The next day, Cally and Chaol are running again, and Cally has to stop to throw up.  Again.  I’m getting pretty sick of her upchucking on every run.  The book seems to think this is impressive, but it’s not.  Throwing up is a sign of something gone wrong.  If you are forcing yourself to throw up on a regular basis, then something has gone wrong.  It doesn’t matter if you’re using exercise or a finger down your throat. 

I’ve seen a lot of people upchuck while running.  About 75% of the time, it’s because they’re either drunk, hungover, or ate too much of the wrong thing before going for a run.  24% of the time, they misjudged their own limits and didn’t take a care to their own bodies.  1%, they were actually sick.

Here, the author seems to use it as 100% “cool, got a good workout today.”  That’s deeply disturbing to me.

While they’re waiting for Cally’s body to stop sending up “HOLY HELL STOP IT THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG” signals, they talk about the scars that are on her back.

“Are you enjoying looking at my scars?”

He sucked on his lower lip for a moment. “When did you get those?” She knew he meant the three enormous lines that ran down her back.

“When do you think?” she said. He didn’t reply

Chaol, you were in the room when these were discussed back at the slave mine.  You’ve already seen these.  What is this?

As Cally tells the story of how she got the scars, she mentions another woman being raped and killed.  Chaol asked if she ever was, and she says no because all the guards were scared of her.

Wow.  Wow.  I just…wow.  How does anyone get to that level of offensive and not realize it?

Hey all you other women, who are literally chained down, you just weren’t scary enough to stop it!

Look: DON’T WRITE ABOUT FEMALE SLAVES/PRISONERS UNLESS YOU’RE WILLING TO TALK ABOUT RAPE.  There are very few circumstances where you can avoid this.  Kidnappers for ransom?  Political prisoners?  Maybe, because in those cases there’s some bargaining value to keeping the victim in good health.

But rape was a huge part of slavery.  Taking away someone’s power is a huge part of rape.  To take one part out of the other is to discount a huge part of what makes them so terrifying and horrific.  It cheapens the discussion to say “they had me prisoner.  Oh, except when it came to sex, I was tots in control of that.”  It takes away from the other victims by pretending like there was anything they could have done about it, since Miss Special there managed to avoid it.

And if you absolutely must write about female prisoners and don’t want to write about rape?  At the very least, just avoid the topic completely, don’t pull this shit.  Don’t give one character special exemption, because when you do that, you completely misunderstand something that is a very real, current problem. 

Current.

Sex slavery and sex trafficking is still a thing, and so is regular slavery even if we don’t quite cal it that, and don’t you ever forget it or I will fucking find you.

 God, I can’t get over this, I’m going to need a minute.  Do you know how many women in inescapable situations fight back against their captors?  Do you know what happens to them?  They die.  They die brutally.  Oh, but not Cally, she’s too fucking special for that.

Seriously, you’re reading this post late because I can’t even.

The following afternoon, the Champions stood gathered around Brullo, who lectured them on different weapons and other nonsense she’d learned years ago and didn’t need to hear again.

Whew, okay, back to the normal level of stupid shit.

When it comes to weapons and fighting, you’re never done with the basics.  Never.  You hammer that stuff in until you can do it in your sleep, and then you practice it more.  You never stop practicing basics.  That’s why they’re called basics; everything else is built on them so you have to maintain (not just achieve) perfection on order for all your fanciness to work.

Cally is saved from having to do her fucking job by some excitement when one of the champions tries to escape.  He’s shot down immediately, and for some reason everyone else is shocked by this.  Odd, what did they think all those heavily armed guards with swords and bows were going to do?  Ask politely?

I am curious why that guy tried to escape right then, in the area that has the most guards.  Each criminal has like 5-6 guards assigned to them personally, so when they’re all together, all the guards are there, too.  Did poor dead Sven just lose it and attack a guard because that guard was taunting him, then think “I’m fucked, might as well run”?

Cally compares it to her ‘suicide attempt’ of an escape and wonders if Sven had the same intention.  Since this book is the kind of book that it is, I’m sure that’s the real answer.

Next chapter, we switch over to Dorian as he mulls over the plot so far, in case we happened to miss which details are important.

Why must his mother insist on his attending court? Even the weekly afternoon visit was too much.

“How dare that woman come near me and be womanly?  Doesn’t she know that woman things are stupid and should be kept over there, in woman space?”

She certainly didn’t know anything about it, and probably would have been horrified if she knew what kind of criminals were living under her roof.

Sigh.  Yet another book where women royals are just decoration.

Look, I know women didn’t have a lot of power, and certainly not a lot of autonomy, in the pseudo-medieval time this book is loosely based on, but they weren’t actually harmless baubles.  They were informed, because they had to be, especially when carrying on a governmental fiction.  One wrong facial expression at the wrong time, one wrong statement, one accidental slight to someone that the government is trying to woo, or accidental favor given to that first someone’s enemy, and all the carefully crafted politics comes crashing down.

Did you know queens would have their own spy and information networks separate from the king’s?  Kings and queens would spy on each other?

Women from that time period get marginalized enough by history; they don’t need books like this taking away what little credit they did have.

Before them, the nobility strutted across the floor of the court, gossiping, scheming, seducing.

Otherwise known as ‘politics.’  Stop calling it useless fluff.

Dorian talks with his mom, and the conversation turns to babies.

“Dorian, you are the Crown Prince. And already nineteen, at that. Do you wish to become king and die without an heir so Hollin can take the throne?”

Excepting arranged marriages, the average age of marriage in the middle ages was not much different than it is today, especially for males.  Mid 20’s was common.  He’s not pushing the envelope by any stretch of the imagination.  And if there’s something in this book that would change that custom (a reasonable something, not just ‘because I said so’) we haven’t heard about it.

They chat about the girls that are available, but it’s just so that Dorian can alternate smack-talk all those girls and/or think about how bored he is.

If you’re bored at the political hub of a militaristic empires, either your interests do not lie in politics/armies, or you’re not doing it right. Since Dorian only mentions stuff like parties and girls that bore him, I’m assuming he’s not doing it right.

It was clear Cain and Celaena would ultimately face each other, and until then … well, the other Champions weren’t worth his time.

Well, shit, you couldn’t even hide that until the end?  It was pretty obvious already, but there went any hope of tension.  We already know the ending!

Some nobles started dancing, weaving in and out among each other. Many were his age, but he somehow felt as if there existed a vast distance between them. He didn’t feel older, nor did he feel any wiser, but rather he felt … He felt …

He felt as if there were something inside him that didn’t fit in with their merriment, with their willing ignorance of the world outside the castle.

GOVERNMENT CENTER OF A MILITARISTIC EMPIRE CURRENTLY EMBROILED IN A WAR, IF NOT MORE THAN ONE.  You are not special, brat.  There have to be people interested in keeping the empire running, otherwise it wouldn’t be running.  If you really want to go find like-minded teens, THEN GO FIND LIKE-MINDED TEENS.

Dorian leaves the group so he can go wander over to where Cally is sparing against three guards at once.  He thinks about how pretty she is, then notices Nemmy is there, too.  Apparently she’s joined in the work-out party.

Dorian goes in because he’s concerned about how Cally has a sword, a princess, and very few guards.  They banter for a while, then Dorian gets down to the business of “look, you’re a politically important princess and she’s a criminal, I can’t let this keep going on.”

Only instead of acting reasonably, Nemmy throws an honest to god temper tantrum.

Since Nemmy is being an utter brat and Dorian is too polite to just drag her out of the perceived danger, he elects to stick around and teach her how to swordfight.  (It’s implied she’s really good with a staff, so he’s not teaching her how to fight, just this new style.)

No drinking game today.  I drank enough over that ‘I’m too amazaballs to be raped’ bit.