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longsightmyth · 6 years

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Queen of Glass, Chapter 10

I am not equipped on an emotional or knowledge level to comment fully on this chapter, y’all. This chapter is the first one with Nehemia Ytger, only in Queen of Glass she’s Anuksun Ytger, and I was correct in assuming that Eyllwe is called Eyputiusunn.

Look y’all. There is no way around this. It’s pretty bad. I’d go so far as to say ‘vile’. Anuksun is there to display that Celaena is an enlightened woman and Kaltain is an evil racist. It excels so well at the second part that one might call this story an overachiever.

I do not at all question that Kaltain is an awful human and a giant bigot after one page of this chapter. I do question why Celaena has suddenly decided that judging someone based on their proficiency with ‘proper’ speech is wrong. I distinctly remember some accent mockery up above.

I guess those people weren’t princesses.

No, seriously. Celaena is pleased when Madam Tul’rouse calls everyone to order and greets Princess Anuksun because…

“Good morning, Lithaen and Jodra. Good morning, Princess Anuksun!” Madam Tul’rouse said cheerily and bowed her head to Anuksun. Celaena grinned with delight as Kaltain’s mouth popped open in shock. She had had very good luck in the past three weeks! First she had gotten out of slavery, then she had received a week in the lap of luxury, and now she’d befriended the princess of a rich country! Things were looking up for Celaena Sardothien.

Also we get some exposition on Eyllwe/Eputiusunn.

Eyputiusunn. It was one of the few countries in the world that had female warriors and leaders within their culture. Large grasslands and forests with bountiful amounts of deer, bears, and other edible creatures, Eyputiusunn was the source for most of Adarlan’s meat industry. In recent years, the government of Adarlan had overused Eyputiusunn’s resources, so a ban on hunting had been placed in order to restock the animal population of Eyputiusunn. This had led to the severe rise in meat prices all across Adarlan’s empire, and a minor famine within Eyputiusunn. Celaena had no idea if the famine was still continuing, but from the amounts of meat that the assassin had consumed since being released from the mines, the crisis must have ended long ago.

I understand that Maas wrote this at a pretty young age, so I can excuse some questionable things here (why would the ‘famine’ be over just because the palace and crown prince haave meat to serve? It is the palace and the crown prince).

But I still have to mention that Anuksun, a woman accustomed to hunting and roughing it, wears a fur-lined miniskirt and carries a spear everywhere.

The thing that the assassin liked most about the woman was that she was by no means dressed like a lady. Her kneehigh boots were of a gray hide, lined with white fur, and kept up by the sinewy, brown strings that were tied tightly around her calves. The tan, stomach-exposing shirt was hardly a top at all—it would have closely resembled the slave-shirt that Celaena had worn in the mines, except for the fact that it was also lined with fur. The above-the-knee skirt matched the top that the woman was wearing.

At her side she carried a great wooden spear, which had feathers, tiny bones, and bells tied like charms on a bracelet near to the dagger-sharp metal point. A similar arrangement of such objects adorned a hair ornament that she wore above her right ear, holding one side of her hair back to reveal her chiseled cheekbones and fine facial features.

Someone better qualified than me can comment more knowledgeably, but something rubs me the wrong way about giving a black woman ‘fine’ features. To me, and it is entirely possible that I am wrong, do not hesitate to tell me so if I am, this implies a lack of any features typically considered black aside from skin color. ‘Fine’ features mean delicate noses, small lips, tiny pointed chin… it’s not that black women can’t or don’t have ‘fine’ features, it’s more about erasing the beauty of a race of women who have historically speaking been degraded for not having said ‘fine’ features, and been called ugly or worse for their broader or stronger facial features. It seems to me that Anuksun is essentially a reskinned white woman so that she’s still ‘pretty’.

But again. I could be wrong.

The chapter ends with Celaena thinking about how she’s never had actual friends.

...but when Princess Anuksun, huntress of the grasslands of Eyputiusunn, grasped her hand, Celaena Sardothien felt the threads of companionship begin to weave.

I genuinely wish I could believe that, but I have read too much of the published series.

#myth reads queen of glass #Myth rags on Throne of Glass #myth talks #benign racism #I guess?

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