Cally gets some knives out, assuring us all that she’ll be tons better with that than with a sword.  But before she can walk her talk, some dude in charge of training comes out and demands everyone’s attention.  Because heaven forbid Cally ever actually show us these skills she brags about.

This guy is Brullo, the weapons master, and he’s going to judging their fitness on an everyday basis.

He starts asking everyone where they came from, and Cain mentions being from ‘White Fang Mountains.’

She’d heard tales of the brutality of the mountain folk from that region, and seen a few of them up close, seen the fierceness in their eyes.

Starting in on the fanatical racism, I see.

I don’t care if there are no White Fang Mountains; any time you imply that something like brutality or sloth or ignorance or incivility can be genetic, you promote the idea that these things can be genetic.  At the very least, talk about how the mountains are harsh and people have to be tough to survive there.  That would at least place the onus on external forces, not saying “oh yeah, those people are subhuman from birth.”

We get a run down of a few of the other competitors.  Much like The Hunger Games, this chapter might as well be called “let’s see who’s actually going to be important and who’s just there because the author liked the number 24.”

Nox – hot boy, thief

Cain – we’ve already met

Xavier – ‘Master Thief’

Bill – murderer who ate people’s eyes

Ned – also a murderer, tortured people

Grave – another assassin with a ‘wicked face.’

So…yeah.  6 out of 23 people are worthy of a name.  Why even bother putting the number so high if you’re only going to deal with this many real characters?

And this is exceptionally bad for Miss Best Assassin Ever.

Next came two scarred, silent men who seemed to be cronies of some far-off warlord, and then the five assassins.  She immediately forgot the names of the first four

This is supposed to be your bread and butter, Cally!  If you can’t bother to keep track of a measly 23 people, your situational awareness is abysmally low and you are useless as an assassin.  Do you know what your greatest asset in that job is?  OTHER PEOPLE!  Friends and contacts and people who owe you favors and will tell you your target’s weak points and leave a back door open for you and tip you off to sudden travel plans and mistresses.  If you can’t do people, then you can’t do assassinations.

Her disgust didn’t improve when Grave ran an eye over her body. An assassin like that never stopped at just killing. Not if his victim was female.

Something tells me the book isn’t going to handle this delicately.

Cally uses her cover story as a jewel thief, and she gets mad when everyone snickers at her.  Apparently it’s very important to Cally that everyone know she’s the Awesomest Assassin Ever, even though everyone knowing that would by default ruin her usefulness as an assassin.  You can’t exactly sneak up on your targets if everyone sees you coming!

In fact, she should be used to having cover stories and lying about herself and going “oh, don’t mind me, I’m just the new maid in here to tidy up your room and put poison on your pillow.”

Chaol has to point out to her what ‘flying under the radar means,’ and even after he spells it out for her, she still goes “but it’s insulting to be considered no real threat!”

I’m calling bullshit.  Not only was this girl not the Best Assassin Ever, I have serious doubts she was even a mediocre assassin.

Chaol tells her to stay in the middle of the pack and explains, again, why.

“I can look out for myself,” she said lightly, taking his hand. “But I have to say that you’re rather brilliant, Captain.

And we’ve hit upon yet another common feature of Badly Executed Strong Female Characters.  She’s supposedly the best ever at what she does, but not really, because somewhere there is a man around to explain the fucking obvious thing that she missed.

If he were explaining something specific to the palace or specific to the competition, I would let this pass, because it would involve his personal sphere of expertise and not intrude on what should be hers.  But no, this is common sense stuff here, stuff Cally should already be able to figure out.

They go running as part of the training, and true to her promise, Cally stays at the middle of the pack.  Cain ends up being the fastest, and considering his size, I think that’s more a slam on everyone else’s speed.

Even the description of Cally’s running (stitch in her side, gasping for breath, desperate mantra) sound more like a middle class suburbanite who’s only being ‘into’ running for a few weeks.  I didn’t even like running before an injury knocked that off my to-do list forever, but even with forcing myself to it, I still didn’t respond like this past the first few months.  This is not how someone used to running would describe it.  I would expect more stuff about how the ‘burn’ feels good, head clearing, catching a second wind, the exhilaration of that kind of effort, the zen of the repetitive movement…

Okay, I liked running a little bit.

At the end of the run, Cally has to slip away to go throw up again.  On the one hand, if she’s upchucking at the end of the run, then she probably wasn’t holding back to stay in the middle of the pack.  On the other hand, she did just get out of a year of slavery.  Even if it was cush, she probably didn’t have a track available to her.

Frankly, a lot of things in this book would be more reasonable if it’d just tone down the bragging.

They break at lunch time and she banters a bit with Chaol before being told that she has the afternoon to herself.  Training master is pretty lax, isn’t he?

Sighing, Celaena called to her servants to draw her bath.

As Megan Marie pointed out in comments, Cally seems to be clueless about court intrigue and the other ladies, and her general attitude seems to be “those people are useless.”  Her attitude about servants is roughly the same.  She doesn’t think twice about using them as if they’re just human shaped appliances, like the dinosaurs in the Flintstones.  In reality, as an assassin (specifically, an assassin of powerful politicians, if her claims of being high paid are to be believed), she should be subsisting on a steady diet of gossip and rumors and information, and servants are a GOLD MINE for that sort of stuff.

The next morning, when Chaol comes to wake her, he sees she’s doing chin ups.  Apparently she’s doing this because she’s going to go half-boar in training to appear weaker, so she has to do more outside of that.  Although I have no idea why that means waking up an hour earlier, when she has the whole afternoon to herself.  Still, I guess it is nice to show her putting in some actual effort.

Speaking of afternoons, we skip to that afternoon as she and Chaol walk around the palace.  Again.  Along the way they run into Kate.  Again.  But this time Kate is with another woman, a princess from some place called Eyllwe.  Her name is Nehemia.  Apparently Nemmy is an active participant in the rebellion back home and secretly funds the rebels.

You know what we have no idea of?  Dafuq is Eyllwe?  Is the country being invaded, already invaded, a protectorate?  Is it one of those Roman things, where you get to keep your own leader, just your leader has to bow to Rome?  Are there ‘rebels’ because the Eyllwen army was disbanded or because the army is the problem?

Cally wonders why Nemmy is being escorted around by Kate instead of Dorian or Duke P.  I’d like to point out that 1) we have no idea what Kate’s status is; she might be an escort of perfectly suitable rank and 2) she’s another woman, women tend to hang out with other women.  Except in YA land, of course.

Cally and Nemmy start talking in Eyllwen so that they can insult Kate on the sly.  Supposedly, this marks Nemmy as one of the ‘good guys,’ instead of an incredibly rude person and utter failure of a politician.

“I’m afraid I haven’t understood a word you’ve said,” Kaltain interrupted. Celaena tried not to roll her eyes—she’d forgotten the woman was there.

Yes, do continue to show off just how incredibly rude and self-centered Cally is.  I don’t hate her enough yet.

“We,” the princess said, struggling for the word in the common language, “were talking with the weather.”

“About the weather,” Kaltain corrected sharply.

“Watch your mouth,” Celaena snapped before she could think.

Kaltain gave Celaena a vicious little smile. “If she’s here to learn our ways, I should correct her so she doesn’t sound foolish.”

So, we’ve reached the point in the book where I stop actually believing the text.  Partly it’s out of spite, partly because it’s been so unreliable so far that I have no reason to believe it.  And given that, the only rude part of Kate’s statement was the ‘sharply,’ which for all I know is just a bias on the narration’s part.  You take that one descriptor out, and Kate’s perfectly correct.  Someone refining a new language does not want to go around repeating simple mistakes. 

Cally and the book continue to be incredibly rude to Kate for daring to exist in the same space as her betters.

Celaena translated again, and the princess nodded. “Get rid of her,” she said flatly to Celaena, and then waved a hand toward Kaltain. “I don’t care for her temperament.”

Nemmy, you had the potential for such awesomeness, and you ruined it so quickly.

“Are all of your royal women like that?” the princess said to Celaena in Eyllwe.

“Like Kaltain? Unfortunately, Your Highness.”

I hate these two so much right now that I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.

The castle tour continues sans Kate, and Cally and Nemmy bond over how they’re both so much better than everyone else.  They both talk about slaves, and then a line later we get:

Servants darted past, eyes wide when they beheld the princess and her guards.

Servants continue to be set dressing instead of real people, and for all the book will moan about the sorry fate of slaves, we still don’t know what rights or status the servants have.  ‘Slave’ and ‘servant’ are not static concepts, and at various times and places, each have different roles and rights.  A Roman slave had more rights than a feudal serf, but we have no idea what applies here.  So for all we know, Cally’s crying about how wrong it is to have slaves could be either disgustingly hypocritical or just mindlessly hypocritical.  Either way, she’s a terrible person.

They talk about what Nemmy is doing there, and it’s all very vague and about ‘learning customs’ and such.  Still no word on if Eyllwe is free, conquered, or actively at war.  Also, she might be facing down an arranged marriage.  Or she might not.  Who knows!

“Rifthold smells terrible. Too many people. At least in Banjali, the sun burns up everything.

Actually, the sun makes open sewage smell pretty terrible, and lots of sweaty bodies in close proximity isn’t exactly alike to roses.

They talk about how terrible it is that Aldaran burned Eyllwe’s libraries when they marched in five years ago.  Okay, so there’s that crumb of information.  Are the armies still there?

Eyllwe’s taking on a very Persian vibe, in case anyone was curious.

Then the two Sues bond over how much they hate their dresses, even though a few chapters back Cally loved getting dressed up.  Apparently when she told us that, she forgot about corsets, even though those should have always been a factor in ‘dressing up.’

Before they part ways, Nemmy says she wants to be friends so they can continue to hate on everything in sight, but Cally is hesitant.

After that, she’d sworn never to trust girls again, especially girls with agendas and power of their own. Girls who would do anything to get what they wanted.

Men, on the other hand, are totally trustworthy and will never stab you in the back?

Seriously, where is this coming from?  We’ve already had rapists and potential rapists in this book, but you’re still going with women being the backstabbing cockroaches?

Then late Chaol and Cally banter more, but it’s from Chaol’s POV so we can hear about how he’s so fascinated by her even though he still thinks she’s going to turn dark or something.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 6, Bragging – 2, Exclamation Marks – 5

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