The next day, the party enters the city with much hullabaloo and fanfare.

Celaena couldn’t help but notice the sharp stares from the same women when they beheld her in the prince’s retinue. She knew how she appeared, seated atop a horse like some prize lady being brought to the castle. So Celaena only smiled at them, tossed her hair, and batted her eyelashes at the prince’s back.

Got to hammer in that girl-on-girl hate early, I see.

I don’t get this.  These are random city girls, not other coutiers; why are they hating on Celaena?  They’re not in competition with each other.  There’s no situation in which Dorian would sweep one of them up to go to the palace.  These people are not living in the same sphere as each other, but the book is presenting female jealousy as if it’s something inherent and ubiquitous, instead of something based on social constructs.

Also, stop trying to tell me Calaena is hot when you’ve already told me she looks starved.  First of all, there’s a difference between starved and starved+photoshop, and there’s a difference between ‘starved, beaten, and generally covered in illness’ and someone suffering from an eating disorder.  Second, ‘thin’ has not been a beauty standard throughout history, and in a pre-industrial-farming-world, thin should indicate low class.  Full-figured people were the ones with enough money to eat until they’re full, which is why that used to be a beauty ideal.  It was a sign of affluence. 

They take a long, circuitous route through the city so that the book can spend ages describing everything to us.  Then we finally get to the castle and have that described to us as well.  It’s fascinating, I assure you.  *yawn*

“I don’t know how you can sleep at night with only a wall of glass keeping you from death.” She glanced up, but quickly lowered her focus to the ground. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but the thought of being so high up with nothing but glass to protect her made her stomach clench.

Someone please tell me they at least hang curtains up between the rooms?  Because trying to visualize a bunch of people in a see-through castle is just too ridiculous.

Do you know how much boning goes on in castles?

Fortunately, Calaena has a room in the older, inner stone castle.

No, I’m still stuck on this.  The book keeps describing the glass castle, but it hasn’t made mention of any…I don’t know, furniture or people or anything like that.  If that part of the castle is actually lived in, as their conversation suggests, then shouldn’t it look less like a glass castle and more like a floating assortment of household goods?  Is the glass clouded, maybe?  The glass in one doorway is described as being colored red, is it the same for the rest of the castle?  That much hasn’t been said yet.  Do people overheat in the summer because it turns into a greenhouse?  I can’t stop wondering these things.

She gets to her rooms (which are enormous, considering THIS IS A CASTLE, HISTORICALLY CASTLES HAVE HAD TEENY TINY ROOMS) and finds out that she has nine guards assigned to her.  NINE!  I don’t care how good she is; for the amount of money being paid out to keep her in check, I bet the king could just buy hits on all his enemies from the other working assassins.  I mean, after a certain point, more skill is just a matter of bragging rights.  If a less skilled assassin can get the job done, the target is still dead as he can get.

Calaena finally does something assassin-y as she makes a shiv out of some hairpins, just to be prepared.  She looks around for more things she can turn into weapons, assuming that Chaol had the place stripped of such things before she arrived.

THEN SHE FINDS A BILLIARDS TABLE.

IN ONE OF HER ROOMS

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

First of all, who the fuck puts a billiards table in a guest room?  Second of all, WHO DOESN’T REALIZE THAT POOL CUES AND BALLS ARE INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS WHEN THROWN AT YOUR FACE?  I broke my toe once just by dropping a billiard ball on it, never mind what someone could do putting a little force behind it.

Wow, these people are incompetent.

Some people come in to give her a makeover, but thankfully it’s kept brief.  At the end of it she’s got pretty new dresses and hairdos.  I really don’t mind it, because it’s not treated as the focus of anything.  She’s in a castle, therefore she needs to be cleaned up, therefore she is, end of story. 

Then she gets to meet her personal maid named Philippa.  They have some weird banter where Philippa scolds her and tells her to act more like a lady, and Calaena is all “why aren’t you more afraid of me, don’t you realize I can squish you like a bug?”  Philippa takes none of her crap, and I want to like her for that, but most everything she says is so awkwardly phrased that I can’t.

Philippa clucked. “You’re still a woman, and so long as you’re under my charge, you’ll act like one, or Wyrd help me!”

…?

Elsewhere, Dorian talks to his dad, assuring him that Calaena is fine.  Mr. King is not happy, because only fools think that the greatest assassin ever is ‘under control.’  Then Dorian wonders again why they’re even having this competition and staffing it with criminals.

“I have enemies all around. Who better to do my work than someone utterly grateful for being granted not only a second chance, but also wealth and the power of my name?”

Oh, I don’t know, how about your army?  How about someone trustworthy?  How about multiple someones who haven’t shown a propensity for breaking the law?  FFS, train up a bevy of spies and stop acting like you can only have one person on your books hired to kill people.

Then, quite out of the blue, the king warns Dorian not to ‘court’ Calaena, because heaven forbid you forget what kind of book you’re reading.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 8, Bragging – 3, Exclamation Marks – 3

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