And now we’re on the third chapter of the same ceremony/feast. I feel like nothing is happening. I mean, okay, Evangeline was chosen as the new princess, but…that doesn’t really feel like we’re moving forward, since “who is gonna marry Cal” was never really part of the plot. It was more incidental to the whole “Mare needs to show off her powers to a crowd” than a plot in and of itself.

Lord Samos is the last to stand, and when he does, a hush falls. […] I don’t need Maven to tell me he’s the highest of the High Houses, a person to be feared above all others.

So, about that. Does your nobility have ranks…like, at all?

He owns and operates the iron mines. Every gun in the war comes from his land.”

So he’s not just a noble. His importance comes from more than just titles.

All this is just…making me really wonder how your nobility works, if the idea of land=power is this novel to you.

The royal family (plus the two new fiances) leave the feast, and Mare realizes she can sense where the security cameras are before they pass them, probably part of her electricity powers. Then she proceeds to not understand how bodyguards work.

But then, what threats could there possibly be to these people? Cal, Maven, and King Tiberias can control fire. Elara can control minds. What could they fear?

Well, I’m thinking if you put a bullet through the head of any one of them, all that fire and mind reading power isn’t exactly going to save them, so probably that.

Also, you hire guards not because you can’t protect yourself, but because you don’t want to have to. It’s a full-time job to guard someone, and 1) passing off that job means getting to do your own work and 2) it’s much less stressful to worry about someone else’s safety all the time than to worry about your own all the time.

After a short king/queen spat, parents and teens split ways.

Like any wife, she hates her husband for challenging her, and like any queen, she hates the power the king holds over her. A bad combination.

Book, are you really trying to make me dislike the queen here? Why? Why the fuck would you vilify her over this? Do you think she should be happy that the king has literally undermined everything she’s said so far?

Even though he seemed polite, nice even, he’s Silver. And he’s Elara’s son, which might be even worse.

I fucking hate you so much I cannot even express it right now.

Which is odd, because she’s a leader of the oppressive group who has no regard for the humanity of the majority of people in her country and uses her powers to cause harm without remorse. I should hate her. It’s just, I should hate her just as much as everyone else, because everyone else is doing the same thing. And yet, because this book keeps singling her out and trying to make her extra-hate-y, it’s having the opposite effect.

Mare and Cal bicker on the way back to her room, and he lays on some praise about her being people-smart that…well, I can see, but I don’t understand why he would say that. All he’s seen of her is “oh yeah, I totally believe you’re a Red like me!” and “lemme just, like, crash into stuff while running away and then cower in fear.”

They get to her room, and Mare complains about the cameras while Cal acts confused and says there are no cameras in there. Mare decides to mope about her powers making her a ‘freak’ instead of the far more reasonable “wtf, secret security cameras that even the crown prince doesn’t know about, why?”

BTW, we have slowed to a truly glacial pace. Strange, we were running along a pretty good clip for a bit there.