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August 5 - August 6, 2022
You don’t escape your own story, Claire. It’s impossible.”
Not too modern, mind you. Brevity once filched some standard ballpoint pens to bring back to Claire as a surprise.
Omg she's so edgy with fountain pens
“Sacred?” Ramiel objected. “We’re in Hell.”
Ok this was kinda funny
and he was hers.
Excuse me??? Hero has shown to be a living thing and, from what the author has been trying to show, the gang is starting to understand and see him a not just a character. Yes, they still bring it up and occasionally throw it in his face, but more bcs all the characters in this book are dislikable and flawed. I was really hoping that the author was trying to portray Hero as having embraced that he exists now outside of a book, permanently. But if he is still seen as property of the library this just makes all that perception die and his character development insignificant.
Maybe the story of humanity is learning to be brave enough to be the character in their own story.
Narrowed, focused, but drifting all the same.
This might be my favorite description so far. The author's writing style really complements this and they play to their strength here
Not rigid, but narrower and more precise as the years went on. As if her hands had forgotten how to flow.
Makes sense since she was carying such a huge secret
Ideas never die. It wasn’t a catchphrase, precisely; it was a promise.
Probity didn’t lie—it wasn’t in her nature.
Not lying doesn't mean she's telling the whole truth
We. Being a “we” with the muses again; longing for that warred with the caution still echoing in Brevity’s head.
Uh oh
Less like a title and more like a reminder of what she wasn’t and never would be. Had it been the same for Claire?
One of brevity's flaws: comparison
It’s their first form of control, to burn the libraries, to burn the books, to burn the archives of a culture. Humans are the stories they tell. If you want to destroy your enemy, destroy their stories. Even if the people survive, it will be as if they never existed at all.”
Humans were always evolving new ways of not saying what they meant.
overconfidence in his charms, but Rami had sworn to protect all the residents of the Library. That included stunningly perplexing dead women and insufferable men with broken books.
He didn’t know where that left him anymore. Not immutable but also not a cold assemblage of parts. Perhaps he was a draft, half-born but unfinished. Unruly and unfixable.
Claire shook her head at the flagrant disrespect for physics, but Walter was moving on.
as a future physicist, i feel represented in this situation
Oh dear gods, he was beginning to sound like Claire.
this is very interesting considering what hero just said a page ago about knowing what/who he is.
Maybe we are starting to see a humanization of hero: he is transcending his status as character and embracing himself as a “living” thing. because humans change and adapt all the time. we acquire traits from those around us, we pick up slang from those who repeat it around us. but mostly, we are a mixture of those who raised us and interacted with us in our formative years. In Hero’s case, this was Claire and Brevity during the chaotic first novel and now his tenure as assistant to the librarian.
“I have volunteers—muses. Oh, sis, we can do this. We can do this.”
So she's been plotting this for a while and Brevity is just a pawn in her game
I hope this turns out with Brev standing up for herself - and the library - again like she did with claire in the last chapter. Brev was finally getting some growth and now she's back to being manipulated... :(
“Where the hell are we? I mean, obviously not Hell, but . . . and why does my head feel as if I was kicked by a gargoyle?”
“Tea. Why is it always blasted tea? Where’re the realms with magical coffee elixirs? Wine? A decent sherry? At least Valhalla had ale.”
i relate: why always tea!?
“I believe you,” Hero whispered and found it true, despite all logic. He did. He believed Rami. He believed in Rami. It was entirely foreign ground to Hero. He allowed Rami to help him down off his vantage point.
omg the bromance is brewing i canttttt
Brevity, the cheerful woman who had stood by her side through almost thirty years of mishandling the Library. She’d seen Claire at her worst, but Claire had found a new way to step over the line.
at least she’s admitting it now...
Or had he? He’d been a rebellion leader, and then an ill-prepared king, then a bad one, in his story. Did it count? Were those memories any fainter, less accurate, less painful, for having happened between pages he could no longer return to? Just because something—supposedly—didn’t really happen didn’t make it less real.
seeing some familiar themes here. consistent throughout the book: characters being confronted with who they are supposed to be, questioning it and their static, preset, notions of who they are. then, they challenge that by trying to understand who they are in the context of others. somewhere in the middle is who they actually are in the present. though, they are constantly changing and evolving, because so is the environment they are in and the people around them.
I like this part very much because it speaks to this type of reflection in a simple yet profound way. Hero is “static” because he, supposedly, is a book character who’s story is already determined. he was already written. his personality is what is in the pages he belongs to. or is it? I find this questioning kinda brilliant because it really shows the struggle Hero has been going through in trying to deal with the notion that he might no longer belong in the pages he originated from. Once you detach yourself from the environment that birthed and nurtured you, who are you? what are you going to become now that you no longer have those structures to carry you through, to write your story for you?
He couldn’t be hers. But there it was: he was hers, and Brevity was hers and Rami was hers and no matter how tightly Claire held on, she felt like she was losing them all. It made a kind of sense, an aching kind of sense, to try loosening her grip. Maybe she owed him that much.
sometimes you love someone so much that it suffocates them and you have to let them go. much like an overprotective mother with her adventurous/rebellious/independent child. it pains on the mother to see them do ill advised things that get them hurt, emotionally and physically. it hurts to see them struggle and suffer through situations that they could simply resolve with an intervention. but, at some point, the mother comes to understand that stepping in would only make things worse. it would create resentment and anger. so they just have to let go.
Was she a muse, or was she a librarian?
really solidifying identity struggles as a key theme of this books
His body caved in on itself. A wordless gulf filled Claire’s chest and somewhere, distantly, a raven was shrieking. Hero’s book, pages, binding, and all, melted into a bleak slurry. Claire clutched it on instinct, but it dripped through her hands with a sharp, cold heat. Used up, it didn’t even appear interested in staining her this time. When she looked up, she was alone. Alone, except for a blot of ink, wet upon the carpet.
:O
The image hit Hero hard: a white demon launching itself at Rami, black razor teeth tearing feathers and closing around his unprotected throat.
awn he’s scared for rami’s safety *uwu face*
Hell with it. Hero chased that breath and sealed Rami’s lips with his own. He swallowed the words, swallowed the questions, swallowed the consequences and anything but the hot relief of finally, finally feeling right outside his story. Rami’s lips were shock-stiff for half a second before turning supple, all-encompassing, and giving as infinity. Soft. Soft! Hero marveled. Such a stony, hard face, to have such soft lips.
the “I am about to die so I’m just gonna do this wild thing and kiss you here because I feel the sexual tension between us” trope will never die for me, it will always be great. I am always here for it (if the tension built right, like in this case)
Numbness crept across his skin, from shoulder to throat wound. It felt colder than blood or ink or even ice. He couldn’t move from where he fell. The Dust Wing’s stories surged and seared through his fading pulse. Lurching sounds of ripping, tearing, and ragged, wet swallows came from somewhere nearby as his book, his world, his life, his essence, was gnashed between rot-black teeth. And Hero stared, in his last moments, at his empty hands cupping the dark.
puta merda
“Hero . . .”
He’s totally blushing right now, I can see it all pink cheeks as he is embarrassed to realize that we’ve kissed right before his lover almost died
“Souls,” Rami said quietly. “The heart of any story is a little, tiny sliver of an author’s soul. That’s how any story is made.”
He could bear to live without his story; he could bear to live as a servant of the Library; he could even bear to live as an abomination without a book. But if the Fates took these three maddening souls from him now, he would give himself over to the despair and eternity of the Dust Wing for good.
Life—it goes on. Change happens. Secrets get out. Challenges appear. Decisions are forced. Whether we’re ready for them or not.”
