I posted this as a
comment on sounis, but I’ll crosspost so it’s easier to find later.
I think I did ok in the “figure out how MWT is tricking you” game, this time around!
I pegged Costis as the Attolian basically from square one (ok, from “he had a simple, straightforward look to him”, which is on page 12). I also guessed that Nahuseresh wasn’t dead right away, mostly because Costis’s earnest “come with me, you can be free!” did not sound like a Eugenides plan. So when Laela came in and sent Kamet off, I went, “ah, there’s the second half of the plan! I knew that couldn’t be it!” After which the only question was whether Eugenides arranged the death or just the message, and Kamet’s reasoning about the Attolians not having the ability to kill Nahuseresh was convincing.
I was vaguely expecting to have that be confirmed pretty early on, so the long delay was kind of nerve-racking. Still, the longer I read without any confirmation either way, the more sure I got. Because if it had looked like a lie by accident, someone would have mentioned Nahuseresh’s death much sooner. Same thing with Costis’s identity, actually, though that was much less hidden. When I read “He told me his name”, and realized the actual name was missing I knew two things - one, I was being fucked with, and two, it had to be Costis, because otherwise the being-fucked-with would be way too mean-spirited. Megan doesn’t do that.
Also, my notes say, word for word, the following: “I punched the king in the face” - YES!!!
I completely missed Kitchen!Gen. I thought it was just heartwarming backstory. Which it was. But. Oops.
There seem to be two interpretations of the sand-in-Gen’s-food story. The way I originally understood it was that the cooks didn’t like “the king” for all the reasons stated in the previous books, and didn’t know he had been the boy, because he had changed so much and they only saw him from a distance. Then when he went to visit, they recognized him and stopped. The other interpretation is that they totally recognized him right away and put sand in his food as punishment for lying to them and then not coming to see them. The main point in favor of this theory, I think, is that it seems unlikely that Gen could have successfully avoided every single person from the kitchens for however long he’s been in Attolia.
Regarding Immakuk and Ennikar - the first time the “wine merchant” showed up, I assumed he was working for Eugenides. The light dawned when it was mentioned, chapters later, that Immakuk has one eye. At which point I frantically leafed back to the description of the wine merchant, confirmed that he was “obviously a former soldier” and was missing an eye, and said to myself, “eeeeeee!!!”
I also missed the “Know that you will never die of a fall unless the god himself drops you” connection. I didn’t believe that Costis was dead, but I was quite worried.
I need to reread. My notes were focusing on the plot-related aspects, the first time around, and there’s so much more awesome stuff there.
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