There were two ways to get to Leck City from the inn or from any point in Sunder. […] This route was traveled by merchants who carried goods, and most parties containing women, children, or the elderly.

The other way was shorter but more difficult.

Girl Power! We should teach girls to fight!  Feminism, yay!

Unless there’s going to be anything difficult going on, in which case lump those ladies in with the weak and helpless.

I’m just gonna drop this here because reasons.

Katsa and Po decide to take the ‘tough’ path through the mountains.

Leck City

I still can’t get over the utter inanity of having all the capital cities be named after the ruling kings.  That must be a nightmare for mapmakers.

It was a landscape of rivers and streams, similar to that of inland Lienid, Po told Katsa – or so the Monsean queen had written – which made it a landscape unlike anything Katsa had ever seen.

It’s like someone cut up three different sentences and made a shambling Frankenstien’s monster out of them.

But it wasn’t nothing for Katsa to rely on someone else’s protection. She’d never done such a thing in her life.

And besides, wouldn’t it be easier for her to kill Leck immediately, before he said a word or raised a finger? Or gag him, immobilize him, find some way to disempower him completely? Maintain control and ensure her own defense?

Considering this book is what it is, I think it’ll become a “point” that Katsa should learn to trust Po, but…she’s right.  Po is a squishy and fallible human.  While it’s fine and dandy to make a group of complimenting powers in order to create a stronger whole, a backup plan is also a fine and dandy thing.  On top of that, they honestly have no idea if Po’s magic will protect him; Po just assumed that it would and they carried on from there with no proof.

Katsa continues on with her “I don’t need anyone” thoughts as they set up camp in the middle of a rainstorm, but then in the middle of the night she wakes up thinking Po has gone missing.  But he’s still there.  Then we skip to the next day, because this chapter cannot fucking sit still, so that Katsa can be all surly because she’s upset about being actually attached to someone and having feelings.

Which, when coupled when how choppy this chapter is, pisses me off in a storytelling sense.  I mean, this is a fine subplot to have, though it’s still clichéd.  However, it should not be something pops straight fuck out of nowhere and gets set up all in a single chapter.  The book refuses to take its time with this thing, which is why we have sections of this chapter less than a page long each, because it’s trying to shove an entire subplot’s development in one spot.  This should have been going on in the background throughout their journey.  But this book hasn’t been able to handle the concept of long-running plots at any point, as evidenced by the fact that Katsa manages to neatly wrap up each of her emotional issues before moving on to the next.  Worried about being a rage-fueled monster?  Well, let’s get rid of that before we go traveling.  Got issues with mindreaders?  Spend a chapter on it, then move on.  This is not a flowing narrative, it’s a series of emotional vignettes strung together with duct tape, and nowhere is that more evident than this compressed build up we’re dealing with right now.

Oh, and Po has randomly developed the power to sense animals.  His magic has been so all over the place that I don’t fucking care.

(Didn’t the start of this book claim that everyone only gets one power?  So how does he get “hear thoughts that are about me” AND “sense the physical world psychically”?)

Katsa randomly realizes that she’s totally lusting after Po and gets mad at him for it, and he’s completely understanding and says he hadn’t planned on all this either, but they don’t really talk about it until they settle in for the night.

Po admits that he loves her, and Katsa decides she needs to go off and process this on her own where he can’t hear her thoughts, which makes perfect sense.  Then she decides to have a good cry, because despite any feelings she has “She could never be his wife. She could not steal herself back from Randa only to give herself away again – belong to another person.”

…look, books.  World in general.  Can we just…stop?

Can we just stop with the idea that marriage is somehow inherently subsuming to one party or the other?

Can we just stop with the notion that is inherently anything besides legally linking two people?

Culturally, yes, marriage can have a lot of baggage attached to it, but that’s just the thing.  That baggage is cultural, not inherent to the notion of two people saying “I’ll stick around and share finances with you.”  And of course you can decide not to be married because of that cultural baggage or because you just don’t like the inherent part, that’s perfectly alright.

But when you’re writing, especially when you’re writing an entirely different culture, you can’t treat said baggage like it’s just an assumed thing, since that baggage is different for every single culture ever.

On top of this, we’re talking about Lady “I can do anything and you can’t stop me” Katsa here.  We had an entire subplot devoted to her realizing that she can just say “no” to the king, and they’ve talked repeatedly about how Po can’t make her do anything because she can physically overpower him.

And she’s talking specifically about marriage, not about emotional entanglement, because she goes on to say that she can’t become his property “no matter how much she loves him.”  So the idea of being emotionally dependent on someone doesn’t seem to bother her, just being married to him and having to conform to social expectations that she’s never conformed to before so what even is going on?

“You know I’d never expect you to change who you are, if you were my wife,” he finally said.

“It would change me to be your wife,” she said.

He watched her eyes. “Yes. I understand you.”

…well I don’t.

I mean, I get the idea that people can change because of marriage, but people change all the time because of everything.  That’s what it means to be human; we’re not supposed to have static personalities because we’re built out of our experiences so adding experiences to the pile automatically changes us.  So while I can understand this statement as an abstract concept, I don’t understand what it means specifically to Katsa.  What change is she afraid of?  Is it any change at all?  She’s noticed changes in herself since meeting Po already and has actually seemed pleased with that, so I don’t think it’s the idea of changing period, and yet we have no idea what change she thinks would happen that would be so bad.

Po points out that people can be lovers without being married.

Could she be his lover and still belong to herself?

That was the question; and she didn’t know the answer.

Allow me to help you out: Yes.  Penises do not actually devour your soul, or whatever it is you’re afraid of.

This…this statement worries me more the longer I look at it.  She’s actually wondering if she can avoid being owned by a man as soon as she sleeps with him.  As if this is some sort of weighty issue that can only be overcome by someone with a strong enough power of will, instead of an automatic thing.  We should not be teaching girls to worry about this; we should be teaching them exactly the opposite.  It shouldn’t be “you can have sexual autonomy if you’re strong enough,” it should be “you have sexual autonomy, full stop, period, as a basic right, grab it with both hands and have fun.”

It was by thinking of Po, and not of the notion of a lover, that Katsa became comfortable enough to consider what it would mean to lie in his bed but not be his wife.

It took more than the thinking of one night.

Despite the fact that book spends a good deal of time telling us that she’s thinking about this, it never tells us what she’s thinking. 

Does this world have morals about sexuality?  Does she have ingrained beliefs that she needs to work through?  Who would have ingrained those in her, since we’re hammered over the head with the fact that no one properly raised her.  Is she concerned about reputation?  Or is she not because she’s above reputation?

All this and more we will never know.

For once she became his wife, she would be his wife forever. And, no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it was a gift. Her freedom would not be her own; it would be Po’s to give or to withhold.

False.  You have already pointed out that Po cannot control you.  If there’s some law regarding this, you need to tell us that, and also tell us why it would apply to Katsa who can beat an entire room full of guards at once.  Is someone going to enforce it if Katsa gets married and then decides to run around outside?

The way this is phrased, without any context, makes it sound as if it’s just a natural thing that men are in charge when in a relationship, as if of course Po would own her, because of course that’s just how the world works.  It presents the idea as if the superiority of men is just there, and it can’t be set aside as bullshit but instead must be overcome through loopholes.

And that’s fucking creepy.

She asks Po how he’d feel if she were his girlfriend and then broke up with him, and he answers that he’d be unhappy but that’s worth the risk.

I’m not really sure what the book is getting at.  I mean… “dating someone and then breaking up” is not exactly a new concept to readers, so it’s something unique to Katsa’s sheltered circumstances, and yet it’s being presented as this huge important weighty issue instead of something she just needs to work through.  Yes, at some point in your life you will care about someone and then grow apart from them, and that applies to more than just romance and even raised by wolves as you were you should actually know this.

I mean, she cried when she left Raffin, so even within this book it isn’t a new concept.

Katsa is antsy and that night she wants to spar with him to calm down, so they do, and then it turns into sexy times.  It’s…dull.  I don’t know, this is just my personal opinion, but I dislike books that try to include sex without actually getting explicit about it.  Either fade to black or show me the fucking, but this half-assed shit is just awkward.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She laughed. “I have not lost myself. And you?”

Oh, good, I’m so glad we settled the matter of whether or not his penis would eat you.  I was so worried about that, after all.