Once again, we step out of the POV of the person getting the action so we can report on it from the outside.  Although, for once, this does kind of help.  Cally was pretty out of it when we last left, and Dorian is a lot more lucid as he watches her thrash about on the ground fighting imaginary enemies.

Although, he is just standing there and watching it.  At least Nemmy steps up and starts doing covert magic.

And then…Elena shows up.  Yeah, the old ghost queen.  Pops literally out of nowhere.

Cain chuckled as he stepped toward the panting assassin and raised his sword, aiming at the assassin’s chest.

Okay, the epithet use in this book has been ridiculous, but this just takes the cake.

Elena knocks Cain over before he can stab ‘the assassin.’

There’s something here very unsettling, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.  Throughout the book, Cally has been bragging about her accomplishments and she’s seen breezing through a few fights, and even her first bout here barely made her breathe hard.  She doesn’t struggle with anything, and she can flick off opponents like they’re flies…but when it comes to Cain she gets beaten to a bloody pulp (and the book spends pages and pages describing how brutally she’s getting beaten) and has to be saved by a magical force.

In essence, Cally is allowed to be awesome only when it doesn’t matter.  For small things that are mean to boost her assassin cred, she doesn’t even have to try.  When it comes to a real challenge, she fails.  There’s a distinct lack of struggle and overcoming obstacles in this narrative.  Cally is simply awesome without effort, until she goes up against something stronger than her and then she falls over bloody.  And the focus on how bloody she gets is…highly uncomfortable.

Back to the story. Elena also fights off the demons that…may or may not actually be real.  It’s very unclear if these demons exist in and can affect the current world, or if they’re just visible-through-the-veil. Elena offers to de-poison Cally, and she also gets rid of Cain’s ‘borrowed’ super strength.  Once the poison is gone, she stops seeing the demon monsters and Elena, so I guess they…weren’t really there?  Anyway, the fight resumes and she stabs Cain with the jagged end of her staff.

Oh, and she was a weird blue mark on her forehead now.

For a heartbeat, she considered killing him right there, so he couldn’t tell anyone what he knew—about her, about her parents, about the Wyrdmarks and their power. If the king knew any of that … Her hand trembled with the effort to keep from driving the spearhead into his neck, but Celaena lifted her bruised face to the king.

I know it’s against the rules, but really?  At the very least she could be all “oops, I didn’t realize there was a major artery there.”

The king declares her the winner, and I can’t tell if he knows something and is giving her the stink eye, or if it’s more of Cally’s usual spiel about how the guy stands there so evilly.  Also, Nemmy collapses, probably from all that magic she just did.

Cally is still injured from all that beating she took, and Dorian tries to hold her/help her.  The king and Cain share a look (which he misses, but…he’s the POV charater?) and Cain tries to kill Cally anyway.  Chaol stabs him first.

Without thinking, without understanding, Chaol leapt between them and plunged his sword through Cain’s heart.

Why?  Why all this ‘no thinking, thinking is bad’ in books?  I don’t understand it.  What’s wrong with him just saying “holy shit, bad guy has a knife and two people I love are in his way STOPPY STABBY TIME”?  Would that really be so bad?  So many books do this, with characters of all genders, and it drives me bonkers.

Remember Chamber of Secrets?  The movie make a change from the books that has always had me thinking.  In the movie, Harry clearly gets Tom’s diary and at least forms some rudimentary plan that involved “maybe if I stab this it’ll do stuff.”  He came up with it, and even if it was more a thought or a guess than a well-reasoned plan, it was still better than the book.  In the book, a fucking bird had to spell out for Harry that he should stab the magical diary.  Why could Harry not figure that out in the books?  I DON’T KNOW!  But it’s so common and it makes me want to stab stuff.

Chaol goes all faint from having killed someone, because the Captain of the Guard has never killed someone before.  Because he’s a pampered little lapdog, not a guard.

And then Dorian decides that he’s tots in love with Cally and damn the kingdom.  Because leaving a place that’s already on a warpath to the hands of his “bratty” little brother (and since this book is what it is, I don’t think we can expect him to grow out of it) is totally the better option.

Kate, furious that all her plans have failed, gets mad at Duke P and demands to know why the ‘damn drug’ didn’t work.

In front of the king.

And all his council members.

Also, her headaches are back, worse than ever.  Do we ever get to figure out what those headaches mean?  Because we’re running out of space.

The duke, of course, turns on her and claims no knowledge, so Kate gets dragged away and arrested.

…wait.  Even in a setting like this, Kate accusing Duke P should carry some weight.  After all, no one actually walks up to a totally innocent party and says “why didn’t your poison work?”  It’s clear that she’s earnest about their association, and she’s not even covering her ass here because no one was blaming her before she outed him as her accomplice.  I know she’s a girl, but even back then this would warrant an investigation, not a brush-off.

But I shouldn’t be surprised.  This book has been happy to strip away every single measly bit of credit and power that women have historically had.  Except for Cally, of course.  She’s special.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 9, Exclamation Marks – 6

\~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/