September 4:
My very first reaction to this book was, I am not kidding, Hawke Flynn? Really? And her bodyguard Wardwell? Then Tawney Lyon appeared and I almost didn’t make it any further. (Aside, I am almost positive I once worked with a dancer named Tawney Lyon back when I was bar-tending in strip clubs.)
But I persevered and I’m glad now that I did because the world-building has completely fascinated me.
The scene in the Red Pearl felt like a bit of an info-dump, but honestly there is so much new information to impart it’s inevitable that some of it is going to feel overly explain-y. Once the story gets back to the castle I thought the gradual reveals were done really well.
At first I thought the reference to “ascension” meant people were being carted off to sacrifice in some way. Nope, her brother still writes to her. By the time we got to the very unpleasant Lord Mazeen I had figured out the vampire angle. When we got the explanation for the Craven I was convinced that not everything Poppy had been told about the world was true and I came up with the theory that the Ascended and the Atlantians were exactly the same thing (some variety of vampire) and the only reason they hate each other is because of some internal power struggle that split their people in half. Poppy just happened to live among in side that was the victor so of course she believes their explanation for why the Craven exist .
By the time we got to the scene where the Duke is blaming the Gods’ wrath at the Tulis couple and people like them for the Craven attacks I was starting to wonder if Atlantians even existed. They’ve lived this way for centuries at this point? Maybe the old war was just a story the Vampires came up with to keep mortals under control and they orchestrate the Craven attacks whenever the peons started to get uppity.
That’s probably why the Hawke/Casteel reveal caught me off guard. Obviously Hawke wasn’t your standard soldier, but I assumed he was a dissenter or something. I didn’t guess Atlantian, and I really didn’t guess he would be the person the Ascended called the Dark One. I should have known better, you don’t bring up the concept of an entire race and then not use them.
There was another big info-dump when Casteel revealed himself to Poppy and honestly I barely kept track of all of it. I got the basics though, which is that Atlantians make Ascended and Ascended make Craven. And also there are werewolves.
They mentioned Poppy’s brother again at the very end and I’m taking my lessons learned that if something gets mentioned, it’s going to be important later. So I suspect the quest for Casteel’s brother will sooner or later lead to a quest for Poppy’s brother. Then immediately we segued into the worst proposal ever.
Not going to lie, I am really looking foward to how this is going to play out.