The Not a Book Club Club discussion

Please keep all discussion to the events and speculation from Chapter 10 to Chapter 15 (pages 196-297).

No spoiler tags required. Though it would be highly appreciated if you Uncheck Add to my Update Feed to avoid accidentally spoiling this for your friends.

Please do not discuss events from later chapters. Referring back to events from a previous section/book is fine.

Even if I hadn't read that the author was influenced in this book by the French Revolution, I would have gotten a strong Les Miserables vibe from this section. The barricades, the students wanting a better world, and the singing (j/k).

I've never read/watched Les Mis, so that didn't occur to me at all.

Things really ramp up in this section. The first two felt like a lot of setup, but now the riot is on (or is it already a revolution?).I'm definitely more sucked into the book with this section.

There is a lot of lying going on. Something's going to have to give soon. The princess is saved from most of her lies by "dying".

Winter's been seen by Marcus, but so far we don't know what the aftermath of that will be. And of course Winter still hasn't come clean to Jane.

I think the most interesting part though has to be the meeting of Winter and the Princess. It seems even more apparent (or has it already been explicitly stated?) that she has a demon inside her that is giving her healing abilities. And it's afraid of the demon inside of Winter, which has been almost non existent in the book so far.

And we find out that Abbey is the daughter of the Vice-Captain of the guard. I also wonder/suspect she and Jane may have been lovers? After all Jane thought she was dead. When she was talking to Marcus she hinted at her father and seemed to be hinting at something about Jane to me. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it though.

I don't think the inner demon was ever explicitly stated, but yeah when they (almost) touch - I guess its stated for sure then! I'd sure like to know much about the demons and how they work!

Yeah, these books are very magic light. However it's there, just not explained much in detail so far.

I saw Mr. Wexler tweet that people found Winter's character "unrealistic" and he linked an article about women found dead in uniforms after some battles.

To me though I find it odd with the mentatlity of:

"Well being possessed by demons that give you magical abilities is fair..but a women soldier? Ridiculous!"

I just noticed the "Demon Free" tag - that made me laugh.

Suzanne wrote: "I just noticed the "Demon Free" tag - that made me laugh."

I was a little slow on switching my name from Tower Lord to this one. It was originally "Just One Name" but that felt too tied to the first book and not this one.

I did find Winter's background somewhat unrealistic in the first book. Whatever about passing as a guy during the book but she apparently spent 3 years beforehand living, sleeping, eating and fighting around the same few soldiers and no one noticed? I also think the whole 'girl disguises herself as a boy so that she can (insert adventure here)' bit has been beaten to death in fantasy. That being said it really didn't bother me that much and I thought Winter's story was an example of the trope done well with a load of other awesome stuff going on as well.

I liked reading the stand off between revolutionists and the Armsmen & Concardat at Vendre. I am wondering what Janus and Orlanko are doing at this time because the actions taken by these two will determine how the standoff ends.

Also I am wondering how come anyone is not searching for Raesinia in the castle because she will be crowned queen after the king dies.

Jane definitely has some leadership qualities because taking control of docks and the rowdy sailors present over there is not an easy task.