*****SPOILERS*****
Kvothe Goes
Adventuring
Threpe,
a minor noble, send Kvothe off to see the Maer of Vintas (who’s descended from
the old line of Vintas kings). Threpe tells Kvothe to ‘”address him as your
grace.”’ No, ‘Your Grace’ in quotation marks (because that’s what Kvothe’s
being told to say) and capitals (because it’s a style).
Who else do we find in Vintas other
than Denna! She appears wherever Kvothe is and their bond deepens. He tells
Denna what he’s already told the Chronicler: her gift of lute case saved
Kvothe’s lift. But we get no explanation as to how!
Kvothe and Denna have an argument
that became cruel in the space of a breath. That was bizarre. The Maer’s
attitude to people similarly swung with such erratic ways. I didn’t make many
notes on Kvote’s time at the Maer’s court because I was too engrossed. I love
(fictional) political intrigue.
The
Maer send Kvothe with mercenaries into the Eld forest to retrieve the stolen
taxes.
It’s said that the Eld is as big as
Vintas. But looking on the map, the Eld could fit inside Vintas at least twice.
We don’t even see the edge of Vintas on the map so it could be more!
One of the mercenaries is Tempi, of
the Adem. They’re silent, skilful fighters. Tam, a normal mercenary, calls
Tempi’s mum a whore. When Kvothe explains what a whore is, Tempi thanks Tam for
being kind. That was great.
There’s an incomplete sentence. ‘Camp
is a misleading term, ‘encampment’ would be better.’ A conjunction, semi-colon
or colon should replace the comma.
Whilst
in the Eld, Kvothe follows the sex fae Felurian into the Fae, the world of the
fae.
Fae was beautiful, stunning, and a
complete contrast to the regular world. But my favourite thing was when Kvothe
plays his flute naked and he notes that ‘my hand rested on the smooth wood of
my lute.’ Mm-hm, I bet it did.
They had sex before they even said
hello. Kvothe compares the experience to music and his body taunt like lute
strings. Not bad for your first time. Then he stays in the Fae with regular
sex. (You think I’ve written ‘sex’ too often in these sentences? Try reading
sex constantly. Not what I signed up for but never mind.)
One sentence unnerves me. Kvothe
said Felurian ‘kissed him with the wildness of a dozen children.’ No. Just no.
You’ve just been shagging her. Don’t
then compare her to children. Absolutely disgusting.
Kvothe sings Felurian a song that
her love making sufficed and was nice. Felurian interrupting with ‘what?’ then
‘nice’ was hilarious. Kvothe wasn’t trapped in the Fae forever (like everyone
else) because he had to finish the song.
Ademre
Tempi
takes Kvothe to Ademre. He’s trained by Vashet to become a good swordfighter.
(Compared to non-Adem’s he’s pretty great. Compared to the Adem, though, he’s a
bit shabby.)
Kvothe meets one-handed Nadu. When
he dreams he has two hands. WEEP.
Vashet says that something shouldn’t
bother you unless it bruises you. This isn’t a viewed by the Adem in general
but it’s an insight into Vashet’s character. For the Adem, the physical and the
mental are one-in-the-same so ‘bruise’ doesn’t just mean a physical bruise. So
Vashet, via her personal views, demonstrates he subtleties of Ademic concepts.
This
was a really intriguing section of the book.
The author managed to create a
different society really skilfully and it was believable. Including Adem
beliefs that seem so clearly false that it shocks you to think people actually
believe it: all cultures have these beliefs so this helped increase the
believability of Adem culture. (Considering that all other cultures in the
books seem mostly interchangeable, it was good to get this level of insight.)
They use sign language because
speech is considered primitive and childlike. The same assessment is given to
showing emotion, all but laughing and crying. (The difference lies in where the
emotion comes from.) It
turns out the silent Tempi is considered talkative by Adem standards.
The
most interesting cultural difference (or at least to horny-teenager-Kvothe) is
the Adem’s openness, and lack of shame, with nudity and sex. In its place,
emotions and music are things that one should keep private.
They have sex with anyone they want
(Kvothe and his teacher Vashet regularly go at it) and by ‘anyone’, ‘any
number’ should be noted. It’s a hobby so why not share it with everyone?
Kvothe asks about sex, romance and
love. Vashet gives a wise answer: ‘“There is a great deal of difference between
a penis and a heart.”‘
During a training session, Kvothe
gets an erection so Vashet tells him not to ignore it because it will throw him
off balance. I can’t even deal with how funny this is.
The cultural belief that blew my
mind was that the Adem don’t believe in fathers. No one’s associated sex with
babies because everyone’s always having sex but not everyone’s always having
babies. So they laugh at the idea of ‘man-mothers’. So that’s fine. But ‘anger’
is creation, used to do everything. Women takes a man’s anger (builds up
because can’t use it) to make babies… and yet they have no concept of
fatherhood? If you need men to make babies then how is that different from
fatherhood? Like I said before, every culture has beliefs that are contradictory.
Without the idea of fathers, then
there’s a risk of inbreeding. Not with brother’s nephews (because they’re
clearly family) but fathers, uncles, paternal cousins… It’s a bit worrying.
Considering the Adem are a hardy, healthy people, they’re not suffering from
inbreeding depression but it’s a risk nonetheless. This could be why the Adem
have no hair/eye colour variation but (1) Caucasians are the only race that
have significant variation and (2) the Caucasian gene pool is smaller than
other ethnicities, so this isn’t a viable link.
The Adem show willingness to have
sex with foreigners so it’s bizarre that so few Adem do show any difference
from the typical colouration. Most of Ademre’s money comes from guarding
foreigners, and women are just as likely as men to be mercenaries, so there are
plenty of opportunities to make half-foreign babies.
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