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LOVING IT LOVING IT LOVING IT so far - after 3 books that left me indifferent or conflicted I am in love with this the characters are compelling there's conflict and tension in each scene the prose is not too lush but is very on point it's all marvelous

They keep saying shit like ohhhh he's so dangerous he is going to be so formidable but it's not evidenced by Alexander's actions in any way? He is defiant, sure, and brave, but they are acting like he is particularly vengeful or violent with no support to it in how he acts

Anyway, it's definitely picking up and intensifying in tone around this point and the disparate pieces of Alexander's personality are coming together, and so are his relationships with the various other characters. Even the repetition from earlier helps some of the later events land. I really hope the book can maintain this pace, because it very quickly elevated itself from a 3.5 with moments of brilliance to a 5

I do love the themes of coming of age and looking for one's place and earning one's independence, how it is explored in a very... 1960s psychosexual manner, though they all still hit at a kind of emotional distance.
But the cascade of Alexander deciding to follow Olympias to the mountain after seeing Gorgo with Phillip makes him unsure of where his place is is chef's kiss.

- This is not helped by the fact that except for Philip, everyone has like two character traits at most.
- Everyone also constantly speaks in exposition with very little in the way of emotion or opinion - I get that we are shown events and told cultural narratives that impact Alexander but perhaps... show someone being impacted?

- There are multiple scenes that serve no purpose beyond reiterating the same character trait over and over again. YES, Olympias is scheming and manipulative and hysterical, YES, Alexander is defiant and courageous and values it in others as well, YES, Hephaistion is loyal and in love with Alexander I GET IT I DO NOT NEED FIVE SCENES TO GET IT ONE IS ENOUGH.

Cons:
- The prose can be kind of workmanlike or too tell-y rather than show-y, which works against the book in its more emotional or playful moments. There's no tension or feeling in what's happening because it's all described matter-of-factly and at a degree of distance (for example "They started wrestling playfully on the ground." or the entire scene when Alexander takes his first man).

Pros:
- Renault is very good at describing that kind of visceral, animalistic intimacy that I love reading about - it comes through especially in the scenes between Alexander and Olympias, and between Alexander and Hephaeistion.
- I love how the characterizations come through in the whitespace of the novel; nothing is said explicitly, but left for the reader to infer

Wait holy fuck it never occured to me that Margaret Douglas was 10+ years older than Lymond. And she slept with him when he was, what, sixteen, and then framed him for treason? Between this and the family tree drama I can see why he is the way he is

Which is okay as long as none of them die please God no more death for these people

I have the distinct feeling that Philippa is gonna turn the entire Crawford family to her side and that Francis is going to HATE it when he comes back

Well, this time it took us really little to arrive to the mandatory part where everyone hates Lymond and everything is on fire

Literally nobody reacts like a human being - they are less characters and more affordances for Maia to express how nice he is, or to demonstrate some semblance of a backbone against a caricature of an abuser

OH MY FUCKING GOD I AM SO SCARED I AM HYPERVENTILATING. I don't think I've ever been so on edge for the climax of a book! I really really really hope nothing bad happens to the children but this series DOES have a habit of killing off very sympathetic characters :(( and everything is going too well ATM :(

Okay Jerott is MUCH MORE interesting in this book than in the previous one - both on his own AND with Philippa and Lymond as a trio. In fact I love the way the three of them play off of each other. I'm not sure how I feel about the soothsaying stuff but the character dynamics are IMPECCABLE and Philippa improves everything I hope she is always there in every book.

Holy fuck this one has ACTUAL WITCHES in it???

I am also very much not endeared by ohhh look at how sweet Maia is to the serving staff uwu and I feel like the prose desperately wants me to be. It's the bare minimum, I'm not gonna fall all over him for doing that

The descriptions of the palace are so long and bland. I am not much interested in palaces, but I am a big fan of the Captive Prince trilogy, which spends a long time describing the architecture and general aesthetics of the setting, and does it so compellingly that my breath is taken away. Because it gets what it is that people find breathless and compelling about art. This shitty workmanlike prose could never

That is, it's incredibly refreshing how human she keeps Lymond. He's brilliant and charismatic, yes (well, charismatic once you get used to how contrary and overly dramatic he can be), but he is also just a guy in his mid-twenties who sometimes likes to drink and fuck too much for his own good.

This is the pinnacle of the hypercompetent smart man genre because he manages to be a human being despite the cleverness.

Hooo boyy, this is all so pulpy and undirected, but I have total faith that it will all make sense eventually.

Also, Francis is half unbearably obnoxious and half unbearably endearing, just like I like him. I have no idea how in control he is right now.

In this one, though, he is almost a background actor so far. All the admiration and infatuated breathlessness of the prose that was all Lymond's in the previous two books is now centered squarely on Gabriel, and Lymond is just some dude in the background of the wide shots occasionally saying something smart. Nobody is commenting on how pretty he is, but everyone notes that he's not particularly tall or broad :(

I love how this series keeps changing the pace on me. In the first one, you are meant to think that Lymond is terrible and chaotic but he's making all the sensible decisions. In the second one, he's making a lot of terrible chaotic decisions but you're hoping that he does know what he's doing. But he's always the mover and shaker on everything, always the center of attention for better or worse.