that details Max, Quinn, and Anna's time as prisoners of Lady Time, and is presumably where this happened, so of course I'm going to read it. Plus, Terrible Teens shenanigans. :D Although Quinn is one of my favorite characters, weirdly enough I'm finding that I don't have a lot to say about him - I just intensely enjoy every time he's on the page, from warning everyone about assassins to trying to head off the long-foretold Ferret Prophecy. So just take it as read that he was a Delight here.
The real Oh Shit moment, though, at least for me, was the multiple carriage house reveals. These ranged from the minor but illuminating (oh, so that's why Rune has a bad shoulder D:), to the deeply tragic (they had a talla bond! they had it and then lost it!!!), to the Oh Shit That's REAL Bad (the geas thing). It surprises me not at all that Rune a) blames himself for the whole thing, b) is by far the most concerned with how this would affect Brand if word got out, and c) used to be one of the selfish asshole scions that he now rails against so strongly. I do agree that this would absolutely destroy Brand if he ever finds out...which means that he's going to find out, sooner or later, of course. It does also explain why Rune lost his whole entire shit when Brand has been mind-controlled in the past.
I really liked the Yeats nod in "My entire life, one way or the other, had been a narrowing gyre to that bloody carriage house." "The Second Coming" is one of my very favorite poems, and I thought the reference was a really good way to ground and amplify the menace of the scene. And it was already *plenty* menacing. It was certainly less graphic than Rune's flashbacks from TLS, but it didn't have that "delicately talking around an issue instead of about it" problem from THM.
Here, as in many other cases, may I just say: thank all gods for Addam Saint Nicholas. He remains the most patient and understanding person in the world - even when his boyfriend kind of accidentally proposes shortly after a) vividly reliving his horrific torture, b) threatening suicide, and c) revealing that he has Extra Super Magic powers that will kill him (oh and by they way they're lost in time and these powers are their only way to get home), his reaction is more along the lines of "sure, okay, that sounds lovely :)" than "HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!" I do still worry about what Addam said about “But it would be so easy [for Rune and Brand to leave him behind], because of that we,” when they were all high as balls on the alchemist's magic, though. He's made it very clear that he doesn't feel like he's settling, and that he's exactly where he wants to be, but it's also clear that he's somewhat resigned himself to being on the outside looking in. They do seem to be making strides on that front, in that the Rune&Brand Companion bond seems to be somehow expanding into a Rune&Brand&Addam bond of some sort??? But I am still increasingly seeing Addam as a quietly tragic figure - Rune keeps having to protest that his feelings for Addam are both deep and genuine, and having to promise to make up for this slight or that omission, in a way he never has to do with Brand, because it's perfectly obvious to everyone (and to the people involved not least) that Rune and Brand are passionately and soul-definingly devoted to each other. Hopefully they'll end up in a kind of V-shaped polycule, where Rune&Brand and Rune/Addam co-exist in some sort of Addam/Rune&Brand triumvirate. This seems to be what they're working towards, anyway, especially since Brand was the one to put Addam's engagement ring on his finger.
I really liked Lady Time as a villain. She was...neither subtle nor complex, as KDE villains tend to not be, but as a terrifying monster of unimaginable power and chilling cruelty she does just fine. She was actually supervillainous sometimes almost to the point of comedy - the grandiosity, the bombastic villain speech, the eeeeeeeevil gloating, the insults ("insolent dogs" and "insects" in this day and age, really??) and so on. It did feel a little hokey, but kind of in a good way; KDE was apparently having the time of his life with her, with her color-coordinated henchpersons and her "rise up and obey me, oppressed masses!!!" speeches and all as well as her Genuinely Scary moments. Speaking of which, I really really really liked the coronation gala/Manse sequences - there was such a mounting sense of dread/discomfort/dread again that built up, even while the plot was still advancing in other directions as well. This was where Rune as a narrator really got to shine - it would be pretty impossible to have this sense of "something is wrong"/"everything is fine"/"no something is REALLY wrong"/"what was I worried about?? everything is still fine" with a third-person narrator. The rest of it was all very well and good, but it was the "who are you in the dark" scenes that really stood out to me. Oh, and let's not forget the evil memory-traveling bone-breaking monster; that one was fun too! :D
Vadik/the Serpent and his compatriot Cornelius/the Owl were cut from similar cloth, just on a smaller scale - almost cartoonishly supervillainous in their gimmicks and their sneering, but in a fun way, and without Lady Time's sense of scale. Vadik was a slimy dickhead from beginning to end; oh boy was I ready for Brand to do something...definitive to him after “And I know what it’s like to have you broken and bleeding and begging beneath me.” Cornelius, however, had like one scene to be unsettling and monstrous before his entirely-deserved death. Which I actually found pretty funny, btw, although I'm not sure I was meant to. Like, if you take a regular human who is able to punch at the level of living gods by turning his body into a finely-honed weapon, and then feed him magic that produces a panic response...if he freaks out and kills you with his feet, that one's on you, my dude; you got no one to blame but yourself. XD
So that's three out of nine masked men down, and six to go. It's clear that there's a lot to learn here - for example, it doesn't appear that Lady Time was initially involved in the fall of the Sun Court, but she certainly has taken advantage of it after the fact. And the organization (because it does feel highly organized - more than just a bunch of sick fucks with a grudge, but less so than a formal Court) similarly took the opportunity to ally with her when she showed up, but she's clearly not one of them, although I'm assuming it was them that funded her rejuvenation treatments. The question of exactly who they are, and why they did what they did, from destroying the Sun Court in the first place, to torturing Rune, to leaving him and Brand alive, remains, though. I'm increasingly thinking that it's something to do with his mother and/or the Star Court of which she was a member - we still haven't gotten a reason for his mother's early death (if KDE pulls the "died in childbirth even though advanced medical technology and magic are widely available" thing I will spit acid, but I think he's smarter than that), and there have been some subtle as well as not-so-subtle hints that Lord Star pulled some Real Bad Shit and was imprisoned for it. So maybe Papa Sun (who the fandom discord has apparently named Capri Sun XD) had some hand in Lord Star's fall, and the raid was in revenge and/or to gather the raw materials to jailbreak him? IDK; I guess we'll see.
Dowager Lady Death was more of a surprise; I'm used to powerful, peppery old ladies who neither take nor give a single shit to be pretty unequivocally forces for good. It actually took me a long time to actually accept that this wasn't some sort of double blind, and that she actually was just kind of mean and petty. Like with Geoffrey from TLS and Battle Royalchemy (which, by they way, is a pun so gloriously terribad it's almost Semiautomagic levels, to continue the Dresden parallels), it was an interesting experience to see a character type I usually love played as a villain.
The found family aspects continue to hit just right. I was unexpectedly and powerfully struck by the older Atlanteans' gesture of protection and respect when they found the replica of the carriage house, and they formed a barrier to shield Rune and Brand. Actually, I just really liked that scene in general - Lady Death trying to protect Rune not just as her ally who she needed functional but her younger brother who she was trying to spare needless pain, Brand not being able to do anything but scream, and Addam being very organically included in Rune & Brand's pain rather than standing outside of it. I'm also really coming to like Lady Diana, who was previously kind of a nonentity - she has just as much competence kink as Rune or Brand or Lord Tower, just in a very different way, and I liked how it became very clear that having a seneschal who knows what they're doing is just as important to a functioning court as having fighters. And, of course, learning that Max and Quinn (and later Anna) had been taken by Lady Time was the real Let's Get Dangerous moment.
I also continue to like the other Arcana we've met so far. Lady Death made a good first impression in THM and continued that here; it's good for Rune to have someone he looks up to in a comfortably bickery sort of older sibling way, rather than the august mentorship of Lord Tower. She seems refreshingly down-to-earth/not impressed by Arcana Bullshit, in an almost Sandman!Death kind of way. I was also unexpectedly charmed by Lady Priestess, who comes across as an elementary school secretary who got lost and stumbled into the Convocation building...until you push her and the gloves come off, that is. Her daughter Bethan also seemed refreshingly competent, and competent in a way that reflects well on Lady Priestess. It was also interesting to see how a visibly & physically disabled person navigates Atlantean society, which is apparently...less than fully supportive of those it perceives as weak. Bethan seemed to get by pretty well, but I still think she and Quinn should get together and form the "Discount Us At Your Peril" Club.
Ultimately, it's not High Literature, but damn is it fun. I keep going back and forth on whether this feels like fanfic. The typos never fully go away even though there are both multiple beta readers *and* an editor in the acknowledgements - heck, there are even beta readers! - and it looks like KDE is very engaged with the fandom. On the other hand, it doesn't have that Tumblr House Style that makes me grind my teeth, and although some of the short story collections/novellas were very interested in having earnest conversations about The Importance of Inclusivity, this one... doesn't, because most people don't sit around talking like that. XD So I think I'm coming down on the side of not fanfic, but not rigorously intellectual classical literature, either. What it is, at the end of the day, is fun. I'm eager to see how this whole series stands up on re-reads, though - I definitely recognize that I'm reading them in the first flush of love, if you will, and while there are plenty of things I think are just plain good (the dialogue, the relationships), there are some that I want to take a closer look at and see how they look when everything isn't shiny and new (the prose itself gets the job done, but hasn't knocked my socks off).
So yes, I will be reading The Eidolon and I will be watching KDE's twitter like a hawk for a The Misfit Caravan release date, but I won't be holding my breath, given that THT was only released, like, a year ago. But, point is, soon enough I'll stop yelling at y'all about the Tarot Sequence
