Week Two - Chapters 6-12

[Rachel]

This is the place to discuss anything that occurs in chapters 1-12.

[Grayson]

Just finished Chapter 12 and man am I really getting a Harry Potter vibe! "Chosen one" kid goes to far away school with otherworldly classes and eclectic teachers? And a "headmaster" of sorts who takes a liking to the protagonist and forms a special bond with him/her? I understand that Harry Potter really set a mold for these type of books, but the obvious similarities are certainly there!

I really liked the Zoya character; I thought she was a decent antagonist and clearly has some motives that haven't been revealed to use yet.

[[deleted user]]

Grayson wrote: "Just finished Chapter 12 and man am I really getting a Harry Potter vibe! "Chosen one" kid goes to far away school with otherworldly classes and eclectic teachers? And a "headmaster" of sorts who t..."

I definitely got a Harry Potter vibe from this section too, and my enjoyment of the book increased noticeably! :)

[Kathleen]

My wariness regarding this book have not yet been assuaged. The one bright spot for me at this point is Genya.

But I'm still reading on and seeing how things go from here.

[Jacob]

I just finished this section. The Baghra is an amazingly efficient psychotherapist, isn't she?

I recently read The Selection, so I'm tending to think about this in terms of that. The Selection struck me as an uneasy and not completely successful melding of dystopian YA, romance, and reality TV. The two books use a lot of the same tropes -- a commoner plucked out of obscurity who becomes the favorite of the prince/the darkling; the love interest left back at home, while a new romance beckons; and so on -- but I found their treatment here more satisfying. (For instance, in the Selection, basically all of the people who make up the government seem like pretty nice people who by and large meant well, while here the seat of government both seems more attractive in many ways, but also more creepy and corrupting.)

I liked the Zoya situation -- I used to work with a guy, a black belt in Aikido, who described how a new student in his dojo beat up one of the masters, and so it seemed legit to me that even a skilled fighter might end up being defeated by her own overconfidence, when fighting against someone she hadn't confronted before.

I'm curious as to what's up with the creepy priest guy. Also I assume there are some spies or traitors in the castle -- well, both castles -- and I'm curious as to who they'll be.