Assassins of Thasalon spoiler discussion space
Here, as has become my custom, is a space for persons who have already read to book to freely discuss it with each other in the comments. Enjoy!
Ta, L.
(Didn't think I'd need to set this post up so soon, it being a novel this outing -- it takes me 3 or 4 days to get through, though I'm slower these days -- but, speed readers.)
Ta, L.
(Didn't think I'd need to set this post up so soon, it being a novel this outing -- it takes me 3 or 4 days to get through, though I'm slower these days -- but, speed readers.)
message 51:
by
Sandy
(new)
May 14, 2021 06:09AM
Any Thoughts on the theology aspects? I thought it striking that the gods rejected someone. I think this is the first time that has happened. In previous books they had been willing to take the "bad guys" who were willing to come (at least to my recollection, these ponderings are inspiring some re-reading). We saw this forgivness in "The Hallowed Hunt" for instance. But here the guy is considered so purely evil and notably sacrilegious that he is rejected by every god. Did it happen somewhere else and I have just forgotten? I think it would mean that Methani would rank as the most evil and irredeemable of all the 'bad actors' that we have seen. Of those whose soul's fates we know that at least.
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Sandy wrote: "Any Thoughts on the theology aspects? I thought it striking that the gods rejected someone. I think this is the first time that has happened. In previous books they had been willing to take the "ba..."It also happened to Dondo in Curse of Chalion and to Joen in Paladin of Souls (sort of - they both appear to have gotten dumped into Be-Not, thus leaving no ghosts behind).
This one is interestingly different from both of those in that the rejected ghost gets to wander around and make accusations. I expect that's actually the more usual way of things.
I don't mean to come across as negative; I spot potential typos as I go but don't want to comment on the whole until I've finished it. I am enjoying it and will do so again, in audio and (eventually) paper form, as well as re-reads of the e-book.Page 199 of 244:
“Lock the door behind us,” said Pen said to Tanar.
An extra "said" there.
Page 205:“I… Learned Tronio is long known to be a confident of Minister Methani and his nephew.”
Should that be "confidant"?
Kosigan wrote: "I don't mean to come across as negative; I spot potential typos as I go but don't want to comment on the whole until I've finished it. I am enjoying it and will do so again, in audio and (eventuall..."At this stage, I really do need the typos more, as soon as convenient. I'm always on edge at this period between wanting to send my error-list in as soon as possible for the corrections pass, so as to not sell more imperfect copies, and waiting to try to catch them all. Which is a mug's game, as some only get pointed out years later...
The discussion, properly, is for you folks.
Ta, L.
Karenhunt wrote: "It also happened to Dondo in Curse of Chalion and to Joen in Paladin of Souls (sort of - they both appear to have gotten dumped into Be-Not, thus leaving no ghosts behind)."As you implied, there's a difference with these characters: Dondo was carried off by the white god's death demon (though notably Martou, who was carried off with him, did have his soul taken up by the Father anyway), and Joen simply wouldn't let go of her demon and thus shared its fate.
But yes, I think this is the first time we've seen a character sundered by the gods' will and not their own.
Talli wrote: "Does Ikos live nearby? Would he have come to the wedding?"Well, technically, Ikos isn't a blood relative of Adelis, so he may not have been interested even if he was in the area.
On my copy page 222 or 244, location 3867 of 4205.... commas enclose the phrase "in Pen's view" and this is correct I am sure (I am admittedly not a grammer expert though) but I thought an alternate option might be for the 'in comma' phrase to have been "in Pen's view mildly insane,". Thoughts anyone? Would the change be an error or just a writer preference? The full sentence reads " He seemed to regard Alixtra with that, in Pen's view, mildly insane respect of a military man for an enemy who had almost suceeded in finishing him."
Sandy wrote: "I thought an alternate option might be for the 'in comma' phrase to have been "in Pen's view mildly insane,"."Yes, it seems to me that the comma could be put in either place. Perhaps your version is slightly more accurate in terms of meaning, but the version in the book may flow better if read aloud. A matter of opinion…
Page 216:A soon as he emerged, he was drawn in to treating the injuries of the Xarre servants,
"As soon as", I should think.
Talli wrote: "Page 208/209 maybe not typo - two "even"s in the sentence"Ha, there's a sneaky one -- that second word was supposed to be "ever".
L.
(Which I just typoed again as "even", sigh.)
Finished now. Really enjoyed it, which was never in doubt.So it seems that Adelis is going to be in Cedonia with Penric, Nikys and family in Orbas. I wonder how Nikys feels about that. Perhaps we'll find out, should any more stories be forthcoming.
It was good to catch up with some previous characters, such as the girls in the Bastard's chapterhouse, and of course Mira's old flame the General. 😂
More time with the Xarre household was also nice; I hadn't expected Adelis and Tanar to ever get married.
The girl in the cover picture became obvious when I got to that point in the story. The meaning of the title I suspected when Pen and retinue set off - after all, only one came *from* Thasalon.
I'll have to read it again soon, trying to take off my "looking for typos" hat. I irritate my wife (and sometimes myself) with mistakes that I see in TV programmes. I blame being a computer geek who writes code for a living. 😁
On the question of other souls not taken up I think it was implied that no god would take Halber.
Talli wrote: "On the question of other souls not taken up I think it was implied that no god would take Halber."For context for folks, from Penric' Fox:
Although Which god? was a good question. The Father of Justice was right out. The Mother and the Daughter likewise. The Bastard, god of all leftovers, seemed unlikely after Magal, although there was no telling. The Brother was a god of vast mercy, as Pen had reason to know, but…
Yeah, I get the impression that offending the Bastard has some really bad consequences - anyone who's offended him enough to cause him to reject a soul (a life of piracy isn't bad enough, eg), has probably offended the others along the way...
On my second read now so able to more savor than devour like the first pass though I'm sure I'll still miss most. I seem to recall a speed reading class I had to take in maybe 6th grade? I think it involved seeing big chunks at one time. I don't know how much of that stuck but it makes a handy excuse. Anyway, on page 80/244 it says the hamper was prepared for the first day's travels. I'm wondering if they thought it would last longer so would be first days' travels.
I am so, so delighted to see Bosha and Tanar again. I love their relationship. I’m quite surprised that two days on I seem to have found an unreported typo at the end of the book: “You have so much new correspondence piled up on your writing table.” Nikys told him. There’s a period between dialogue and tag, where there should be a comma.
Not a typo list, just some random thoughts:I also loved "like a chicken that brought its own pot and onions." I know I'm going to steal it sometime.
"as if he were a marketplace performer about to pull that rabbit out of the air." Am I the only one who heard this in his head in the voice of Bullwinkle J. Moose? "Presto!"
In the very next paragraph, ""I'll see what I can do," he sighed." Also in my head, this sure sounded like Ivan to me.
"I did it" Sure surprised me, although it is obvious once you think about the character.
Re: Foix and Liss, I've often wished for more of their story, but I suspect Penric and Nikys occupy a similar space in Lois' brain.
Finally, nothing to do with Penric, but since you mentioned Barr in a recent post, I just wanted to say, of all your novellas, "Knife Children" scratched an itch I didn't even know I had. Thank you.
Judy wrote: I’m quite surprised that two days on I seem to have found an unreported typo at the end of the book: “You have so much new correspondence piled up on your writing table.” Nikys told him. There’s a period between dialogue and tag, where there should be a comma."
Right-oh.
The corrections list with the 13 errata went in and was uploaded yesterday, so this one missed the train. If enough more accumulate (Bastard avert I hope not) to make it worth making my e-wranger go back again, it will be included.
New purchases should be, er, error-freer. In addition, I believe B&N updates prior purchases automagically. Not sure if one still has to go to one's "manage content and devices" page on Amazon to do so -- it's been a while since I visited that function. (Quick check -- I don't see a button for it today next to my own purchase, so, dunno.) Apple, I don't know -- if anyone buys an Apple version today, you might make a spot check to see what you got.
...I wonder if the Bastard is considered the god of typos and errata in the 5GU? Or at least among those finicky perfectionists over at the Father's Order...?
Ta, L.
Talli wrote: "On my second read now... Anyway, on page 80/244 it says the hamper was prepared for the first day's travels. I'm wondering if they thought it would last longer so would be first days' travels"I think we may just assume Nickys packed the hamper very generously, on this one...
:-), L.
For some reason, Assassins does not show up in the Lois McMaster Bujold author page on Amazon. If I search on the full title I find the entry, but I went to the author page when I wanted to check my review, and when I sort by "publication date" and in Kindle format (so as not to get all the special hardback editions and audiobooks, etc. ) I don't see anything newer than 2019! When I do "all formats", it does show a kindle version for Physicians of Vilnoc, and Orphans, not sure why those to don't show up when I limit by "kindle". The bottom line is that your author page on Amazon is missing stuff that should be there.I love Assassins of Thasalon, and admit being totally surprised when the identity of the second assassin was disclosed, although I shouldn't have been. Getting ready for a re-read.
Lois wrote: "The corrections list with the 13 errata went in and was uploaded yesterday"It's nice of you to bother, after all the work you've already done on the book. The update is not yet showing up on Amazon, but I suppose it will soon.
Jonathan wrote: "...The update is not yet showing up on Amazon, but I suppose it will soon..."Soon, ngh, historically that's been pretty random
at Amazon. Sometimes we have to try more than once to make it go through on that page. It can be hours -- or months.
As long as all new copies sold ongoing are corrected...
Ta, L.
Jerri wrote: "For some reason, Assassins does not show up in the Lois McMaster Bujold author page on Amazon. If I search on the full title I find the entry, but I went to the author page when I wanted to check m..."Huh. It's not coming up on my Author Central control page, either. It was there before. Possibly the new upload has bollixed something... I should likely give it some more time, and check again.
L.
Hi,I was afraid the iBooks version wouldn’t go up until after the weekend, but it showed up Saturday morning Aussie time, which was perfect for spending the day resting and reading at 33 weeks pregnant. I enjoyed it very much, thank you!
Possible typos in iBooks version: “I was paid the same, but the other unmarried woman had a dormitory provided, and food.”
Should that be women not woman?
“and who-knew-what in the pouch as his waist, every one tainted. At that point, the jade-hilted sword....”
Should that be the pouch at his waist, not as his waist?
I really enjoyed watching Pen train a new sorcerer. But I particularly enjoy the way that, through the stories, Pen often speaks quite literally and straightforwardly about the Gods, from the perspective of one who has seen them in action (and been their action) and people persist in hearing it through the lens of politics and their own plots. I can understand Pen’s outrage and frustration. But it’s a great way to illustrate that for most people just go about their normal lives, even in the temple, not always thinking about the Gods, while keeping that a strong part of Pen’s character.
I enjoyed remeeting so many familiar faces, but I was surprised at Dubro seeming unchanged. Apparently Pen is teaching Maska good healthkeeping tricks fast enough to ensure that Dubro will still be around when Rede finishes his temple training and is ready for a demon. All in all a very enjoyable story.Thank You, Lois!
No corrections yet in the Kindle version on my device. In the past they've updated automagically which does give me pause.
Claire wrote: "Hi,I was afraid the iBooks version wouldn’t go up until after the weekend, but it showed up Saturday morning Aussie time, which was perfect for spending the day resting and reading at 33 weeks pre..."
Ah. We will need another corrections pass...
Other than that, glad you enjoyed the story!
The non-matching nature of these catches does provide a good lesson to those folks, who generally haven't done it, wondering why modern books aren't better proofread.
Ta, L.
...also, I think I need to learn how to turn off the autocorrect function in my Word program, because I'd swear it's putting some of these in.
Favourite line: "looking like a man out for a ride with his good friend the shrouded corpse".Mummification doesn't seem to have caught on in that word, alas...
Lois wrote: "I need to learn how to turn off the autocorrect function in my Word program"Yes! I always turn off all autocorrections, because my experience is that they make more mistakes than I do. I habitually reread my own text as I'm going along, and I catch most typos.
Just checked my own Kindle copy tonight, and the corrections in it have magically appeared. Apparently one does not have to import them by hand from the content & devices list anymore, excellent.L.
I love when Pen Bops Alixtra on the head.I'm really surprised that Des has never been to Thasalon.
Lois wrote: "Just checked my own Kindle copy tonight, and the corrections in it have magically appeared."Perhaps this magic works only in the USA; not here in Spain, where I'm still being offered updates to download manually. Though not yet for "The Assassins of Thasalon". (This is not a complaint, of course; just a bulletin on the state of the world.)
My (US) Kindle copy hasn't updated yet and I do have wifi on.
I did a refresh on mine, and that seems to have done it for me. Also US, though I'm using my kindle-on-pc. I haven't checked my carrying kindle.
Ok - I closed the book and reopened it and now the corrections are there, although not that sentence with two "evens" which I think didn't get corrected.I'm using the Kindle app on an Android phone
Don't know if this was already caught:Page 143/244 - this this
Kim wrote: (I'm also curious about the significant diminishment of sorcery and knowledge thereof in the time of Curse of Chalion. Did Penric's two-volume treatise not survive the centuries? (I realize it's because you wrote them in reverse chronological order, but it creates an interesting historical question!))
My own conjecture is that Chalion had diminished understanding of sorcery as part of the Curse. The Curse acted as a powerful repellent against demons and sorcerers, but the twisted bad effect was a great backwards ignorance about sorcerers, compared to, say, Darthica of the same time period.
And on the third hand, Chalion did seem to be reasonably supplied with saints and petty-saints, compared to the other places we've seen.
Jonathan wrote: "Lois wrote: "I need to learn how to turn off the autocorrect function in my Word program"Yes! I always turn off all autocorrections, because my experience is that they make more mistakes than I do."
Spellcheck, grammar check, and autocorrect software should be treated as a blithering idiot who does not understand the genre. One can ask it for advice because sometimes even a blithering idiot can be right. But one should never ever allow it to change things on its own.
Talli wrote: "Don't know if this was already caught:Page 143/244 - this this"
Hah -- that is that ever-familiar gremlin, a new mistake introduced while correcting an old one. (Yet another reason that doing last-minute revisions are a terror to me.) I'll put in on my list #2...
L.
Lois wrote: "Talli wrote: "Don't know if this was already caught:Page 143/244 - this this"
Hah -- that is that ever-familiar gremlin, a new mistake introduced while correcting an old one. (Yet another reason ..."
Watching typo-roaches breed!
Got through all 90 comments before posting this. I very much enjoyed this book, and spread reading it over several days, owing to other projects going on. I fell asleep twice while reading at bedtime; the third time I finished it, feeling sad that there wasn't more.Aside from enjoying grandmotherhood, there's no reason any more for Idrene to stay away from her home in Cedonia, so my guess is that's where she'll soon go. But this is another excuse to visit there, no?
All the typos and other errors I saw have already been mentioned, so I have nothing to contribute towards error correction.
An aside: the name "Rach" is so close to the German word for "revenge" that I could not help thinking about that, even though there is no other hint of revenge around that character.
My sister has already posted my favorite quotes. Harumph. (The chairs as filing system one is especially, uh, close to home.)The only possible-error I haven't seen mentioned is "He softened the account of the worser but invisible torture that Tronio had inflicted to almost nothing" (p. 188) - worser isn't a word, so this should strictly speaking be just "worse", but I can see using "worser" as a stylistic choice.
Martha wrote: "My sister has already posted my favorite quotes. Harumph. (The chairs as filing system one is especially, uh, close to home.)The only possible-error I haven't seen mentioned is "He softened the a..."
Yep, stylistic choice.
I keep thinking we must be done with the great typo hunt, and I keep being proved wrong. I will hold the second hit list for the end of this week, though, just in case. It's very good to know that with the automatic corrections, the early purchasers, who should be rewarded, won't be stuck with less-perfectish copies. Takes a lot of the pressure off to hurry them through prematurely.
Glad you enjoyed the story! Writing it made this past shut-in cold winter pass very agreeably for me.
Ta, L.
Feeling a bit smug that I pondered "worser" and decided you were using it as sort of the opposite of better.Grateful that you spent your time creating a gift for us especially in such a crappy terrifying time.
"Worser" may count as an old or dialectical form of "worse", but Shakespeare uses it (when Gertrude tells Hamlet he has "cut [her] heart in twain", he tells her to "throw away the worser part of it"), so I'm fine with it being used in the 5GU ... which hasn't even reached its Elizabethan-era-equivalent (if any) yet!
I apologize for not knowing the right terminology and maybe this isn't an error or already caught.At 63% - after but such a relief - the next sentence has another opening quotation mark.
Talli wrote: "I apologize for not knowing the right terminology and maybe this isn't an error or already caught.At 63% - after but such a relief - the next sentence has another opening quotation mark."
You don't need to apologize for anything -- all this volunteer proofreading is a pure gift, from my point of view.
Anyway, yeah, that quote mark should not be there. Added to List #2...
L.
Lois wrote: "Now, if we had Foix's (later, post-bear) viewpoint"I know the stories come as they come, but YES PLEASE
Talli wrote: "I apologize for not knowing the right terminology and maybe this isn't an error or already caught.At 63% - after but such a relief - the next sentence has another opening quotation mark."
Aha. A revisit to both my original file and the Kindle edition finds that this one was due to a paragraph break somehow dropping out during the process of readying the thing for uploading. It was there in the original... Not sure what gremlins are responsible, but it wasn't my fat fingers or crap eyes... this time.
Ta and thanks, L.
This is my first time commenting. Firstly, I want to say thank you for all of your wonderful stories. They bring joy to me every time I read them (which is frequently!)Secondly, I love the previous lines that people have mentioned. I also really enjoyed Iroki referring to Des as "Miss Big Demon". Iroki reminds me somewhat of Iroh in the Avatar: The Last Airbender anime series.
Thirdly--some typos: on page 7 (of 244) there is a comma "after knee though the atrium gallery balustrade" that seems unnecessary.
on page 151 (of 244) "Five gods weep, he knew was supposed to have left with Alixtra.!" There should be "he" after knew?
page 224: When it was older, it would doubtless fetch entire legs. Do you mean logs? Referring to the stick?
Same page: there is a comma between reports from the Xarre captains, and feeding Bosha that seems unnecessary.
