TSK discussion | Passage, ch 13-24

[shimotsuki]

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post this one! We got back home from Greymouth Monday evening, but then things picked right up at work, so evenings have been short this week. :( The second half of Passage is really fun, too -- I've been looking forward to discussing this part in particular.

Summary

• Chapter 13: The Fetch arrives at Silver Shoals. Berry goes to inquire about her father's missing boat, and meets Cap Cutter of Tripoint, who is likewise looking for several lost boats -- the problem is bigger than we knew. Meanwhile, Remo continues to learn about farmers, and Hod develops a talent for managing Bo when he's in his cups.
  
  
• Chapter 14: They go and explore the mint in Silver Shoals, and Dag continues experimenting with ground-ripping food items (the apple pie doesn't go so well). The river falls some, and Bo runs the Fetch up onto a sandbar. More experiments with ground, and Dag admits he's concerned about how similar what he's doing seems to be to what a malice does.
  
  
• Chapter 15: Dag works out how to unbeguile Hod, and comes to the novel conclusion that avoiding beguiling farmers is as easy (and difficult) as accepting farmer ground when a ground reinforcement is given. He and Fawn steal a chance to, um, scout for squirrels, and conduct more, um, intimate ground experiments. Then Fawn and everyone else conspire to give Dag a surprise party for his birthday -- although the biggest surprise of all is Barr turning up, in search of Remo.
  
  
• Chapter 16: Barr makes a general nuisance of himself trying to get Remo to go back to Pearl Riffle with him, since the camp leader had said that was the only way for Barr to get back on the patrol. Fawn finds herself having thoughts of a home and children, someday. Cap Cutter's keelboat passes the Fetch, and news is exchanged. Barr finally goes too far, attempting to plant a persuasion on Berry, but quick thinking by Whit and Remo intervenes. Barr and his narrowboat are thrown off the Fetch, with, as we learn later, no provisions.
  
  
• Chapter 17: A hungry Barr keeps pace with the Fetch through cold and rain, and finally asks to be brought back on board to go with Remo to the sea if Remo won't come back to Pearl Riffle. Dag gives Barr a very thorough talking-to, and he apologizes to everyone and promises to behave. Flatboat boss Wain, who was involved with the carpenter's wife's appendicitis incident (and didn't help with the sandbar), offers a mutton roast if Berry will fiddle for the party. Fawn learns that some poor farmer was cheated out of his sheep, and eventually there's a comedy-of-errors with her conscripting Whit and then Barr into helping her try to return the ones that hadn't been roasted yet: Barr is starting to really join the group.
  
  
• Chapter 18: Training: Whit with Berry on the steering oar, and Remo and Barr doing ground-veiling drills with Dag. But then they rescue one Ford Chicory and his band of hunters-turned-boatmen from Raintree, stranded after their flatboats sank, and bring them on board the Fetch. It turns out the Raintree men have some experience with malices; they've seen blight, and during the Raintree malice affair they discovered that if you drag mind-slaved farmers far enough away from the malice, their minds clear. This latter information is of great interest to Dag. The next morning, the Fetch is hailed by two men in a skiff, offering to pilot them through a tricky patch of the river. One of them turns out to be Berry's lost Alder.
  
  
• Chapter 19: Berry has her happy reunion, but it doesn't last long. Alder starts spinning tales, but Dag can tell that he is lying, and that Skink, the man with him, is beguiled. Dag finally decides he'd better let Berry know that Alder's stories are lies. Skink tries to get away, Dag breaks the beguilement, and Skink begins to talk -- it turns out that Skink and Alder are both part of a gang of river bandits, led by a renegade Lakewalker called Crane, who hijack boats, steal their cargoes, and kill or conscript their crew. The Fetch ties up and waits for Boss Wain's boat to turn up, and collects a few more boat crews as well. That night, Dag, Chicory, and Wain lead an attack on the bandits' cave. Back on the Fetch, Alder tries to sweet-talk Berry again, but she works out (and Fawn confirms) that he wasn't beguiled at all.
  
  
• Chapter 20: The attack on the bandit cave goes fairly well, though it turns out that Crane, and his cruel lieutenants the Drum brothers, aren't there after all. Whit shoots an arrow at an escaping bandit and kills for the first time. Dag heals Chicory and another boatman, both gravely wounded, and spends most of his strength. He heads back to the Fetch to question Alder about where Crane might have gone -- and to reassure himself that Fawn and the others are safe. Except, of course, that they're not; Crane goes to spring Alder, and when the others wake up, he stabs Bo in the stomach, threatens Hawthorn, and grabs Fawn as a hostage. Just as the bandits are trying to get the Fetch launched, Crane opens his ground, and Dag ground-rips his spine, paralyzing him from the neck down.
  
  
• Chapter 21: The clean-up after the fight. While the Fetch makes its way around the Elbow to the bandit cave, Dag heals Bo, and he along with Barr, Remo, and Fawn question Crane. Crane turns out to be the Lakewalker that Saun had once warned Dag about, the one who was banished from Log Hollow Camp for taking a farmer lover and giving her things from his camp share. Dag gives Crane a choice: hang, or share. Crane chooses to share. So, Dag will try to rededicate an unprimed knife that was found in the bandit cave, so that he can bond it to Crane in order to let Crane share his death. Once the Fetch reaches the cave, Berry (and Fawn and Whit) go to look at the boats that were captured. Berry finds her papa's flatboat, one of the very oldest ones. Whit actually turns to Fawn for advice on how to help Berry with all this; Fawn tells him just to be there for her.
  
  
• Chapter 22: Dag avoids having to distinguish beguiled bandits from freely acting bandits by reminding the boatmen that Lakewalkers shouldn't be placed in the role of judging farmers (especially not by criteria that farmers can't verify for themselves). He also persuades the boatmen to let Crane share rather than hang, claiming the priming of the knife as his salvage share from the cave. He turns the priming -- and the sharing -- into another chance to educate farmers about Lakewalker ways, and certainly does make an impression.
  
  
• Chapter 23: While the hangings go on at the cave, Dag, Fawn, Whit, and Berry, and later Remo and Barr, find solace for their souls and grounds in the meadow where the bandits have kept their horses. Whit manages to give Berry a comforting hug and a chance to talk. Remo and Barr manage to find one of Crane's treasure caches, and Wain lets them have it for their salvage share. The Fetch sails on down the river, Dag writes up a report for Fairbolt Crow out of habit and a sense of rightness, and they reach the confluence of the Grace and the Gray Rivers. One evening, the weather has warmed, and Fawn suggests more archery practice to lift the mood. Whit confesses that he sees archery differently now that he's killed a man and seen how easy that is; this leads to Dag confessing some of what he's been doing with groundwork, and admitting that he's very disturbed. Fawn, bless her, points out that lots of useful tools can be used to kill. Archery practice happens, and things do lighten a bit. But the fact remains that farmers can't guard themselves against the kind of ground-ripping that Dag used on Crane.
  
  
• Chapter 24: Graymouth, at last. Whit presents a dubious Fawn with what can only be a flounder, and he arranges for a fishing boat to take them all down to the sea for a day. There, we see Barr and Remo splashing in the waves with Hawthorn, but we also see Dag all tied up in knots because he doesn't know how to make enough of a difference in the world. Fawn cheers him up a bit; they build a driftwood bonfire and watch all the unexpected colors in the flames; and Whit and Berry re-emerge, announcing that they're going to be married. As the fishing boat returns to collect them all, Whit says they've found the end of the world, and Fawn opines that if you look at it another way, it's really the beginning.

Next week (Tuesday?), I'll put up a discussion post for the first half of Horizon -- let's do chapters 1 through 11, because that makes a good stopping-point. I know this is shorter notice than we've been having, but I've been getting the sense that a lot of us are already on the last book now, anyway. ;) Anyone who wants me to hold off later than Tuesday for posting the next discussion, though, feel free to squawk in the comments. And if anyone is reading the series on a slower schedule, by all means feel free to jump in on past discussions!

---

Past discussion posts:

• Beguilement, ch 1-3 | ch 4-11 | ch 12-19
  
• Legacy, ch 1-9 | ch 10-19
  
• Passage, ch 1-12

Comments

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

Some random thoughts:

1. I'm very bad at guessing where a story is going. Or to put it charitably, I just like to go along for the ride and find out where the author is taking me. ;) So despite all the hints dropped into the story by things that characters were speculating about (boat bandits? a river malice?), I was surprised to find out just how much bad stuff was going on at the Cavern Tavern. That was an exciting action climax to the story -- and the execution of Crane was an exciting sort of moral or conceptual climax. This book, much more than the first two, clearly felt like it had a plot arc and a definitive ending (for all that there were open issues and things left for the characters to worry about).
   
   
2. Another bad guess: I wasn't thinking about Crane finding the Fetch, although it seems obvious in retrospect that he would! It was interesting that he reacted a little when Alder explained that Fawn claimed to be married to a Lakewalker. I wonder how Crane truly felt about his own farmer lover before he was banished from his camp. Maybe he truly loved her, and still had old happy memories buried somewhere. Or maybe he was just envious that someone else might be getting away with something he wasn't able to...
   
   
3. Barr and Remo are fun characters, and it's also fun to think about how they function in the story. On my first read, when these two were introduced, I didn't pay that much attention -- I only saw them as the plot device for Dag not getting a knife from Pearl Riffle Camp. So I enjoyed it when they each turned up later on and became important characters. I also like the way they have very different personalities; Bujold isn't writing a single Lakewalker type, she's keeping them nicely individual. Which leads into something else I enjoyed: Dag thinking to himself that it wouldn't be a good idea to use his Wolf Ridge history to berate Remo, but then later on not hesitating to whump Barr over the head with it. He's a good patrol leader / company captain / natural teacher to be able to judge things like that.
   
   
4. I was fascinated by the idea of ground-veiling practice. When we first meet Dag, he does things with his ground at will, so it's interesting to learn that young patrollers actually have to practice these skills.
   
   
5. Did anyone else think that Fawn's argument that Dag needs to let her hear Crane's interrogation -- "without knowing things, my wits are like a bow with no arrows. Don't leave me disarmed" -- sounded a little familiar? ;)
   
   
6. The problem of farmer justice versus Lakewalker justice is a big one, and I don't see any clear answer, without the Lakewalkers becoming lords again. On a related note, it's not clear to me that all the river bandits were equally guilty, even if they had all played the "game" -- especially since we know that at least Skink was heavily beguiled for at least some of the time. Playing the game could be seen as a type of self-defense, sick as it is. So Dag's refusal to adjudicate the question of bandit beguilement or guilt was an aspect of the story I found very disturbing, although I'm not necessarily sure that Dag was wrong to refuse. Some thought-provoking moral ambiguity there.
   
   
7. I love the final chapter. The beach is drawn in such wonderful detail (and it cracked me up to be presented with a completely deserted beach on what is essentially the Gulf Coast or Florida...where are the beach houses and tourist traps?!). Whit's success made me go aww, although I was a little surprised that Berry was agreeable so soon after Alder's death (and this may have given rise to a plotbunny for the Ficathon -- especially since katyhasclogs posted the perfect prompt). I like Dag's gloomy pondering, too, for all that I'm sorry he's so gloomy. These are big questions he's facing, and they deserve some pondering. And of course we know there is one more book coming. ;)

Also: did anyone notice that by the end of the book, even Whit is swearing with "blight it!"? :) (I do like the way Bujold invents swear-words that make sense in the worlds of her books.)

And if I were going to make more icons, Please be well, beloved gloomy man would definitely be at the top of the list!

[katyhasclogs.livejournal.com]

I'm very bad at guessing where a story is going. Or to put it charitably, I just like to go along for the ride and find out where the author is taking me. ;)

Hee, me too. In my case I think it's mostly that I'm reading so fast that I don't have time to even begin to think about what might happen next, lol.

In actual fact though, I wasn't at all surprised about Remo and Barr joining the crew, since the blurb on the back of my copy specifically mentions Dag n' Fawn being joined by "two novice Lakewalker patrollers fleeing the catastrophic consequences of an honest mistake". Having said that, Barr turns up so late that I spent quite a while being scornful that the blurb writer had got it wrong!

Also: did anyone notice that by the end of the book, even Whit is swearing with "blight it!"? :) (I do like the way Bujold invents swear-words that make sense in the worlds of her books.)

I hadn't, but what a lovely detail! I agree that the swearing (and other turns of phrase) Lois invents for her worlds is great, and I always manage to pick some of it up. After Chalion I spent a while muttering "Bastard's teeth!" when things went wrong, and I've found myself saying "stands to reason" quite a lot recently!

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

In my case I think it's mostly that I'm reading so fast that I don't have time to even begin to think about what might happen next, lol.

That's a big part of it for me, too! When Deathly Hallows came out, I actually made myself stop after every chapter and write down what I thought things meant. I got the silver doe that way. ;) but there were other things I still managed to be in denial about...

Terry Pratchett has a Watch novel where he makes fun of people saying "stands to reason," so every time Fawn says that, I can't help wincing. ;)

[philomytha.livejournal.com]

Barr's arc is one of my favourite things in the series. I love, love, love the way he completely screws up in every possible way and makes an utter nuisance of himself, and how he gradually comes to find a place for himself on the boat and in the end is the one most strongly in favour of following Dag around when Remo is thinking of going home again. Bujold very skilfully writes him as extremely unlikeable at first, and gradually shows his good side coming out. Whit has a similar arc in the book, but he gets his nuisance-potential over with early, for the most part, though it isn't until the end, when Fawn reveals just what happened to her with the malice, that he really seems to do some serious growing up.

I was also entertained Remo discovering farmer towns and trying to pretend he's not scared to death by them. Lakewalkers encountering farmers is a fascinating theme.

The Crane/Dag parallels (um, okay, I don't mean that slash the fic way AT ALL, *fetches brain bleach*) are also really fascinating. Their lives are so similar, up to where they're not, and it's not that hard to imagine that without Fawn, Dag could find himself down some hideous destructive path or other. Thematically, he plays a good part as a warning for what might happen to Dag without other Lakewalkers to balance him out, and explains why Dag really does need the extra help to manage his powers, which is the first problem in Horizon.

(Also, looking forward to Horizon because my very favourite characters show up there! :-D)

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

I love, love, love the way he completely screws up in every possible way and makes an utter nuisance of himself, and how he gradually comes to find a place for himself on the boat and in the end is the one most strongly in favour of following Dag around

Yes! I love the way Barr [SPOILER REDACTED -- sorry, realized after I went to bed last night that I had forgotten what book I was supposed to be talking about. Blame it on the fact that I've been drafting the first Horizon post, heh.]

it's not that hard to imagine that without Fawn, Dag could find himself down some hideous destructive path or other.

I agree that Crane makes a very nice thematic contrast, and perhaps an object lesson, for Dag. But I wonder if Dag's own type of destructive path, if he hadn't met Fawn, would have been more along the lines of taking increasingly reckless chances on patrol until he got himself into some peril that he couldn't fight his way out from.

[philomytha.livejournal.com]

I agree that Crane makes a very nice thematic contrast, and perhaps an object lesson, for Dag. But I wonder if Dag's own type of destructive path, if he hadn't met Fawn, would have been more along the lines of taking increasingly reckless chances on patrol until he got himself into some peril that he couldn't fight his way out from.

Before Dag left Hickory Lake with Fawn, yes, but if she died, or ran off with a farmer boy and left him, or something, what would happen to him then? I don't know if he'd go back to Hickory Lake, after all that's happened.

Though I grant it's hard to see him turning into a crimelord under any circumstances...

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

but if she died, or ran off with a farmer boy and left him, or something, what would happen to him then?

Ah, that's a good point -- his balance may have been tipped once he's so wrapped up in Fawn. (I still think I see him just giving up and sharing before going off on any kind of rampage, though.)

[gilpin25.livejournal.com]

Another member of the Barr fanclub here - and Remo, too. I like the way LMB uses them to show some of the best and worst of Lakewalker characteristics, and how she makes me want to regard Barr as a lovable rogue one minute (I found the makeshift helmets as funny as he did), and a long, long way from being lovable the next in the scene with Berry. That's one girl who will remain forever impervious to Lakewalker charms.

I must admit that the word that kept popping into my head with regard to the Berry/Whit relationship was 'convenient'. Much as I like both of them, particularly Berry, I was also surprised she was willing so soon after Alder. It did, however, make more sense in the way it was shown, very quietly through Fawn's eyes, and with her acting as advisor/confidant to her brother rather than us observing a blossoming romance, when compared to *something else* seen through Dag's eyes in the next book, which I can't talk about!

Fawn spent vast amounts of time behind a stove, or serving meals, but everyone had to earn their keep and this was her job. (Plus she did come up with some tasty-sounding food on limited supplies; I always seemed to be reading this right before dinner!) My favourite scene of the whole book is Dag lighting his birthday cake, under the impression it's probably a farmer superstition that he'd better do his best to oblige, and Remo all but laughing his head off at him.

The end of the book is an exciting climax, and the hints of Dag being ruthless when necessary are totally borne out and more. It's chilling how he takes Crane out, but of course I feel that's totally justified. And then LMB messes with my head again shortly afterwards:

Playing the game could be seen as a type of self-defense, sick as it is. So Dag's refusal to adjudicate the question of bandit beguilement or guilt was an aspect of the story I found very disturbing, although I'm not necessarily sure that Dag was wrong to refuse. Some thought-provoking moral ambiguity there.

Exactly what I thought. Dag's "It shouldn't be my judgement" is particularly interesting; I'm not sure what else he could have done in that situation, when there was nowhere to hold prisoners, but his realization that most were ruined men now means he's aware that not all were.

[katyhasclogs.livejournal.com]

how she makes me want to regard Barr as a lovable rogue one minute (I found the makeshift helmets as funny as he did), and a long, long way from being lovable the next in the scene with Berry

Absolutely. I too found myself considering Barr as a lovable rogue, and mostly eye-rolling at a lot of his more dubious antics and then, at the end of my second reading of the whole series, suddenly pausing and going - 'that thing with the girl at Pearl Riffle, in our world we'd call that date-rape (just replace ground-persuasion with rohipnol), huh'. (Though I do remember, in the first reading, being pretty cross with him about the Berry incident, so perhaps some the fond eye-rolling was based on retrospective knowledge.)

I must admit that the word that kept popping into my head with regard to the Berry/Whit relationship was 'convenient'. Much as I like both of them, particularly Berry, I was also surprised she was willing so soon after Alder.

I wasn't surprised, but only from the point of view that I'd been expecting and wanting them to get together since they met. Now you've all pointed it out though, it does seem hard to understand the speed of it with regards to Berry, and though here I was happy to go along with the 'everybody must be paired off' theme, I perhaps had less patience with it later.

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

Fawn spent vast amounts of time behind a stove, or serving meals, but everyone had to earn their keep and this was her job.

Oh, that's an interesting point to pick up on. I guess I saw it as natural, since she is good at cooking and at managing a household, for her to parley these skills into a useful job. But I guess there is a sense in which it may have kept her from learning the river as most of the others were doing. (I would have been happy to help them deal with some of that excess catfish, though -- yum!)

[gilpin25.livejournal.com]

I was originally going to say something about female fantasy characters tending to be much more physical, and 'feisty' and 'kickass' nowadays, which does bug me a little as the original arguement seemed to be that they shouldn't ALL be portrayed as either the love interest or stuck behind the stove raising the children. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, and I was thinking it was rare to see a character do what Fawn does. As you said, it seems natural, though I did read some reviews that wanted her to turn into a completely different character during this book, and those reviewers seemed bugged in the opposite direction to me.

There are a couple of instances when she seems wistful that she can't see what the others are, and I did feel for her then. Though I couldn't get over how relatively calm she is when presented with that huge fish to sort out! I'd have abandoned ship and headed for the nearest restaurant.

[katyhasclogs.livejournal.com]

I've been getting the sense that a lot of us are already on the last book now, anyway. ;)

And some of us read them twice-through in three weeks and then got distracted by Vors. Ahem. ;)

Anyway, some equally random thoughts of my own:

I remember reading a review somewhere that said this book suffered from a lack of malice. I actually didn't feel like that, and like the underlying tension and unease that the mystery of what happened to all those boats creates.

In this volume I also really like the way Dag and Fawn's relationship has developed from can't-keep-their-hands-off-each-other-complete-infatuation into a sort of comfortable intimacy. Although, have they had any sort of argument yet?

I thought the sharing scene was absolutely fascinating, and the natural amphitheatre created by the hill made me think of those old operating theatres with all the medical students sitting round watching the dissections and operations (there's a very old one in somewhere like Guy's Hospital that always crops up in science documentaries over here). Perhaps Dag has a future in public lectures. ;)

What's even more interesting in that scene, I think, is Crane being horrified by Dag spilling all the secrets. The "Me, they banished, ... you they'll burn alive" comment brings home how very seriously Dag has been transgressing against the normal rules all along the river (and before) and the scary thing is that at this point neither he nor we really know that it's going to work, especially as he's pretty much making it all up as he goes along. If the whole experiment comes tumbling down around his ears, what are the consequences going to be?

And I think this affects Dag more than his "I have my reasons" response at the time indicates, which I guess leads me on to the issue of the Dag-Crane juxtaposition in the text and the question it raises of just how different are they, exactly? Instinctively, we all feel the answer is that they're not at all the same, but I love that beyond gut feeling, there's no real answer to that question. Delicious complexities and ambiguities, I loves them!

Contrary to everyone else, I actually felt more uneasy about Dag's ripping a slice out of Crane's spinal cord than about his refusal to pick out the beguiled bandits (once the relief at Fawn being saved had passed). I guess I was as alarmed as he was at how easily he could kill someone (and by easily I mean ease of effort and skill, rather than ease of conscience. Mostly.) With the beguiled bandits though, it seemed clear to me that there wasn't anywhere near enough trust between Lakewalkers and farmers for any hint of interference or pronouncement on Dag's part to have ended well, even if asked for. As he says, any judgement he made would seem no more than hearsay to their eyes, and it would have put him in a position of power over them that I would have been uncomfortable with. Besides which, I have a suspicion that the distinction is by no means as simple as beguiled=compelled, unbeguiled=uncompelled - not only are there more kinds of persuasion than the groundsense type, but I also presume that some required more persuading than others. Not that I'm completely thrilled about mass-hangings either, but... Well, but.

[gilpin25.livejournal.com]

In this volume I also really like the way Dag and Fawn's relationship has developed from can't-keep-their-hands-off-each-other-complete-infatuation into a sort of comfortable intimacy. Although, have they had any sort of argument yet?

I forgot to say about that, but it's okay because you've said it for me. ;) It's as though they become the old married couple, looking on as new relationships develop! And no, they haven't, though I can think of a scene in the most recently posted discussion where I wouldn't have been as wryly amused as Fawn!

Contrary to everyone else, I actually felt more uneasy about Dag's ripping a slice out of Crane's spinal cord than about his refusal to pick out the beguiled bandits (once the relief at Fawn being saved had passed).

On my second read through, it was impressively scary that Dag paralysed him in calculating certainty of what he was doing, and without even making a conscious decision, apparently. It's clever the way the whole interrogation of what, in effect, is a living dead man, is seen through Fawn's eyes: we never know exactly how hard (or not) it is for Dag to keep his voice level and his groundsense open. I did love Remo giving Barr a this could be you, mate! look in the middle of the interrogation, and Barr getting hotly indignant in return. Crane clearly gets under all available Lakewalker skin and makes it crawl, and I'm sure under Dag's most of all for the reasons you've stated.

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

And some of us read them twice-through in three weeks and then got distracted by Vors. Ahem. ;)

LOL -- I may have been late posting this very discussion post (partly because of work, but) partly because I couldn't stop my re-read of the book long enough to write about it.

I remember reading a review somewhere that said this book suffered from a lack of malice. I actually didn't feel like that, and like the underlying tension and unease that the mystery of what happened to all those boats creates.

In complete agreement here. I definitely thought the missing-boats/river-bandits plot was sufficient for a good story, and in a way, it gave the series more depth not to just have a malice plot in every book. (At the same time, malices and sharing knives were very much on everyone's minds, which was true to the world of the series.)

What's even more interesting in that scene, I think, is Crane being horrified by Dag spilling all the secrets.

Yes, this! Crane was an interesting indicator of how deeply ingrained certain aspects of Lakewalker culture must be, to persist even in a renegade. It reminds us how hard Dag found it to talk of all these things at first, himself.

I actually felt more uneasy about Dag's ripping a slice out of Crane's spinal cord than about his refusal to pick out the beguiled bandits

That Dag's abilities go this far is disturbing, indeed. I guess the reason why it didn't hit me that hard in the scene with Crane is that I'd already been shocked and disturbed by the implications when Dag ground-ripped the mosquito. And, given that Crane was threatening Fawn's life, it was a situation where another character might have killed Crane with some kind of physical weapon. But all that said, yes, Dag's abilities are certainly disturbing, but (*carefully avoiding spoilers*) this sets up some interesting themes for the last book, too.

(Where are you with the Vors? Are you going to be ready for the new book when it comes out in ~November? And if you need someone to react at after reading a certain other somewhat recent book, have at me. :P )

[katyhasclogs.livejournal.com]

Replying quickly here to say that I will email you about the Vors - I have lots to say so it will get a bit long and spoilery for this post. :D