If she wanted to break free, she’d have to go through Chaol first. Had they been alone, she might have attempted it

Well now wait a minute.  Earlier she was fully intending to go through with the competition and earn her freedom the legit way.  I was actually on board with this plan, because there’s certainly a lot of difference between being a fugitive and being pardoned.  Given the choice between the two, I’d like to not have to hide from my government, too.  But now she’s contemplating escape because…reasons?  Really, what’s her goal here?  She’s all over the place.

The Crown Prince’s dogs approached the assassin with wagging tails and lay at her feet.

This is another thing.  About once a page or so, the book will refer to Caleana as ‘the assassin’ instead of her actual name or a pronoun.

This is called an epithet, and it’s very common in bad fanfiction.  Writers use them…I think in an attempt to break up the repetition of using the same name all the time, but ‘the assassin’ is to less repetitive.  It’s also reductive, because it takes just one facet of Caleana and uses it to represent all of her.  It’s the same with other epithets: the dentist, the tall man, the brunet, the footballer, the brawler, the cook.  There are times when this is okay.  If we don’t know the character’s name, if they’re just an incidental character, if that feature is most important in the moment, fine.  Call the bouncer ‘the bouncer’ in that case.  But why do we care right now that Caleana is an assassin?  We don’t!

I think we should add epithets to the drinking game. \~/

So, the party has stopped for lunch in a section of forest that’s extra pretty and quiet.  The soldiers all start getting creeped out by the place and say it’ll soon be burned down, but Celaena likes it, both for the same reason.  It’s a fae wood and apparently there’s some fairy kind named Brannon that’s still in there.  But they fairies are…’gotten rid of.’  Fairies are general mythological beings (gnomes, sprites, etc) and fae are the big humanoid version.  So fairies are ‘gotten rid of,’ but the fae are just in hiding.

Then there’s a long backstory that basically boils down to: the king outlawed magic because of religious reasons and started burning shit down, but magic disappeared on its own shortly after that for reasons unknown.

At least, I assume that’s what happened.

The King of Adarlan had outlawed it all—magic, Fae, faeries—and removed any trace so thoroughly that even those who had magic in their blood almost believed it had never really existed […] most knew the truth: within a month of his proclamation, magic had completely and utterly disappeared of its own accord.

In reality, the text can’t keep track of who ‘removed’ magic from one sentence to the next.

This is why editing is important, people!

Also, Caleana had magic back then, but she’s glad it’s gone.

It was far too dangerous for any sane person to wield; her gifts might have destroyed her

Because of course we get this trope again.  Women can’t handle power, it drives them bonkers! 

Wait a minute, she had magic when she was a kid and she’s only 18.  How is it possible for people to believe magic never existed when it’s only a decade removed from the present?  Everyone should remember it still.

Later that night, some fairy comes into her tent and leaves her flowers.  She knows it was a fairy because of the tiny footprints, and she sweeps those clear before anyone can find them.  Because…?

I know they claim to have ‘gotten rid of’ all the fairies, but what would happen if the current batch of soldiers knew some were still around?  I can believe something bad would happen, but I want to know what it is!  Would they accuse Caleana of something?  Would Dorian convince his dad to come burn the place down?  What?

So they travel for two weeks, and it rains part of that time, and Caleana shows off what a delicate little flower she is by complaining the whole way.  Jeesh, even if your assassin training didn’t harden you the fuck up, surely a year in the mines would ha- oh, who are we kidding.

while she could bear sodden hair, she couldn’t withstand the agony of wet shoes. She had little sensation in her toes.

Numb feet are nothing.  Google ‘trenchfoot.’  Or you could not and just take my word for it that it’s some nasty business.  You get it by leaving your feet in wet boots for days at a time, and anyone trained in anything the least bit martial should know that.  It’s not an uncommon condition.

“Come,” he said to the captain

I’m including epithets for Chaol and Dorian, too.  \~/ \~/

So they get to a hill overlooking their destination see the crowning glory of ridiculous so far: an entire castle made out of glass.  Well, not entire: the original stone castle is in there, with new glass construction built all around/on top of it.  I have to admit, the visual of that is really cool.  However, without magic to hold it up, how has the whole thing not completely collapsed?  One good hailstorm will do it in, and that’s before we even consider an attack from opposing forces.  They are a militant country; they’ve got enemies.  You wouldn’t even need an army to take that thing down, just a handful of rebels and a passing knowledge of structural weak points.

They decide to camp for the night and arrive in the morning, so while they get settled, Celeana and Chaol chat about how she was captured.  She believes that she was back-stabbed by another assassin who wanted her to stop taking all the good paying jobs.

And then an abrupt subject change out of the blue to the mines.  Okay.

But the overseers had been instructed to treat me with extra care, and took the liberty of rubbing salt into my wounds—salt I mined—and whipped me often enough so that some of the gashes never really closed.

Book, you just keep digging your grave deeper with this whole mess, don’t you?

Later Celaena has a nightmare about the mines and then goes to sit out and stare at the stars to recover her calm.  It’s not a bad scene, actually.  I rather like it.  It doesn’t count for shit as far as portraying trauma, though.  Nightmares are just nightmares; everyone gets them.  You want to show me trauma, you show it to me through actions.  Otherwise she’s just one more person in the world having a bad dream.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 4, Bragging – 1, Exclamation Marks – 2

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