That night, Kelsea lays in her tent, kept awake by the ’drunken laughter’ of her guards. Yup. Drunk. Because they are drinking. Literally the previous scene was them being nervous about how pursuers are hot on their tail and they might have to split up, but now they’re all…drunk.

I don’t know how to process this. I have no idea what was going on when this meta decision was made. How…just how, how do you write guards like this? What thought process went into it? I cannot fathom it. “I want Kelsea to have this harrowing journey where guards have to protect her! Oh, and also drunkenness, I guess”??????? Does the author mean for them to be bad guards? Except also for them to be good guards, since they were introduced as being badasses? Does she think this is somehow not terrible behavior? But how could you not realize that?? I AM SO CONFUSED RIGHT NOW.

Kelsea decides to join them, hoping that their drunkenness will make them more talkative. Mace and the captain are at least still sober, but I don’t care,DO YOU EVEN HAVE ANYONE DOING ACTUAL GUARDING? You know, like, looking outward, where the danger is? Scouts? Sentries? Literally anything?

They talk about what will happen once they get to the Keep. Apparently they plan to bring her home in the middle of the day, as a big production, whole city watching, because her uncle wouldn’t have the gumption to murder her with the whole capital city as witness. But she should be wary of assassination attempts even after she gets to her throne.

“There’s no castle. The Keep’s enormous, but it’s a single structure: your castle.”

Kelsea blushed. “I didn’t know that. No one told me much about the Keep.”

…awesome plan, guys, raise a ruler who doesn’t even know about her own seat of government. What else has been left out of this supposedly strong education?

There’s more talk about her uncle and the Red Queen allying, and Kelsea wonders what Mortmesne is getting out of it, since Tearling is so very, very broke. This makes all the guards clam up.

“Lady,” Carroll said apologetically, “many of us spent our lives guarding your mother. We don’t cease to protect her just because she’s dead.”

“I was never in Queen Elyssa’s Guard,” Pen ventured. “Couldn’t I—”

“Pen, you’re a Queen’s Guard.”

Okay, but…and I know this will sound weird but hear me out… what if you also were charged with protecting the current queen? Which it seems you, in fact, are? Doesn’t that fall under the duties of ‘Queen’s Guard’? Wouldn’t telling her the things she needs to know be part of said protection?

You guys are all horrible and I hate you.

I bet whatever this secret is isn’t even that juicy. You can’t build something up this much and have a satisfactory payoff. And that’s not a comment on what the secret is; that’s a comment on all this frikkin build-up.

There’s a lot of flashbacks in this book, and so far all of them have been needless. Do we really need this many words to explain “Kelsea had an idealized version of her mother in her head”? That seems like something any normal motherless child would do.

“What about the Mort invasion?” Kelsea asked, interested. Carlin had never explained the invasion or its causes very well.

DID CARLIN ACTUALLY TEACH YOU ANYTHING AT ALL?

I feel like all of Carlin’s non-teaching is just so we can get things explained to us, the reader, in dialogue. But it’s not like the book shies away from narration; just replace a few tedious flashbacks with a history less and call it a day.

Oh, I see, it’s part of the “mystery” because none of the guards are talking either. Mortmesne invaded 20 years ago, then just stopped.

Ah, and a casual reference to war-time rape, right along with the implication that only men were fighting in the battle. Considering it was quasi-armed farmers against a trained army, why couldn’t the women pick up a few hoes and start swinging as well? This is a society that has had two ruling queens in a row (and Kelsea’s mom was unmarried and Kelsea is illegitimate!) and their neighbor also has a ruling queen so what the flying fuck is with all the patriarchy? Is this plethora of queens considered unusual in this world, or did no one involved in this project think that maybe in a world ruled by women, people would assume women can actually do stuff?

They spent a lot of time talking about random parts of the war which just boils down to shock value. Nothing terribly informative there, besides the fact that Tear apparently didn’t have much of an army.

Apparently Mortmesne used to be called “New Europe.” I don’t think there anything I can say to that which hasn’t been said already about New Asia, so moving on.

Kelsea stood up, tightening her cloak. “Won’t you all be hung over in the morning?”

“Probably,” muttered the dark-haired guard named Kibb.

“Is it really a good idea for so many of you to be drunk on this journey?”

Carroll snorted. “Lazarus and I are the real Guard, Lady. These other seven are window dressing.”

Wanna know what drunk, hungover louts are?

A FUCKING LIABILITY.

It’s not a matter of “oh, those other two are tough enough and we’re just kind of extra.” Once you put yourself in that state, you aren’t chaff, you’re an active hindrance. Dead weight would be less of a problem, because dead weight can’t go haring off making bad decisions in their hasty need to upchuck.

The next chapter opens with an excerpt from a fake book about Tear, and apparently the country has just every climate ever, because reasons.

The heart of the country is flat and temperate, much of it rich farmland. In the west, the kingdom is bordered by the Tearling Gulf, and beyond that God’s Ocean, which remained uncrossed until well into the Glynn Queen’s reign. In the south, the country becomes dusty and dry as it reaches the borders of Cadare. On the northern border, above the Reddick Forest, foothills climb into the Fairwitch, an impassable mountain range.

So the country goes from mountain to farmland to desert? Entirely possible, but I want to talk about deserts anyway. It all depends on where the prevailing winds are coming from, but generally speaking, deserts come after the mountains. The wind hits the mountains, dumps all its weather, and nothing makes it to the other side, resulting in a desert. So if the winds are coming from the north (or NW/NE) then the geography is backwards. If they’re coming from the South (or SW/SE) then okay, but there’d better be something on the south side of that desert that caused it.

Sorry, pet peeve, I see maps with pointless deserts all the time.

This chapter we are in the Queen of Mortmesne’s POV. The Queen is having vague, bad dreams about Kelsea. Also she has a literal sex slave. The book slides right over that, because raping women was just used for shock value, and raping men is just used to show a woman’s villainy. Heaven forbid this book show anything even approaching a conscience.

We spend several pages with the queen just stressing about how she can’t find Kelsea, and we learn that she only sorta cares about the girl herself, she’s more interested in the two sapphires.

The Queen had handpicked him for his dark skin and aquiline nose, a clear sign of Mort blood.

Oh, how fun, the evil kingdom is POC.

That’s so terrible I’m at a loss for what to say.

Then the queen has her rape victim carted off by guards to have his tongue cut out, because she doesn’t like his snoring.

This whole scene is completely pointless. All it adds to the book is one problematic piece of bullshit after another. Why do we keep having villains who just do evil things and nothing else in order to show their villainy? Is the fact that she’s trying to kill Kelsea and invade her kingdom just not enough for you, book?