Here's the deets about what's going on:
Week 1: Wednesday 6th May, Chapters 1 through 9
Week 2: Wednesday 13th May, Chapters 10 through 17 (end of part 2)
Week 3: Wednesday 20th May, Chapters 18 through 26 (part 3)
Week 4: Wednesday 27th May, Chapters 27 to End (part 4 & 5)
Lisa at DeerGeekPlace is hosting the readalong . The questions will be posted weekly in a Goodreads group page, and will also be tweeted out weekly from the @wyrdandwonder account using the hashtag #TheGoblinEmperor, as well as the standard #wyrdandwonder tag.
Right. Let's do this.
So many verbal encounters. So much political muck! Let's start with Princess Sheveän, who seemed so very outraged at the idea of the late emperor's body being 'desecrated'. Do you buy that as her reasoning? Or do you think she was making a scene for another reason?
I'll take option B thanks.
Well. Maaaaaybe someone else wound her up and put her up to it. I can believe that she is less elf and more drama llama to begin with. But there is something nefarious going on, no doubt about that.
Cala and Vedero both have some hard but pragmatic advice for Maia here: Cala's concern is for the emperor being seen to be weak for treating his nohecharei as equals when their job is to protect him; and Vedero's situation is different but her concern is basically the same as Cala's. She seems alarmed at the idea that Maia might go against society and tradition by refusing to bargain for a marriage for her. How do you feel about these scenes, and the conversations between them? Are they being too harsh and/or cynical, or is Maia simply being too naive?
When someone walks into the tiger cage, advising them how best to not get mauled is neither harsh nor cynical. By the standards of the court, they're the mercy of mother's milk itself. It's not on them that things are the way they are there.
Cala and Vedero both have some hard but pragmatic advice for Maia here: Cala's concern is for the emperor being seen to be weak for treating his nohecharei as equals when their job is to protect him; and Vedero's situation is different but her concern is basically the same as Cala's. She seems alarmed at the idea that Maia might go against society and tradition by refusing to bargain for a marriage for her. How do you feel about these scenes, and the conversations between them? Are they being too harsh and/or cynical, or is Maia simply being too naive?
When someone walks into the tiger cage, advising them how best to not get mauled is neither harsh nor cynical. By the standards of the court, they're the mercy of mother's milk itself. It's not on them that things are the way they are there.
That said, while Maia is looking naive, so would everybody else in such a situation, I'm not sure about being too naive. Too naive would be if he didn't believe them. Right now, he's feeling out his way on what he can and can't do. That's going to involve some getting it wrong. So for now, I don't think anybody is too anything; they're just doing what thesituation dictates.
Setheris attempts to come at Maia from his more abusive position, clearly intending to railroad his cousin into giving him a position at court he feels is worthy of him. Yet Maia sticks to his intention of sending Setheris somewhere he will not have so much easy access to the new emperor. Do you think, with that, that Setheris's days of troubling Maia are over?
There is nothing to make me think Setheris will be a further issue save for the shape of the story; too much have been invested in him for nothing to happen nine times out of ten.
Setheris attempts to come at Maia from his more abusive position, clearly intending to railroad his cousin into giving him a position at court he feels is worthy of him. Yet Maia sticks to his intention of sending Setheris somewhere he will not have so much easy access to the new emperor. Do you think, with that, that Setheris's days of troubling Maia are over?
There is nothing to make me think Setheris will be a further issue save for the shape of the story; too much have been invested in him for nothing to happen nine times out of ten.
Also, I renounce my previous theory that Setheris will come round. I guess maybe he will, but he is clearly a bit of a chode.
A discovery is made that the sabotage of the Wisdom of Choharo may have been caused by the Cetho Workers League - a "dissident group". Do you think this will lead to a resolution of the investigation, or did the plot just thicken?
My money is on this being with noble backers at best and an outright black flag at worst; someone close to Maia is to blame here. So yes, the thot has plickened.
Maia's grandfather is coming to court for Winternight, though this seems to please Maia far more than it pleases Chavar ... What do you make of Chavar's open disagreeableness during the dinner at the ambassador's home? Is it plain arrogance (albeit the racist kind), or do you think his disapproval of goblin folk runs deeper than that?
A discovery is made that the sabotage of the Wisdom of Choharo may have been caused by the Cetho Workers League - a "dissident group". Do you think this will lead to a resolution of the investigation, or did the plot just thicken?
My money is on this being with noble backers at best and an outright black flag at worst; someone close to Maia is to blame here. So yes, the thot has plickened.
Maia's grandfather is coming to court for Winternight, though this seems to please Maia far more than it pleases Chavar ... What do you make of Chavar's open disagreeableness during the dinner at the ambassador's home? Is it plain arrogance (albeit the racist kind), or do you think his disapproval of goblin folk runs deeper than that?
He liked the old silk ones, or at least liked them better than the other ones, right? I think this is ninety per cent pure snobbishness and if he's got an issue, it's with modernism in general.
Maybe.
I'll be honest, the information overload really got me for this section and right now, what'll be will be. I enjoyed the start of the book but this is beginning to feel a bit muddy middle, or maybe a better way to put it would be I'm not sure we've progressed from the set up and that means there's not a momentum sucking me in. And while Maia is growing on me, I'm still waiting to see a little more about these around him.
No comments:
Post a Comment