#sethra lavode

[fuckwhoeverpickedallthefunnyurls]

“I turned around and found I was looking up at Sethra Lavode, atop a horse that, with my equine expertise, I can assure you was dark coloured and very big.”

Someone get this man a horse-identifying gimmick blog

[sickolib]

[under-an-orange-sky]

Sethra Lavode

Sethra Lavode is always a tough one for me. I have yet to read it without sobbing through the end.

In the Afterword, however, one of the "When I first met Paarfi of Roundwood" bits really hit this time around.

".. he was at work on a retelling of the Eastern legend of the Fenarian gulyas - nosferati, whose immunity to the hostile effects of garlic lends them a distinctly tragic grandeur. This work would have occupied several volumes of text and at least two more detailing the recipes sampled by the characters during their long quest. ... I suggested that perhaps the searching out of these dishes was more Paarfi's motivation than the ancient tale of the hungry undead. Paarfi replied that such thoughts had occurred to him as well, as might be indicated by his proposed title for the work Blood and Paprika."

In a post- Dracula Daily and Re: Dracula age, Blood and Paprika would probably whip ass.

"Duty, that is Aerich. Love, that is Khaavren. I am friendship, and Pel is loyalty. There, you see? That is why we get along so well."

We continue to stan Tazendra, for as little as she was in this book. This would have been a significantly shorter book if she hadn't been put in magical stasis for a year.

Something I intend to come back to, when I get to Teckla: when Aerich goes to Daavya to look for Tazendra, only to find the castle abandoned save for a Teckla. There is a character that Vlad meets in Teckla (or maybe Phoenix?) who described a similar scenario - he had moved into an abandoned castle, was pestered by some nobleman, and he'd harried them with spells he knew. Something like that. A similar situation, but two different perspectives. And who even can say if either is a reliable narrator, if they are describing the same scene? Anyway, when I get to that bit, I hope to come back to Sethra Lavode to see how well the accounts align.

All of the Piro scenes after this point are really rough for me. I love the Battle of Adrilankha chapters, it's fantastic that Morrolan gets some big damn hero chapters, but Piro's chapters are the ones that destroy me. Like, Five Hundred Years After is absolutely a tragedy, but it's mitigated by the fact that most of our favorite characters survived. Sethra Lavode is not a tragedy, which makes the deaths of some of our favorite characters hurt so much more.

"They killed Srahi."

Fuck.

All in all, it's a good wrap-up of Khaavren's saga. We'll see him again, at least once more if I remember correctly, and Piro and Ibronka as well.

[sickolib]

Anyway have a Dragaera meme

[tiassaascendant]

The thought of following those who attempted to escape did not so much as cross his mind. Instead he went directly to the icon that occupied a place of honor in the center of the village and spat upon it. Then, sheathing his sword and unbuttoning his breeches, he made certain, in a way that was as old as Eastern tradition itself, that no man or god could have the least doubt about his feelings toward Tri'nagore.

The Viscount of Adrilankha