As Kelsea’s group finally begins their journey, Kelsea muses about how she’s never been more than a few miles from home, or dealt with any human beings other than her two caretakers. You know, just to really drive home the point about how absurd her upbringing is.

We do get a flashback about once when she was 13 and got lost, only to discover another cottage nearby with a few brothers playing mock sword fights in the front yard.

she had watched them for a very long time, sensing something she’d never considered before: an entirely different upbringing from her own. Until that moment, she had somehow thought that all children had the same life.

Yes, truly an excellent quality in a ruler.

Kelsea could only wear high-necked shirts with tight, long sleeves, so that no chance passersby would ever get a look at her arm or the necklace she wasn’t allowed to remove.

The whole sleeve doesn’t need to be tight, just the wrist.

Tuck it in your bra if that’s what you’re worried about, or wear the gem somewhere not around your neck. I used to wear my dogtags tied to a belt loop and tucked in a pocket. Granted, I don’t think she has belt loops, but the point stands that just because it’s on a chain doesn’t mean it needs to be around your neck.

This seems like a really ridiculous measure. I know they’re paranoid, but they’re also in the middle of the woods with zero company ever, I think they can afford to just have normal long sleeves.

Carlin didn’t show affection, not even to Barty, and the best Kelsea could hope to earn was a smile.

At first I liked Carlin as a stern-but-fair teacher, but the more things go on, the more the text harps on Carlin’s cold nature. And, well…why? The book outright says she’s not cruel, then puts in all these side comments about being cold and heartless. Does the book think that being 100% without affection is the only way for a woman to be in charge, or does it just not understand how ‘stern but fair’ works? Honestly, I’d believe either, many books don’t get the nice-stern teacher thing right.

But on the long ride home, Kelsea couldn’t shake the feeling that these two children had more than she did.

Or perhaps it just wants to angst about Kelsea’s life and threw a female character under the bus in order to do it.

Carlin had merely stared at Kelsea before informing her that her library privileges were rescinded for the week and that night Kelsea had lain in bed, frozen in the revelation that she had been utterly, monstrously cheated. Before that day, Kelsea had thought of Carlin as her foster mother, if not the real thing. But now she understood that she had no mother at all, only a cold old woman who demanded, then withheld.

Yup, this is some side-character-eating woe-is-me.

Back to the present, where Kelsea takes some time to check out her guards as they ride through the woods, but not on any road or path. Because…reasons, I guess. (Paths are there for a reason, guys! Enjoy breaking your ankles in badger holes and having to backtrack around impassable bushes.)

Red hair was a recessive gene, and in the three centuries since the Crossing, it had bred slowly and steadily out of the population.

…just being recessive doesn’t actually do that. Being ‘bred out’ of the population implies some deliberate social actions, but the book then says that women and men dye their hair because the rare color is valued. If that’s the case, then one would think redheaded people would keep on having kids, and that redheaded gene would not disappear from the genepool.

I mean, this should be self-evident, as red hair has always been recessive and yet we obviously still have it.

Also I’m not going to tackle the fact that this non-industrial world has knowledge of things like genes and ‘antihistamine.’ I already know they’re in the future, and it’s not that weird, humans have had a lot of information for way longer than many people think. The fact that they have modern words for things that humans have had generalized knowledge of for centuries doesn’t bother me, but I’ll tackle the lack of tech when we get to it.

We get descriptions of all the guards.

But how could she win the loyalty of any of these men? They probably thought her weak. Perhaps they thought all women so.

We have had it hammered into our heads that Kelsea has no knowledge of the outside world and everything she’s learned has been learned from Carlin, a very in charge sort of lady.

Where the fuck did she get this thought from?

Hawks were beautiful creatures, and good food as well

…predators usually don’t make for good eating?

but Barty had told her that in Mortmesne, and even on the Tear border, hawks were trained as weapons of assassination.

…???????????????????

They stop for the night and all disperse to do their setting up camp tasks, and Kelsea insists on taking care of her own horse. One of the guys brings her the gear needed to groom the mare, and Kelsea asks why she has a mare and all the guys have stallions.

I don’t know why books are so all-fired obsessed with stallions. They’re not often actually the best choice, and in fact the guard (Lazarus) says it’s because they weren’t sure if she could ride so they brought a calmer mount for her. But…well, even if you were a good horseman, would you want a not-calm horse on a stealth mission through the middle of the woods?

“What the hell did you think I was doing out there in the woods all these years?”

“Playing with dolls, Lady. Putting up your hair. Trying on dresses, perhaps.”

Again I ask….why? Why on earth would you think this? She’s living in a cottage in the middle of the woods, not someone’s grand country estate full of riches and servants. And all these men were loyal to Kelsea’s mother, a ruling queen, so do they not assume women can be good rulers?

All of this stuff feels like it’s in here just for the sake of making a statement against it, but it utterly fails, because come on book, it was your choice to ham-fist this shit.

Barty and Carlin had never had any mirrors around the cottage, and for a long time Kelsea had thought that it was to prevent her from becoming vain. But one day when she was twelve, she had caught a glimpse of her face in the clear pool behind the cottage, and then she had understood, all too well. She was as plain as the water beneath.

And what, pray tell, is your standard for beauty, Miss I Was Raised With Only Two Old People And No Other Human Companions?

Lazarus tells her to call him Mace, because it’s his nickname after his prefered weapon, then he leaves.

At dinner Kelsea notes that their meat is tough and probably from an old animal, then notes that there’s not a lot of wild game/birds around.

Kelsea wanted to ask the men about the lack of animals, but she worried that it would be taken as a complaint about the meal.

First of all, you’re less than a day’s ride from your home, so if things are noticeably different from what you’re used to (as evidenced by the fact that…you noticed) then that’s very strange. Really shouldn’t be possible without some sort of geographical divide or magic.

Second of all, a lack of animals where there should be animals is a huge warning sign and if these guys are as badass as you keep implying, then they won’t take it as a complaint because they would have already noticed.

And then we get a really long flashback about how one time as a 7 y/o she pitched a fit about being alone and then was told “you’re not alone because literally the whole world knows you and is thinking about you” which apparently was just plain weird enough to make her stop crying.

It was only a year or so later, reading one of Carlin’s books, that she found the word she’d been seeking all along: not alone, but anonymous. She had been kept anonymous all those years,

…how…just…whut…do you know what words mean? That would make more sense if she was seeking anonymity, but I’m pretty sure the entire point of that story is that she was not anonymous and was alone, so…??????

The men would sleep around the fire, but they had put up a tent for Kelsea, some twenty feet away on the edge of the clearing.

You know, in case there’s any distress, so they won’t have to hear it.

As Kelsea settles into her tent, she finds an envelope from Carlin and hopes there’s a letter explaining all the woeful gaps in her knowledge, but instead there’s just a sapphire necklace that’s exactly like the one Kelsea already wears. So helpful.

And then Kelsea spends a couple pages musing on all the things we don’t know.

I get that a mystery is a good thing to hook readers into a story, I really do. But this isn’t a mystery. This is just…a lack. A mystery needs some impetus behind it. “Thing happened, and we need to figure out X about it, because Y.” Here, instead of having any goal or reason to be invested, we’re just hammered over the head with “YOU KNOW NOTHING, JOHN READER.” There’s no reason to care about why things have been withheld, because there’s reason they were withheld, also we don’t have anything that needs to be solved. Kelsea’s uncle wants to kill her so he can be king, and she needs to reach the Keep before he can (because…reasons). That is not a mystery plot. That’s an action plot. You can have a few mysteries, sure, as B plots, but don’t spend your first chapter practically rhapsodizing about how you’re not telling the reader jack diddly so nya nya nya.

The next day there is more riding, much description of the weather and the terrain that seems like it should mean something but doesn’t yet, and then they stop for camp. Kelsea offers to set up the tent because she wants to feel useful, and one of the guards helps her because it’s a two-person job. She notices all her guards are pretty good looking.

Surely her mother wouldn’t have chosen her guards only for their looks?

Considering they apparently stayed up all last night laughing and they don’t know how to organize a proper camp at night, she might have.

Although the book does do something that pleases me when it notes that the youngest guard there is still over 30. Hurrah for not having teenagers in roles that require years of experience!

Pen, the guard, mentions that they’re being tracked by hawks, and the only reason the hawks aren’t attacking them is that their group is too large.

I’m still…really confused about all this. Are these magical hawks? Because they’re built to kill stuff like squirrels and mice, not humans. They could do some damage, sure, but fatal damage?

Pen does mention that the hawks are probably being used to track them by whichever human party is following along behind them, and that they are probably her uncle’s guards + some people from the neighboring kingdom of Mortmesne. (BTW, my favorite fictional place name ever, no idea why.) The narration informs us that Mortmesne has a “Red Queen” who has been ruling for over a century, so probably magic.

The captain comes by to talk to her and get a sense of her skills, because he thinks their pursuers are close and they might need to split up the part for speed/stealth/confusion. There is more random talk, a lot more “nope, not telling stuff,” a vague warning against trusting church members (Mace is a practitioner of this religion, whatever that means in this world.)

Aaaand, that’s enough for now. We’re still in the first chapter. I’m going to have to summarize more, because this is ridiculous. Maybe later chapters will be easier to shorten; we are still getting introduced to the book at this point.