Kelsea and her crew head out at dawn, and now Kelsea’s sapphire has decided to magic it up and drag her due east. Because it’s not done anything like that before, but hey, anything can happen when you have no rules for your magical artifact and can make it up as you go along!

the thing exerted physical force, as though a string were tied beneath her rib cage. She was being hauled in a nearly straight line east, and if she tried to go in a different direction, the jewel flared into unbearable heat and Kelsea’s stomach was racked with nausea, so much so that she could barely stay on her mount.

So does the jewel know when she’s still intending to head east, or is their party having to cut straight across fields and such so their queen doesn’t vomit? How did they even get out of the city? Climb over houses? With their horses?

Apparently the entire Queen’s Guard is with her, save for two. This would have more meaning for me if I had any idea how many guards there were, but I don’t, so…

The guards are all grumpy because they think this is all a waste of time, but also Kelsea’s necklace is glowing bright blue and she gets faint when she tries to take it off, so the thing is obviously magical. So…why, if everyone accepts that their queen has a magic do-dad, do they also think magic visions are a non-option? I mean, are visions not part of their magic system? Hell, I’m not sure this book even has a magic system, it can’t even seem to keep a halfway consistent attitude towards the stuff. Half the time it’s all vague ‘talents’ like Mace reading people or Andalie getting ‘feelings’ about the future, but also there’s glowing jewelry that throws people, and everyone has the exact same reaction to all of it. There was no thought put into this. None at all.

(For the record, I would like to see a fantasy built around vague talents. I’m sure I have, it feels familiar, I just can’t remember any titles. )

The next day they see wagon ruts in the road, and Kelsea pushes everyone to go harder and faster. For some reason, they still don’t believe that the obvious bad guy is obvious bad-ing. This really serves no purpose except for Kelsea to muse for a while about how all her guards trust Mace more than her because they still think of her as a little girl who had to be collected and delivered like baggage. JFC, what was that whole interminable middle section for if not trying to prove the exact opposite? (And also misogyny.) How many pages did we spend crowing about Kelsea’s incredible deeds as a queen, only to revert to this again? And with very little prompting. The longer this goes on, the more and more ridiculous it is, and all just because the book has Things To Say and it’s going to shoehorn in those Things, damnit, whether you like it or not!

They keep going and Kelsea’s jewel keeps dragging her harder, until finally they get to the mountain pass and look down and see the line of cages in the distance.

“Bullshit!” Elston roared from the back of the troop. “How the hell could Thorne build new cages in secret?”

…are cages the new printing press? Did everyone just forget how to make them? Because, like, they aren’t that complicated. Or large. Seems like it would be easy to build some on the sly. It’s just a cart with a roof.

We switch to Javel, who is driving one of the cages and thinking miserable thoughts about how this is all so miserable, and he’s trying to focus on his girlfriend but nope everything is too miserable.

Also more rape, because the book totally needed more of that. Pointless, pointless backstory rape that’s just there to point out one of the other bad guys is bad. Like we didn’t get the message already.

Oh my god, for something as horrible as a slave shipment, this section is just super fucking boring. Javel carries on about backstory and exposition for ages and pages, and just get on with it. You’re doing it for Allie, yes, you raided villages, we know that, you’re headed for Mortmesne just fucking get there already. We’re three chapters from the end, things should not be dragging this much.

I actually like Javel’s character. He’s…not really sympathetic, but understandable. I enjoy seeing him slip down the slope of evil far more than the other villains and their cackling Saturday-morning-cartoon evilitude. But good lord his sections just drag on forever.

Very soon she would have little value as a slave; she wouldn’t be able to work, and no man wanted a pregnant woman for his toy.

It’s like this book is so in love with the GRIMDARKNESS of sex slavery that it forgets anything else exists. Like, female slaves can’t do actual work, no, IT’S ALL SEX, THAT’S IT, THAT’S ALL WOMEN ARE GOOD FOR, god this book is so bad. I can’t believe the author claims this shit is feminist just because Kelsea is ‘ugly’ and doesn’t have a romance.

And that’s it for Javel. Wow, such a useful section that was. We leave Kelsea’s group staring at the cages, and all for the sake of learning…that there are cages, and they suck. So helpful.

Anyway, Kelsea’s group is watching the cages all settled in for the night, and they make plans off-page for how to attack.

From overheard conversations, she knew that Elston hated Arlen Thorne; it was something to do with a woman, but no one would give Kelsea the whole story.

I bet a fridge was involved.

So the attack starts, and Kelsea and her personal guards are sneaking up on the…battle? Maybe? There were some archers, and the bad guys put out the fire so the archers couldn’t aim anymore, and then…???

All of a sudden, Fetch shows up! He stops next to Kelsea and they have a nice little chat there next to the…fighting? Bad guys fidgeting in the dark? Something else?? Damnit, book, this is not the time to be taking a dialogue break!

Kelsea flinched at the sarcasm in his voice, but drew herself up to her full height. “A long time ago, before ascending the throne, the king pledged himself to die for his kingdom, if necessary. It was the only way the system worked.”

…no, I’m pretty sure systems tend to get thrown into a lot of chaos when the person in charge dies suddenly. Which, you might notice, is kind of the opposite of ‘working.’

Anyway, Fetch is rather impressed with her “I’m willing to leave this monarchy without a clear contender for the throne thus throwing us into basically civil war” comment, so he gives her back the necklace he took from her back many many chapters ago. Wow, that little side nugget was super useless, wasn’t it?

And then…fighting? I guess, not that we get to see any of it.

Then, Thorne sets one of the cages on fire.

Javel saw evil in those bright blue eyes, not malevolence but something much worse: an evil born of lack of self-awareness, an evil that didn’t know it was evil and therefore could justify anything.

Evil that did the math.

So…this helps, how? I mean, if the claim that this is evil born of ruthless practicality and not spite, then there must be some gain to it. I guess distraction, but wood (especially young wood) doesn’t really burn that easily–

The fourth cage on the left was aflame at one end, the door already obliterated. […]But the fire was coming for them, inching its way across the floor of the cage.

Sigh.

Guys, large planks of wood don’t catch fire easily. They just don’t. If they’re old and dry, it’s a little easier, sure, but this is new construction. You’d have to put a torch to these boards for a long time, and even then you wouldn’t get a blaze going. Anyone who’s had a fireplace or built a campfire would know this; you need kindling + time or else some kind of accelerant. So unless the cages were soaked in something flammable, then they shouldn’t be this much on fire, which means they would be a piss-poor distraction because the cages own occupants could put it out pretty easily with their clothes.

But not in this world, where instead of doing anything useful the women just scream and catch on fire. Because that’s the role given to women in this ‘feminist’ book. (I don’t care if I’m bringing this up too much, I’m still mad about that article.)

The second woman was nothing but a blazing torch, a dark, writhing shape with arms that waved madly from inside the fire.

Yeah, people don’t really catch on fire that easily either. Clothes, sure, but stop drop and roll is pretty instinctive. Now, just being close to fire will still cause lots of damage and death, but this is another piece of fiction that apparently operates on The Floor Is Lava rules, where it’s either all safe or all BURNING PILLAR OF ENGULFING FIRE.

Javel attempts to break the bars with an axe he found, but he’s not fast enough. (We once had a pallet-breaking contest, I managed to destroy mine in under ten seconds. I am not exceptionally strong. Now, you could argue the cage bars are thicker than a pallet, but also that shit’s burning incredibly fast, so that would rather imply thin planks.) Anyway, he does no good and catches on fire himself, because this book thinks living skin is just so very flammable.

Kelsea shows up on the scene (Javel was hammering away for a while there, how long did it take Kelsea to walk across the campsite?) and her jewels flare up and she thinks how they desperately need water (because…magic can’t put out a fire?) so she calls forth a rainstorm and then passes out.

This ‘fight’ scene did time so weirdly, I hate when there’s supposed to be a tense, fast-paced situation and everyone spends ages and ages just standing around watching things. And you know time really did pass, because the description includes a series of events, like with the cages where Javel watched fire moving and people being engulfed and dying. That’s time passing right there, not just clunky narration that takes up our time but not the character’s time. Even worse in here, since there’s multiple POVs, so for every second Javel is standing around scratching his navel, everyone else is too.

And really, there was so little fighting in this ‘fight’ scene, not even sounds of battle or anything. Presumably it was happening, but you wouldn’t know it outside a couple of throwaway lines around everyone else standing around and talking.