A week later, Cally sits in her room reminiscing over how posh her time recuperating has been.  She still doesn’t have her contract from the king (and even though I know contracts have existed forever and ever, that still sounds weird).  Chaol shows up, and they do more talking about the plot.  Because we’ve got to squeeze out a little more padding, apparently.

They have a bit of awkward romance and talk about how her parents are dead, all without giving us any details about them other than how Cally found them murdered.  She gives him a hug for saving her life, and then Dorian walks in.  We play musical love interests as Chaol leaves.

Dorian is there to announce that her contract is ready, and then he tries to kiss her.  Cally puts the kibosh on that.

“I can’t be with you if I’m the King’s Champion.”

Because…reasons?

It was true—and if this relationship became something more, then it would only complicate matters when she eventually left the castle.

That’s not because of King’s Champion-ness, that’s because of leaving at the end of it.

So she gives him the ‘let’s be friends’ speech, thereby setting up the contrived love-triangle drama for the next book, and he leaves.

Chaol wanders around looking for Dorian to try and explain the love triangle baiting that went on earlier, and he runs into Cally instead.  Cally tells him she ‘ended’ things because of her “I’m the champion” excuse. 

Chaol is also still upset over the fact that he killed someone, and while this is an appropriate reaction to the whole debacle, it also doesn’t feel…period-accurate.  First of all, he shouldn’t be a captain of the guard having no experience, and second, in a setting where most conflicts are solved with violence anyway, one would have different cultural expectations.  Yeah, he’d still be upset, but he should be trying to hide that fact because killing criminals is ‘normal,’ or he should be wondering why it’s hard because everyone else pretends like it’s easy so he doesn’t realize this is normal, stuff like that.  Instead this feels…rather modern.

Later, Cally dreams herself into the tomb and chitchats with Elena.  Elena spends a while blathering on about how incredibly awesome Cally is and could continue to be.

You found and defeated the evil Cain was bringing into the world. And now you’re the King’s Champion. You did as I asked.”

Wow.  So you really were absolutely useless, weren’t you?  I mean, it’s not like Cain was hiding what he was doing very well.

Also, Cally didn’t actually do much with regard to that.  She didn’t stop him from killing any of the champions, and she didn’t do anything about the magic he was using.  All she did was duel with him, which is exactly what she would have done if he hadn’t been summoning devil creatures.  She didn’t even kill him.  Nemmy is the one that countered his magic, and Chaol is the one that killed him, so do please tell me what the fuck Cally actually did about his eviltude?

Then Elena gives off even more bullshit about how Cally is special and is going to do great things.  Because…what, being the king’s muder-pet isn’t enough of a draw for the next book, we need this, too?

OMG there is SO MUCH FUCKING TALKING.  When I saw we had five chapters left after the duel, I thought we’d get, like, another reveal or something, but this is just five rather short chapters of people talking about the plot.  Rehashing what was already obvious or even just straight-up summarizing the book for us.  God, this could have been handled in an epilogue.

The next day, Cally goes to sign her contract among much pomp and circumstance.

his voice made her bones splinter.

I had to read that and now so do you.

The king stresses how she should do every single mission he sends her on, or else he’ll kill Chaol.  Erm…subtle.  Then he threatens Nemmy and her family as well.  JFC, man, if you feel the need to resort to threats then why on earth did you decide to fill your competition with criminals?  And he’s so frank and intense about it, it comes off as desperation.  It doesn’t feel like he’s in power here, it feels like he’s scrambling for anything he can do or say to keep her in line.  He might was well paint a big neon sign saying “I’M SCARED OF YOU.”

After the signing, Cally and Chaol meet up outside for a little smiley moment and then we’re finally done with this book.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 7

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Next week: We start The Maze Runner.  Which one of you went on a campaign for that book, btw?  It has more votes by itself than most of my polls get combined.  O.o