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Curse the Dawn
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Curse the Dawn (Cassandra Palmer #4)
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Lannister wrote: "And then there's the whole weird thing with the timeline around Roger Palmer. When Agnes takes Roger prisoner in the Houses of Parliament scene..."Oh man that doesn't sound right... maybe it's a mistake? Or time travel making a doozy of us all yet again [shakes fist]
Roger is one of the most mysterious characters of all. For one thing he appears to have worked for both the Guild AND the Black Circle, and all for this abundance of power he was collecting (which we still don't know the purpose of). On top of that, his appearance keeps changing?? Mircea thinks he may have used a glamourie but... I thought master vamps could see through those?
Add to that his mythological significance as Garm (which I had actually forgotten until I got up to the end of HTM) and you have one very puzzling man. KC said he was human... I don't know. The man is a great big question mark.
On a slightly amusing sidenote, my re-read of CTD turned up this line, '"Us?" I raised an eyebrow.'
It seems Cassie could do the one eyebrow raise she's always wanted just fine in Pritkin's body XD And she never even noticed she did it lol
Duca, I did wonder if KC had goofed with that comment, and we can't rule it out completely. But my feeling (or hope!) is that it's deliberate. KC must surely have a strong handle on Cassie's timeline jaunts and it feels more like a clue that there's something else going on here. I'm not always the most attentive reader (certainly not on first read, anyway) but I spotted the inconsistency right away. I can't believe it would slip under KC's nose, and she presumably has editors and beta readers too. I think we'll get some sort of timeline/change history shenanigans that explains it, or we'll find out that Artemis made up the story, for whatever reason. I hope it's the latter. That's the simplest way round it.Your comments about Roger's association with the Black Circle & The Guild are interesting. Kathleen said above that maybe Artemis took Roger back in time (and I really like this theory). When he was caught by Agnes, if he didn't want to reveal anything about Artemis, Roger pretty much had to lie, and using The Guild is a great cover. After all, who else (Pythias aside) could travel through time? But maybe he's never actually had any association with The Guild at all? It was all just a cover. I'm now trying to remember the proof that he was in the Black Circle. Is there hard evidence, beyond 'the Silver Circle said so', or could that just be a cover too? I can't remember now, but I'm going to bear this in mind when I re-read the last couple of books.
LOL, that's funny about the eyebrow! See, instead of checking out Pritkin's pretty dick, she could have been checking out his eyebrows instead. I mean, those are far more interesting, right? Right....?
Onto my reread...I read the scene where Cassie finds the photo album with Dory's pics. It reminded me of the scene where Cassie sees Dory in FK and (in my opinion) she behaved badly. Cassie has a serious case of the green-eyed monster over Dory. She says...
Mircea and I didn't have an exclusivity agreement, didn't have any agreement at all, in fact. He could see anyone he wanted. Only for some reason it hadn't occurred to me that he might actually be seeing—might, in fact, be doing a hell of a lot more than just seeing—someone who made me look like one of Cinderella's ugly stepsisters.
She also says "I wanted to gouge those pretty dark eyes out with my thumbs."
Obviously this is the foreshadowing to that scene in FK and (RtW spoiler) (view spoiler) I disliked Cassie's behaviour in FK. I can understand her jealousy, but I thought her behaviour was incredibly petty and childish. Even if Dory had been doing the horizontal shuffle with Mircea for centuries, Cassie's beef is with Mircea, not Dory.
She complains in this scene that Mircea has a book full of photos of Dory, but not one of her (even though they've been dating a month and Mircea was out of his mind/in a box for much of that time). She also seems to want to have it all ways. She's allowed to express many doubts about their relationship (that they'll eventually run into some giant obstacle in their relationship; wondering if Mircea would want her if she weren't Pythia) but at the merest hint of another woman, she's crying over the book. Sort yourself out, Cassie!
I know I'm being hard on her and emotions are often a jumble of conflicting feelings, but I feel her expectations are unrealistic and sometimes quite immature.
So in the Gunpowder Plot incident1. Agnes complains that her ungrateful heir eloped and took the pentacle ward with her.
2. Agnes captures Roger for the first time
3. Artemis later says she met Roger and got to know him *after* he was caught, while he was imprisoned.
4. Letters Mircea finds in the suitcase Artemis eloped with indicate she and Roger had been corresponding for 10 years.
I certainly hope this Escheresque timeline is deliberate and that KC explains it in the series somewhere.
@Lannister In TtS, Roger says he conned the Dark Circle into thinking he had figured out a way to enslave ghosts. Dangerous game.
If Roger hadn't belonged to the Guild, why was he there on Guy Fawke's day? Would Artemis have known that Cassie would have been there for him to meet? That GFW meeting preceded the Paris 'escape' ruse, when Roger recognized her and Artemis saw that she was their daughter. So.......was he sent by Artemis to meet Cassie, but not told by Artemis that she was their child?
Gah! Time travel makes my brain explode!
Gah! Time travel makes my brain explode!
Nancy, agree about exploding heads! When I start to think too hard about the time travel stuff, and all the paradoxes involved, it gets too complicated and my brain shuts down. I do remember KC saying one time that we should view everything from Cassie's POV, as timeline revolves entirely around her. Not sure if that helps.Kathleen, thanks for the outline. I have more confusing inconsistencies outlined below!
But first, I found some other general timeline info in HtM. Artemis signs up for the Pythia Court at age 14. She's named heir at 33, and runs away at age 34. I guess about a year later Cassie is born, and Artemis and Roger are killed in the car bomb five years after running away (when Cassie is four).
I have one question and I'm not sure if it's answered in TtS and I've forgotten. How did Roger get out of Agnes's prison? Did Agnes free him, or did Artemis bust him out when they eloped? Is that explained anywhere?
There are so many conflicting statements around the timeline already, and I've remembered another. Jonas tells Cassie that Tony visited the Pythian Court for an audience, and this is when Roger supposedly seduced the Pythia's heir into running away with him. I think this makes it even more complicated! I've tried to sort the various facts/timelines below.
The world at large was given the following timeline:
* Roger is working for Tony
* Tony goes to the Pythian Court for an audience & takes Roger with him
* Roger meets and seduces the Pythia Heir
* Within a week, they elope and (I guess?) go back to work for Tony
* Cassie is born, presumably about a year later
* Five years after eloping, Roger & Artemis are dead
We know the bit about Roger & Artemis running away after a week is false, because there are letters going back a decade.
If we take Artemis at her word, the timeline goes like this:
* Roger is captured by Agnes in the Parliament scene
* She imprisons him in the Pythian Court
* Artemis brings him food etc.
* They talk, supposedly fall in love, and elope (how long did this take??)
* They end up at Tony's
* Five years later they're both dead
So how can Roger be visiting the Pythian Court, as part of Tony's entourage, when -at the same time- he's imprisoned by Agnes? And, of course, there's the small fact that Agnes tells Cassie that Artemis has already gone by this point. Marsden seems quite sure about Tony's visit to the Pythian Court, but I don't know if it's personal knowledge (i.e. he saw Tony) or if it's just what Agnes told him.
Also, given that Roger worked for Tony, and the Pythian Court was hunting for the heir (and presumably Roger too, if Artemis busted him out of jail), didn't they look for them at Tony's? Artemis and Roger seem to have lived there since Cassie was a baby. If the Pythia can see all things, why couldn't she take a peek at Tony's place?
I sorta have the feeling we might be seeing Agnes again. I'm wondering if she's mixed up in these timeline shenanigans. Cassie did give her a load of information, after all. And Nancy brings up a good point in asking why Roger ended up involved in the Guy Fawkes plot, if Artemis did indeed take him there. None of it makes any sense!
Anyone else got any thoughts on this?
Too much about Roger doesn't make sense. I don't get that guy at all. Either someone somewhere is lying about how he and Artemis actually met or someone changed something. Cassie does give away way too much info when she travels to the past to talk to Agnes. Agnes tries to ignore it, but surely she must have heard something? Maybe she changed something. I can't see why she would, though. It didn't seem to change the end result at all if she did.
Maybe we are looking too closely at stories that are not meant to be overanalyzed?We assume that KC is in total control of all details and maintains internal consistency...but maybe she is only human, telling a huge, complex story.
I bet some of these reflect complexities of the story and will be explained...and others won't. Just as she changes Mircea's looks and coloring somewhat in the early books.
KC is a wonderful storyteller but maybe not (gasp!) *perfectly* consistent?
Could be right, Kathleen.
Absolutely! I can't blame KC if a few small details slip through, but I feel that all this timeline stuff is quite important, given that time travel is pretty much the whole crux of the story. I'd be a little disappointed if there were some glaring inconsistencies with that. But, as you say, KC is only human and sometimes it's easy to get so buried in detail that you can't see the wood for the trees. But mostly, I enjoy over-analysing and with two years minimum between books, what else would we talk about otherwise?
You should read some of the Song of Ice & Fire fan theories. Those dudes have had five years to over-analyse and the theories get crazier and crazier by the day! :D
OMG, yes!
I can't go there anymore.......
**whispers. Do you think we'll get that way if we have to wait five years for Dory 4? **
I can't go there anymore.......
**whispers. Do you think we'll get that way if we have to wait five years for Dory 4? **
LOL, we're halfway there already [she said proudly] :D :DFrankly, I think pairing Mircea with Marlowe was the tipping point, and - believe it or not - I wasn't the first person to come up with that. Tragically, I can't remember who it was now, cos it was a few years back. Think it was just a throwaway comment from someone, but once the seed was planted ....
Mircea and Marlowe--What a pair of hotties! Do you think KC is a fan? She pairs them a lot in both series....ya never know!
@Mello I like your theory that some of the inconsistencies come from timeline changes that we don't yet know about. I suspect Artemis in particular.
One thing I noticed in this book, and possibly the last too (I'm not sure because everything's starting to run together!) are the comments about the ouroboros spell and how it's maintained. They've talked about the number of mages involved when the spell was set up originally vs the number of mages in the Silver Circle now. They reckoned that about 90% of mages would need to die in order for the spell to fail.Ordinarily, I'd have thought that to be highly unlikely, as it would need about 225,000 deaths (it says there are around a quarter million mages in the Silver Circle). And yet... they keep talking about it. There are several discussions about the spell failing, which could be viewed as foreshadowing.
So, considering The Big Picture, do any of you think this spell will fail before the final book and the gods will be back? Or will it only be the ones we already know about (i.e. Apollo, Ares and Odin) that we'll see directly?
I was wondering if it may not require the deaths of the mages. Perhaps if something disrupted their magic, even for a short while, it might be enough to break the spell and allow the gods entry back into the world. I'm imagining a scene in the final book where The Baddies disrupt Earth's magic in some way, the spell fails and the gods start to filter through, and it feels like all hope is lost ... until ... just as it's all falling apart, our plucky heroes come up with some other magical spell that banishes/destroys the gods all at once and saves the day! :)
So what do you think? Will Artemis spell fail before the end of the series? Are KC's comments foreshadowing, or is it just background information?
@Lanni I think about this a lot. I'm thinking it's equally possible that it's foreshadowing or a red herring that the spell fails because of the mages specifically, but I'm personally betting that the spell does fail. There are two ways it can fail, from what I remember/understand. One is by a whole crapola of mages dying, and the other is that damn paperweight holding the entire spell together. Roger Palmer = Garm, as we were told by the spartoi in HTM. Garm could also be the same as Fenrir, the wolf whose escape from his chains signals the beginning of ragnarok. I'll paste this link for those of you that want to brush up on Garm http://norse-mythology.org/garm/If we take these two facts as truth then it follows logically in Cassieverse that when Roger/Garm is 'set free' from his 'chains' (the paperweight) the spell will fail and chaos will ensue. And Cassie wants to find the paperweight, but I don't know what she's going to do about her father's soul inside. Presumably, she wants to free him since eternity in a paperweight doesn't sound like a pleasant existence. She also knows that his soul is linked to Artemis's and if something goes wrong with the paperweight then all hell will literally break loose (do you see the joke I made there?). I'm pretty sure with Cassie's life, something with that paperweight will go wrong but I don't know the logistics yet since the book is a little sketchy on detail in that area.
Oh yeah, good point! I think the paperweight is far more likely to be a major factor in the spell failing, rather than Mage Genocide. I just don't think KC would go down the path of slaughtering over 200K people, which is why I wondered if it would be their magic that was affected. But, probably just a red herring about the mages then.Thanks for the link about Garm. I'm not especially knowledgeable about Norse mythology, and it starts to get confusing very quickly when everyone involved has at least three different names!
I had tended to think that Fenrir would be a werewolf, which ties in with the shifter side series that KC has. Isn't Fenrir supposed to be a 'child' of Loki? KC has said that Roger Palmer is all human, and not godly in any way. Yet there was also a Q & A where someone asked if Cassie might have relatives she didn't know about on her father's side. KC replied (paraphrasing) that eventually we'd realise how funny this question is. That's ... confusing! I know the whole 'child of Loki' thing isn't always literal, so it's certainly possible that Roger could be made to fit the prophecy.
The whole thing leaves me scratching my head. Until very recently, I'd thought two of the Ragnarok battles were done, and only Odin was left. But I think now that fighting the Spartoi wasn't a replacement for Ares, and Cassie (or whoever) will still have to battle him too? At least, I assume so, since Rhea was talking about him in TtS.
Ok, let me jump in first and say that CtD is the book that I consider, together with HtM, the double pinnacle of KC's series, the likes of which the series hasn't reached before or sadly, after. (Overall, HtM and Fury's Kiss probably compete for the best KC book title, at least for me).The story is great, the ideas are great, and they are managed in a series of events that are well-paced and contribute step by suspense-filled step to the eventual climactic resolution of the plot. It has a healthy balance of characters, no plotline is overpoweringly skewed or sluggish, it has great twists and reveals and the increasing romance is kept to a tolerably low level.
Going back to the series with the reread, the one thing that stands out is Cassie asking to date Mircea at the end which doesn't make sense in light of the developments that we are aware from the later books.
My fav scene was probably Rafe's revival, I was glad to have him stick around, though he is sadly absent from the series. I know KC said she includes characters when needed 'for the plot' but I'm sure she has several irrelevant side characters in every book, so i'd love to see more of her genuinely interesting creations dusted off the shelves and included more in later installments!
I am currently rereading CtD and early on Cassie comments on how the Pythias have been under the Circle's thumb for thousands of years. That recalled another conversation for me that was between her and Rhea in Reap the Wind. In that conversation Rhea was talking about Agnes and how she was very close to the Circle, to the point that her power and influence in the magical community was vastly diminished. She then talked about how the Pyhtias were unique in the ancient world and how there did not always come from wealthy and powerful families. She also said that during the coven wars when the Pythia made the self-fulfilling prophecy that led to the mages' victory over Britain, since that time The Pythias have been very close to the circle and regarded by the rest of the community as the Circle's puppet. When I read this conversation I wondered if before the coven wars the influence and power of the Pythia was more. Cassie in CtD says that because Pythias were servants of Apollo back when Gods ruled the earth, after Artemis's rebellion, they tried to controll them. I personally think that the mages monitored and watched their actions and words but couldn't handpick the Pythias. And so, I think that before the coven wars the Pythian court was a more independent entity, although never as powerful as institutions such as the circle or the Vamps's senate.
Mod
I thiñk that Cassie has three covern members as part of her own covern now, so I suppose that the coverns are committed to the war effort now. I hope that means the three covern leaders are part of the war strategy sessions, since they have operated covertly and successfully ever since the White Circle mages took control of the
Pythian selection process.
The coverns can "think out of the box", and they have links to Faery, so they could be helpful allies, I hope they come to the fore in the next book, which SHOULD BE HERE SOON!!!
Nancy wrote: "Good grief, Elika! You have reminded me of moderators and commenters who have been silent for years!I thiñk that Cassie has three covern members as part of her own covern now, so I suppose that t..."
Yeah, sorry Nancy. 2021 was a very busy year for me. I've had some health problems and I've been mostly busy with life and work, so I hadn't had much chance of reading books, much less commenting.
About my post, when I was rereading CtD, I noticed that Cassie says that Pythias have been under control of the Circle for thousands of years. But I think based on what Rhea said, this tight control really started after the coven wars. Sure, the Pythias influence was strong during Apollo's time on earth. And after Artemis's rebellion and banishment of the old gods, it would make sense that the pythias would be regarded with suspicion and even hostility. But I think that even after that their word and judgment still held weight in the supernatural community. I think that after the coven wars and making the self-fulfilling prophecy that the Circle would win the wars, the supernatural community could never again view them as a completely neutral entity to be referred to in matters of fair judgment. And that's when I think that their influence in the supernatural community began to diminish even further. The position of the Pythia is an important one in Cassie Palmer's world. If the Pythia can prove to be immune to sources of outside influence, she can become a major political player and unite the various supernatural groups. This makes the position even more important during the times of war. I wish we could have seen one of the Pythias in the anciernt world and how her court operated when it wasn't so heavily influenced by the Circle.
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How do we know that the G..."
Oh yeah, excellent point! The whole thing's so odd. Maybe Roger really meant "I intend to stay in the past .... until Artemis comes to collect me" or something like that? What I can't figure out is what would be in it for Artemis by blowing up parliament, but maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe it was that Roger had to meet Cassie or something?
One little thing I noticed, and it probably has no significance, but Cassie talks a lot in front of him, when she's explaining to Agnes that she's the new Pythia and has no training. That's good information that maybe Roger or Artemis could use in some way? No real idea, though. I'm totally guessing.
I do hope The Guild get mentioned again. After all, time travel is one of the main plot drivers of the story, so it's a little odd to introduce a whole cabal of time-travelling mages and NOT feature them again (Chekhov's gun and all that.)
On the countdown thing, I'll set up a thread today, and every day we can post quotes or pics or whatever.