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longsightmyth · 6 years

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Chapter-by-Chapter, The Naming, Chapter 16

PELLINOR

So the dude talking to them in the speech is essentially a marchwarden. He’s not a bard though, which is confusing to both Cadvan and Maerad, who both thought only bards could use the speech. Maerad can’t even use the speech yet, so she’s a little left out when Cadvan and the new guy tell each other things. More people who can presumably use the speech appear with more bows and arrows and lead Maerad and Cadvan off.

The bowmen led them for hours, long into the night. Maerad looked up through the trees and saw the stars shining bright and cold above them. How many times had she cast up her eyes to the stars for succor? she wondered to herself; for as long as she could remember she had found a comfort in their chilly beauty, so remote from human suffering.

Keep that in mind: we’ll chat about it in the comparison section.

The bowmen lead them to a super fancy bardhome where the trees have even grown some beds. Cadvan is pretty chill about the whole situation, saying that he’s grateful for a bed and food while Maerad (understandably) frets. They sleep.

Cadvan learns the bowmen’s names in the morning when they set out early (Farndar, Imunt, and Penar) but nothing much else. After a while Maerad realizes they’re following a path, and they reach a river. Cadvan thinks it might be the Cirion, which does run into and out of the forest. Nobody knows what it does while it’s in the forest, though.

They are brought to the city of Rachida, which is made entirely of wood. Throughout are planted gardens and orchards. It sounds pretty great tbh. Cadvan says he has in fact heard of Rachida in story and lore (it was one of the havens of the Dhyllin) but everybody thought it had been destroyed.

As they walk through the city the people are kind of interested in Cadvan and Maerad (they’re both pale and dark-haired, which appears to be a rarity here) but even more interested in the horses. The children especially follow them.

They are led to a hill and told their ruler’s hall is at the top.

There’s a lot of similarities to Lothlorien for reasons that will soon become even clearer, but Rachida is actually more similar to Gondolin for all that Ardina could easily be compared to Galadriel.

They get to eat and wash their faces and hands and rest, and then Farndar comes back to lead them to what is effectively a throne room.

At the far end was a dais on which was placed a single chair, carved simply out of a polished black wood that Maerad thought at first was stone, and in the chair sat a tall woman. She was robed in white, and her hair fell freely down her shoulders almost to her feet, like a river of silver. Her face seemed at once young and infinitely ancient, as if she were the painted image of a queen who had reigned in ages long past which, by some enchantment, lived; and her gaze pierced Maerad with a strange thrill, as if she had stepped into a cold river. She bore no circlet or jewel or staff of authority, yet Maerad knew at once she was a queen of great power.

The woman tells them that it’s a good thing Cadvan knows the speech, because otherwise they might already be dead and she’d be a little bit sorry about it, since she prefers people not to die needlessly. They’ve been brought to her to hear her decision.

“I will tell you willingly of us, Lady of Rachida,” said Cadvan, bowing. “But it seems a lack of courtesy not to know who I am addressing, and who reigns over this enchanted place.”

“You wish to know who I am?” The woman seemed to ripple with amusement, although she did not laugh. “I am called many things. To my people I am the Star of the Evening, and the Song of Morning, and the Sap That Feedeth the Tree of Life; and once I was called the Child of the Moon, and the Jewel of Lirion, and many other names. I have wandered beyond the Gates to the Meadows of Shade and returned whole, and so am encumbered with a doom alone of all my kind, and am also called the Alone. What is a name?”

Cadvan, who apparently missed the whole bit about names being pointless to her, asks if she was once known among bards as Queen Ardina. She says yes fine, that’s her too, and she hadn’t thought anybody remembered her outside Rachida.

Cadvan says the bards at least remember her, but they all thought she died, and Ardina basically says she isn’t allowed to die.

They all sit and chat, Cadvan filling Ardina in on a few things, and,

She asked for news of the realm of Annar with a distant curiosity, as if they spoke of something that had nothing to do with her, but was quaint, like travelers’ tales of distant regions.

So if you can’t tell, Ardina is an Elidhu, though we don’t know that for sure for another two pages or so. She mentions her kinship with Maerad (second Elidhu clue, the first being, of course, that she’s only vaguely interested in the human world: I still love that little detail. Even the Big Good Elidhu is kind of like ‘sometimes these stories are entertaining’) and sends them off to rest more while she considers some things.

The kids still love the horses, and Cadvan and Maerad are given a guest house to sleep in, where Maerad asks about Ardina since Cadvan is so flummoxed by her continued existence.

Ardina, it turns out, fell madly in love with a mortal king and rescued him from Arkan (the Ice King, if you remember), but first she had to exist, so Cadvan gives us a bit of poetry.

When Arkan deeme an endless cold

And greenwoods rotted bleak and sere,

The moon wept high above the world

To see its beauty dwindling:

To earth fell down a single tear

And there stepped forth a shining girl

Like moonlight that through alabaster

Wells, its pallow kindling

A wild amazement fastened on

The Moonchild’s heart, and far she ran,

Through all the vales of Lirion

Her voice like bellnotes echoing:

And from the branches blossoms sprang

In iron groves of leafmeal wan,

And Spring herself woke up and sand,

The gentle Summer beckoning.

Basically, Ardina is a mashup of Galadriel, Luthien, and Arwen. I’m less mad about it than I could be, especially since she was apparently created in direct opposition to Winter, aka Arkan.

So Ardina rescued Ardhor from Arkan, and Cadvan says there are a zillion and twelve tales about her (paraphrasing).

“But I wonder what she meant, when she spoke of her doom. The Lady Ardina was one of the Elementals, and she alone of all her kind attempted to die as a mortal and to follow her lover through the Gates. The songs say that they walked together past the Meadows of Shade and to the Starry Groves that overlook this world, and there at last they could be together as they wished. But it seems the songs are wrong.”

I love this, y’all. She tried to pull a Luthien and failed.

Maerad dreams about her mother Milana as First Bard of Pellinor, and in the dream Milana won’t turn to look at her. Maerad wakes up crying.

If she was First Bard of Pellinor, [Maerad] thought to herself, why did she not free us? Why couldn’t she have run away with me, like Cadvan did? Maerad couldn’t remember Milana ever mentioning her father, but suddenly she knew with adamant certainty that his death had destroyed her mother. She wondered what it was like to love someone like that, like her mother had loved her father, like Ardina had loved Ardhor. She never would: it was too dangerous. It had killed Milana. And even Maerad hadn’t been enough to save her. Why not? A pain she had never acknowledged opened and flowered in her breast. Why couldn’t she have saved her mother? Why did Milana die, so miserable, so broken, in a place so far from the bright world that was her right?

...she thought of Silvia, of how deeply she already loved her, of how in that short time in Innail she had been more of a mother to her than anyone. Except Milana before Pellinor burned, she loyally added to herself; but the truth was she could scarcely remember Pellinor.

Maerad further remembers that the Elidhu in the forest called her ‘daughter’ and starts spiraling into an existential crisis, remembering Dernhil too, and then moves on to whether going to Norloch is worth it and how exactly she feels about Cadvan.

She knew she trusted him as she trusted no other man in her life, except perhaps the father she could barely remember, but she didn’t really understand why. Perhaps it was because Silvia trusted him too; but inside she knew it was more than that. She remembered how he had first stood before her in the cowbyre, years ago it seemed, though it was only a couple of months: how his face then was gray with exhaustion, vulnerable, and, she thought now, sad. Even then it had not occurred to her to doubt him. ...what if he was wrong [about her being the foretold]? Would he then abandon her?

She can’t stop thinking and can’t sleep, so she goes outside to look up at the stars. Eventually she does sleep, wrapped up in a blanket. He tucks her hair away from her face and goes back inside to let her wake up naturally (I’m a sucker: SHE’S SIXTEEN but this is really cute).

The next morning Maerad is especially grumpy about not having the speech since that’s how everyone communicates here. Cadvan tells her to be patient and it’ll come. Maerad points out that he doesn’t know everything because he didn’t know about the elementals.

“No,” said Cadvan. “I don’t know everything. No one does, and only the foolish seek to.”

They discuss being set apart even amongst bards, but Cadvan won’t tell her why he is even if she’s noticed it.

Rachida is great, but Cadvan makes a sidelong comment about possibly not being able to leave since nobody knows about the place.

“I hope not,” [Maerad] said. “It’s time we left.”

Rachida is in fact like Gondolin in that once you’re there you aren’t allowed to leave, they learn when Ardina summons them back after a week. Cadvan makes the case that if she doesn’t let them leave there probably won’t be a Rachida to keep safe, because the Nameless One and the Dark are rising. He further tells her that he (Cadvan) was “captured by one of thy kin, one who inhabits a mountain some know as the Landrost. He was long ago snared and corrupted by the Nameless. He is a sorcerer of great malevolence and strength, and even so he is but a slave of that Dark power.”

Ardina acknowledges that she knows who he means, and Cadvan continues that his captor had a dark reflection of Ardina’s scrying pool, and in it Cadvan saw all the awful things actually currently going down in the world including the return of the Nameless because his captor hoped he would die of despair.

“The tools of the Dark have ever lied,” said Ardina swiftly.

“Aye, Lady,” said Cadvan. “But I am said among bards to be a Truthteller, and have the gift of knowing what is a lie and what is not: and I am long used to the deceptions of the Dark. What he showed me was not a lie. He could not have hoped to have tormented me with a falsehood or a meretricious shadow; and well he knew that.”

Ardina considers it and says that Cadvan has something else he should tell her, so he tells her that Maerad is the foretold. He takes his time about it: I can’t tell if he’s dolling out tiny bits of information in hopes that eventually she’ll stop asking before he has to tell her it’s Maerad that’s important or if the book is just dawdling a bit.

Ardina says Cadvan reminds her a little bit of Ardhor, and she really wishes he didn’t. She turns to Maerad.

“I see a Fate on thee, sister,” said Ardina softly. With a thrill, Maerad realized that Ardina was speaking to her in the tongue of the Elidhu, not in the language of Annar. “I sensed it when first I saw thy face. I know not what to say to thee, for thou art yet asleep, like the lily that sleepeth under the ground in winter; and yet within thee there dwells a fire of unsurpassed brightness, which will blossom in its own time.”

She says that she thinks it will mean the end of her people here in Rachida one way or the other, and Maerad says maybe it will be another beginning. Then she realizes that Ardina and the Elidhu in the forest are the same person, just slightly different aspects maybe.

“Aye, sister,” said Ardina, who was studying her closely. “You see aright. I am both Queen and Elidhu, here and there, wildefire and hearthfire, forgetting and remembrance. But do not yet speak of this, for men are impatient with such things and do not brook contradiction.”

Ardina says she’s going to let them go and gives Maerad a ring, telling her to be careful: “...you are sought by the Dark and the Light. Perhaps you will find that your Fate has nothing to do with either of them. It may be that you will find that your greatest peril exists already within you.”

She adds that Maerad has a great heart, but will suffer for it and shouldn’t let the suffering make her heart any smaller. She gives Cadvan only a blessing, but he says that’s pretty big in his books.

Maerad decides she will always wear the ring just like she always wears the jewel Silvia gave her, “as a token of love.”

They are led out of Rachida and bid everybody farewell.

Yet already it seemed to [Maerad] that a shimmering veil lay between her and Rachida, as if, even at this distance, it lay only within her memory, a golden dream of untouchable beauty.

THRONE OF GLASS

Chapters 32, 33, and 34, y’all.

Nehemia and Celaena walk through the gardens. Celaena reflects on how much of the common tongue she’s taught Nehemia even though they both speak Eyllwe on their walks, and how in learning Eyllwe she at least learned something in the mines.

Nehemia says that Celaena seems troubled. Celaena says she can’t tell her anything about it, and Nehemia says she understands secrets but will always be there for Celaena to talk to. She mentions that Celaena is always followed by guards or locked in her rooms, and “if [Nehemia was] a fool, [Nehemia] would say they were afraid of [Celaena].”

I’d worry that my friend was being unwillingly kept, but what do I know.

Nehemia says that she’s been talking to Georgina to keep her fingers in all the pies of royal politics, which I approve of. Anyway, they reach the kennels, where Celaena worries they aren’t allowed to be.

“I am Princess of Eyllwe,” [Nehemia] said. “I can go wherever I please.”

Rock on until you hit the evil conqueror whose will is supposedly never flouted, I guess.

The breeds were all fascinating and beautiful, but the sleek hounds aroused awe in her breast.

Breeds weren’t really a thing in medieval-ish society? You bred for traits, but you didn’t have, say, labrador retrievers or springer spaniels. I guess I can give some leeway because hounds were a thing, but you just went ‘I have a dog that’s great at sniffing out game, let’s breed it with ANOTHER dog good at sniffing out game.’ The classifications weren’t nearly so specific as ‘breed’ implies. Also, stop using aroused to sound fancy 2k18.

In short, when Dorian and Celaena discuss ‘mutts’ I roll my eyes a lot. If they looked nice and fulfilled a function, the dogs were already ahead of the game. If they just fulfilled a function, they were used for it.

ANYWAY.

Celaena gets angry when Dorian says that a puppy that hates people and also won’t get along with other dogs might have to be killed. Celaena immediately scoops it up and declares that that would be cruel, and Dorian says fine, he’ll find a family for it if it makes her happy and make sure she approves of the family.

But if the dog hates people and other animals, what kind of family are you going to get it to? You can’t put it with kids, kids like to pet soft things and a dog who hates people and other animals will bite. Dogs can do damage. Additionally, Dorian didn’t even say that the dog would be killed: it was a conditional. I hate to be on Dorian’s side, but he said if the dog couldn’t respond to humans it would have to be killed, and that’s an if. So like?

Nehemia and Celaena leave, discussing how pretty Dorian is and how much Nehemia has misjudged him (...?). Celaena says she would sooner cut her heart out than love a Havilliard, which. Fair.

Celaena considers running away once she and Nehemia split up, and runs into Cain, who is acting strangely. He finally leaves after appearing to almost choke himself and try to say something.

Celaena waited until the sounds of his fleeing footsteps faded, then hurried back to her own rooms. She sent messages to Nox and Pelor, not explaining why, but just telling them to stay in their chambers that night and not open the door for anyone.

I maintain that Celaena is Adarlan’s Assassin not because she is the most competent, but because everyone else is even more incompetent. The champion candidates are getting murdered left and right and nobody’s guarding their doors? I’d guard them on the off chance it was one of the champion candidates offing the others to eliminate competition.

Chapter 33

Kaltain smokes opium for her headaches. Perrington comes to see her and she swaps clothes and sprays perfume in the hope that he won’t smell it, and then drops hints about Lillian not being appropriate for the prince. Perrington agrees. Kaltain manages this while hallucinating and in the midst of a migraine.

Cut to Celaena in the library. Nehemia enters and says she didn’t know where else to go. Five hundred rebels were captured and being transported to Calaculla when they tried to escape and all of them were killed.

“What is the point in being a princess of Eyllwe if I cannot help my people?” Nehemia said. “How can I call myself their princess, when such things happen?”

“I’m so sorry,” Celaena whispered. As if those words broke the spell that had been holding the princess in place, Nehemia rushed into her arms. Her gold jewelry pressed hard into Celaena’s skin. Nehemia wept. Unable to say anything, the assassin simply held her—for as long as it took for the pain to ease.

We’re gonna discuss this later, y’all. For now, the next chapter.

It’s eleven pm and Nehemia has returned to her room. Celaena stretches and feels a cramp. We are informed she’s been like this for an hour. Philippa comes in with tea and says it’s a pity about the rebels, but that at least Nehemia has a good friend like Celaena.

She leaves. Chaol comes by and starts babbling his feelings on the matter to Celaena even after she tells him she isn’t feeling well. She throws up, which is fair - menstrual cramps are, as previously mentioned, nothing to sneeze at. Chaol is alarmed and escorts her to bed, where she finally fesses up that it’s her cycle.

He immediately flees.

Dorian comes in and decides they should play cards, since he knows she’s menstruating and wants to distract her. She throws a book at him, he says she should call him Dorian, and then he starts to mock her romance novels. She tells him Chaol wouldn’t read them either, so he takes one and hides the title to avoid being embarrassed I guess.

Dorian tells her she’s beautiful. We learn that he hasn’t ever known an attractive woman this long without courting her except Kaltain.

He goes from there to considering how he’ll feel about inheriting a conquering country to how Celaena must feel about being from a conquered country, with only a cursory mention of Nehemia, whose people are being killed right now you selfish overcooked monkfish.

Anyway, he tells Celaena he gets why she might hate him (no one ever mentions this to Nehemia) and Celaena tells him he isn’t like the others and he mentions the Yulemas ball.

Celaena can’t come. She wants to know why, and also what a yulemas ball is. Celaena, you are a motherfucking princess and also raised in this exact city, you know about the goddamn religion/celebrations.

She jokes about extending her regards to Perrington, and Dorian gets angry thinking of how Perrington treated Celaena. Dorian leaves.

Celaena stared at the moonlight as it streamed across the ceiling. A masked ball on Yulemas! Even if it was the most corrupt and ostentatious court in Erilea, it sounded dreadfully romantic. And of course, she wasn’t allowed to go. She let out a long sigh through her nose and tucked her hands beneath her head. Was that what Chaol had wanted to ask her before she vomited—a true invitation to the ball?

She shook her head. No. The last thing he’d ever do would be to invite her to a royal ball. Besides, both of them had more important things to worry about. Like whoever was killing the Champions. Perhaps she should have sent word to him about Cain’s strange behavior earlier that afternoon.

Celaena closed her eyes and smiled. She could think of no nicer Yulemas gift than for Cain to be found dead the next morning. Still, as the clock marked the passing hours, Celaena kept her vigil—waiting, wondering what truly lurked in the castle, and unable to stop thinking of those five hundred dead Eyllwe rebels, buried in some unmarked grave.

You forget about them quickly enough.

COMPARISON

Let’s get this out of the way: I love that Ardina is a failed Luthien, and I love that she kept on keeping on anyway. It’s an interesting contrast to how Maerad thinks about Milana, though later on we learn more happened than just Maerad’s father’s murder.

About the stars: Throne of Glass has a fascination with the stars, but usually in order to make bombastic statements about how much people want to sleep together etc etc. The bards have a whole culture surrounding stars (if you remember from way back in the very beginning, they’re even technically called Star People). When Maerad looks up at the stars, she’s pulling on childhood teachings that she might not consciously remember but remained ingrained in her. When Celaena looks up at the stars… well I don’t know, what do the stars even mean to Celaena aside from that one line about rattling them that originated with Treasure Planet?

Also we hit a menstruation scene in Throne of Glass, which is slightly better than I remember maybe. Everyone involved is super embarrassed except Dorian, who proceeds to try to embarrass her about her books and this is supposed to be funny? I don’t know. It feels very juvenile, but then so does the whole book so maybe that’s just what’s wrong here. You’d think menstruation in a YA novel aimed at young women especially would deal more maturely with the whole thing, but to be completely fair a lot of grown-ass people I know in real life deal with menstrual cycles in a juvenile way.

On the note of dealing with things well or not: I am not a fan of the narrative becoming All About Celaena once more when it’s Nehemia’s people who have been murdered. I understand that we don’t get Nehemia’s PoV, but we do get Dorian’s and he feel remorse towards Celaena ten times more than he feels for Nehemia, whose people are being murdered right now when he can in theory do something about it as opposed to a conquest that happened when he was eight or nine. This book’s priorities are very clear.

Both protagonists are likened to fire a lot, or having a fire burning in them, and both display fantastic capacity for destruction (granted for Celaena it’s in later books). Celaena gives lip service once or twice to not wanting to use her powers and/or wanting to be normal, but it always feels out of left field. Part of it is that we’re in her head so if the narrative doesn’t mention it it seems like Celaena isn’t thinking about it, and part of it is how little Celaena hesitates to use her phenomenal cosmic powers to threaten or punish.

Maerad uses her magic in times of fear and worries about it afterwards. She constantly worries, because it’s only been a few months. She trusts Cadvan and Silvia, neither of whom belittle her or invade her privacy or override her opinions. I wonder how Celaena would seem to us-the-readers if she had a more deeply developed relationship with anybody: it’s a pity that Nehemia is here to prop up Celaena’s supposed awesome, because Dorian and Chaol constantly override her opinions, deliberately invade her space to watch her sleep, don’t believe her if she says she feels ill, and force their presence on her when she doesn’t feel well. That’s leaving aside embarrassing her about her own body or her reading taste.

Honestly at this point Celaena feels like one of those children who are often unpleasant, but once you see their home life you understand: they have too many rules and not enough boundaries. Here, the book is the parent: it refuses to let Celaena move out of the role of Shining Light in the Darkness Who Can Do No Wrong when it tries to push the idea on us, while at the same time letting her get away with everything so long as it doesn’t directly stop the story’s goal. It’s bad writing and worse parenting.

Maerad is allowed to make mistakes and worry and second guess and be wrong. She’s allowed to be set down, but she’s also allowed to be right even in the face of her love interest, which is something Throne of Glass also doesn’t allow. Maerad is a sixteen year old coming out of a terrible situation that she ended up in through no fault of her own, and she’s adjusting, however slow the adjustment might be in some areas (or fast in others). Her experience has shown her, for instance, that dudes are to be feared or at least to be wary of, but her instincts and (short) experience with Cadvan say that he is trustworthy. Cadvan very purposefully gives her space: compare the scene a few chapters back in ToG where Chaol and/or Dorian watch Celaena sleep to the scene here where Cadvan finds her asleep.

First of all, he isn’t going into her private space looking to watch her sleep. He goes outside and she has fallen asleep there. He moves her hair out of her face and leaves her alone, in fact going back inside so she isn’t disturbed. Chaol and Dorian? Walk right into Celaena’s bedroom and stare. They stare a lot. They wake her up. They fantasize about her, so when they do something like move her hair back it’s fucking creepy instead of sweet. I cannot emphasize enough how deplorable I find it that these two men with literal power of life and death over our protagonist continuously enter her private spaces without permission (sometimes after being told to leave). It doesn’t matter that I hate Celaena. It doesn’t matter that I loathe Celaena with every fiber of my being. This is bullshit, and I hate it.

Cadvan, I think you might be worth 10,212 Dorians and 127 Chaols. Even your age difference goes by the wayside at this point.

STATS

Throne of Glass

Pages: 22

Fragments: 19

Em-Dashes: 49

Ellipses: 15

Pellinor

Pages: 29

Fragments: 9

Em-Dashes: 6

Ellipses: 7

#myth reads #Myth reads The Naming #myth reads The Books of Pellinor #myth rags on Throne of Glass

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