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Shattered Pillars
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SP: Part One: Chapters 1 - 6
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Robyn
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Mar 25, 2015 02:55PM
A place for us to discuss chapters 1-6 of Shattered Pillars. Please avoid spoilers for future chapters!
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These threads are in the General discussion. They need to be under the Eternal Sky discussion. One of the mods should correct that in 3, 2, 1 ...
I'm about 2/3 of the way through and really enjoying this one...I hope everyone else does too. :)
This book picks up pretty well right where Range of Ghosts left off. Temur is with Ato Tesefahun and Edene is wandering the desert accompanied by scorpions. Edene meets up with Besha Ghul who takes her to make a home in the ruins of old Erem. This is probably not going to work out well since we find out later that it is from reading the old scripts of Erem that has caused Brother Hsuing to start losing his sight and caused him to take a vow of silence. Meanwhile, in the Citadel of Tsarepheth the standoff between the Emperor Songtsan and the Wizards who aided Temur, Samarkar and Payma in escaping has softened somewhat. A plague has descended on the city and the Wizards of Tsarepheth are using everything at their disposal to try and fight it.
In Ala-Din we find that the soul of Shahruz is now residing in the body of his twin sister Saadet (along with her). Saadet convinces al-Sepehr that she can be of service even though she is a woman. He tells her to go to Qori Buqa and make herself his queen while the plague does its work in Tsarepheth (so we know it isn't a naturally occurring illness if that wasn't obvious).
In the last chapter in this section Temur, Samarkar, Brother Hsiung and Hrahima pay an official visit to the caliph of Asitaneh, naming al-Sepehr as a rebel warlord responsible for raising blood ghosts and killing all the inhabitants of the city of Qeshqer.
So, lots of things happen, but that's a summary of the basics. :)
Just finished section three. Wow, that's a hell of a plague.
Chapter 5:One who did not deal by heartlessness in the arena of politics did not live long enough to see one’s lofty ideals lead inevitably to the ruin of nations.Now that's a dark point of view.
Lindsay wrote: "Just finished section three. Wow, that's a hell of a plague."The whole description of the "manifestation" of the plague was fairly stomach turning. But given the whole destruction of Queshqer, really, what can you expect? I wasn't going to be pretty.
The other thing I wanted to comment on in this section was Temur and Samarkar.In the previous book I felt this relationship was unearned, but I think if you accept that there is now affection between them there are things in this section that go a long way to defining it.
In particular, Temur and his frustration that he can't get one night to show Samarkar how he feels about her, and in turn Samarkar's impassioned statement of fealty.
This whole book for me went a long way in terms of defining relationships; not just between Temur and Samarkar (and I agree with you Lindsay), but all the characters...the relationships become as important as the story in many ways.
I loved the descriptions of Astuabeg .... by which I mean, Asitaneh, when my fingers are actually on the right keys.
