u/Burgundy-Bag

This book made me love Williams even more. Even though I think the longer books are more to his strength, but I just loved what he did here. 

I should admit that Isgrimnur and Gurtun were my two least favourite characters in MST, because of how closed minded they both are. There were parts of MST where I liked each, but my overall impression of them was very unfavourable. I am also quite biased in any conflict between humans and other species because of the way we sprawl and leave a path of destruction behind us.

So getting me to empathise with the Norns would not have been very difficult. Even when they show abhorrent behaviour, like wanting to execute the lower caste/slaves for not wanting to go into the Deep Darkness. Yeah, they're not great people, but no one gets to decide who is "good enough" to live in this world. Especially for an entire race. Especially if the people deciding are the ones who started the cycle of violence to begin with (or their ancestors did).

But I did not expect that the book would make me despise the rimmersmen. I felt my blood boil when I read some of Isgrimnur's chapters, where he talked about wanting to kill an entire race, or showed Brindur's bloodlust. So many people died, because Isgrimnur was grieving and didn't want let the Norns just live in hiding, or reach a peace treaty with them.

And it wasn't just Isgrimnur's PoV. Viyeki uses the same words to describe Floki as humans do to describe the giants. The book really portrayed the rimmersmen as barbaric and brutal. 

Interestingly, it was only the rimmersmen who were being portrayed like this. Porto and Endri both found the war pointless. The language used during their PoVs is much more grounded in the devastation of a continued war. Even though Endri died hallucinating and talking nonsense, I found him (and his single-minded obssession to go home) the sanest of all the humans in this story. It was that same single-minded obssession to go home that stopped zombie-Endri from marching into the camp to murder the living. The end of the book was devastating, but incredibly beautiful.

Other things I really enjoyed: 

1. I also loved the portrayal of how dangerous desperate people get. Especially people at the point of extinction. I really don't think the humans ever appreciated it. Isgrimnur did not seem to understand it even when Suno'ku told him.

2. It was interesting to me how different the Norns were to the Sitha. They have sch a respect for formality and hierarchy. While the Sitha have respect for their elders, it was made very clear in MST that the elders can't order the other Sitha to do anything. This is very different amongst the Norns, to the point that Viyeki is devasted to find out about his master's supposed betrayal, and wants to kill himself. I wondered whether Williams was linking their respect for hierarchy to their ruthlessness, or whether the respect for hierarchy is a product of the gruelling lives they had inside a mountain.

3. What it means to survive. For the Norns, it was initially to fight with tooth and nail, but then to surrender their most fierce fighter and seal themselves off from the world. And maybe choose to be builders. It will be interesting to see how the society will have changed by the time the Queen awakes and what her reaction will be. It was also interesting that Akhenabi decided to join this coalition. I liked that Williams did not portray him as simply an evil character. I hope we see more of him in the Last King of Osten Ard books. He would make for a complex and interesting villain.

4. Edited to add: the scene between Suno'ku and Isgrimnur. It was such a devastating scene. How Isgrimnur came to have respect for her, but even then he couldn't offer better terms. And her parting words "Then we have little reason to speak more" even though they both share the same pain and they want the same thing. They are the same people. But they couldn't find a common ground.

Two things I wished were a bit different:

1. I wish the Norns weren't so similar to humans. In MST we are told a lot that the humans can't decipher the Sitha, but in this book we're shown that the Norns have similar emotions and social structures as humans. I guess Williams wanted to de-dehumanise them. But I wonder if that would still have been possible if he maintained an element of alien-ness.

2. I wish the book leaned more into the pointlessness of blood feuds. We saw that some of the Norns understood it. But it seems like the humans (at least the decision-makers) didn't appreciate that they're sacrificing the lives of more people and bringing more misery by continuing this war. It isn't until Ayuminu tells Isgrimur that he decides to parley and even then he offers terms that are basically a joke. I thought the Brindur's first reaction to Floki's death would be a catalyst. But he only became more bloodthirsty after.

 

So what were your thoughts on this book? What did you like the most about it?

I am in the very fortunate position of getting a pupillage. I have been reading up on how pupillage awards are taxed and I find it very confusing. As I understand there are 2 options:

Option 1: The pupillage award in respect of the pupil’s first six months will continue to be tax-free, but the award in respect of the second (or subsequent) six months will be included as normal professional earnings in the year of receipt.

Option 2: Both the ‘first six’ and ‘second six’ awards will be taxable in the fiscal year of receipt under the general sweep-up provisions (“income not otherwise charged” see Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005, Part 5, chapter 8, s687).

Is my information correct? If so, Why would anyone choose option 2? Clearly option 1 is better as I won't be paying tax on the first 6 months'. Am I missing something?

I am training my 1.5 year old cat to walk on a lead. The only reason I am doing it is because she really wants to go out through the front door, and every morning stands at the door and meows at me to open it. I have let her out a few times with me while I put the rubbish out (she always responds when I call her, so I'm not worried about her running away), but recently she seems to want to go further, so I've decided to train her so we can go for a walk together.

It's gone really well. She got used to the harness very quickly, so I added the lead, and she got used to that pretty quickly too. I play with her and she plays with the same enthusiasm and energy as she does without harness and lead, I also use food to get her to follow me around while I hold her lead (lead is loose, I never pull her using the lead).

But, despite the fact that she wants to go out herself, and she's comfortable with the harness and lead, if I put the harness and lead on her, she doesn't want to go out. As soon as I open the door she runs to her hiding place. I have even tried to do it when she's meowing at the door, but she still refuses to go.

What's going on? And what can I do?

Did anyone find the prose overwritten and rhythmically clunky? I am really struggling to read the book, even though the story seems interesting. I am on page 23 and I think I've seen more commas in these 23 pages than in my entire adult life, and quite a few sentences that are so long that I ran out of breath before making it to the end. Even though I'm not reading it out loud!

These are just two examples:

>So, already, had Lonza, and Aljais, even Silvenes itself, with the sad, plundered ruins of the Al-Fontina. So, later, did Seria and Ardeño. Now even proud Ragosa on the shores of Lake Serrana was under threat, as were Elvira and Tudesca to the south and southwest.

This one felt like sitting in a car while the driver keeps hitting the break really hard. And then this:

>The winds blew, bringing rain, yes, but sometimes also sweeping away the low, obscuring clouds to allow the flourishes of sunrise or sunset seen from a high place, or those bright, hard, clear nights when the blue moon and the white seemed to ride like queens across a sky strewn with stars in glittering array.

I just finished Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, and while I loved the series (and Williams as a writer... I'm picking up his other books next), the ending didn’t quite work for me.

So I wanted to ask what others thought of it?

My main issue is that it felt too neat and happy for a story that had spent so much time exploring dark, complex themes and exposing the lies behind legends. It felt like the ending Williams had imagined at the beginning, but by the time the books had developed, the story grew into something that no longer fit that ending.

The biggest example is Simon becoming king. His arc is an inward one, not one of leadership. He has a kind heart, courage, and inner strength, but he is also still immature, impulsive, and prone to rash decisions right up to the end. Making him king felt symbolically tidy rather than earned.

By contrast, Miriamele felt much better suited to rule. Yes, she also makes rash decisions. But throughout the series, when she gets into trouble, she often gets herself out through diplomacy (like the last time she sees Aspitis). She also saves the world by making the devastating choice to kill her father. That is arguably the most politically and morally difficult act in the climax. Given how much of her arc is about not being taken seriously as a woman, I found it hard to believe she would happily give up the throne or share it with a man.

The explanation that people would not accept her as queen also felt unconvincing to me. The whole series shows how legends are created and manipulated. If John’s reputation could be built on the lie that he killed a dragon, surely the truth that Miriamele saved the world could have been spread in the same way.

I also found it very unbelievable that the whole broken country is left in the hands of two teenagers.

I think one issue is that I didn’t find the Simon/Miriamele romance especially compelling. It felt like a neat way of getting Simon to the throne without him being too ambitious, and letting Miriamele marry for love rather than politics. But I never felt the chemistry between them.

Simon’s deepest transformation was bound up with wonder and the world behind the human world. I think ending up with someone like Aditu, or at least an ending that leaves him connected to the uncanny feels more in keeping with what makes him interesting. Being married to a princess and ending up as a political ruler felt too... ordinary for his character.

Miriamele, meanwhile, would have made more sense to me as an Elizabeth I-type figure, a queen in her own right, perhaps unmarried, ruling without needing her legitimacy to come through a man.