SFF Readalongs led by Kitty G discussion

This is for discussion of Chapter 6 for House of Chains. Please ensure you do NOT post spoilers for any other part of the book! Thank you!

Okay so in this chapter we have some revisiting of past characters such as Cutter (aka Crokus) who is speaking with Cortillian. I have to say I feel very sad about Crokus who was once such a bright and fun character and now he's a rather forlorn and lonely one. He has had to change his name and become 'Cutter of the Knives' and he seems to have lost a lot of himself after being faced with so much sadness and horror.
I wonder how his relationship with Apsalar, Cortillian and also Blind (the hound) will go one but of the three I'm most sad for Cutter as he's seemingly the one who I knew best and who has lost the most. Cortillian and Apsalar seem set on their own purposes and despite having to deal with their own losses they seem far more in control of their emotions and paths.

There's mention of an island. I am not yet sure what this island is all about, but it seems that they might intend to journey there and if that's the case I'm sure we'll see more of it's place in the world.

Then we have a 'child army' type of situation with all sorts of very creepy and sinister training taking place and Kalam is also there commenting on it all. Can't say I like the idea of children being trained as a force... we'll see what happens there!

We have Onrack who's a T'lann Imass and Trell who's a T'lann Edur and they end up travelling together after Onrack frees Trell. It seems that despite having their differences they can be mutually peaceful and they talk a bit about he past of their races, particularly the Edur...
There's some mention of a 'terrible purpose' and that seems pretty ominous to me. I was a bit irritated that Onrack kept us lingering and didn't want to know what the purpose was, but equally he seems sort of disjointed from the rest of his race and I can understand him not wanting to go back to them just yet. He seems more 'human' than many other T'lann Imass we've met, but maybe that's something that will be tested as we go on?

Basically we have a ton of snippets of information in this chapter and I hope that each one gets more and more developed as it goes on because right now we're kind of in the 'bombardment' stage where information is coming at us left right and centre and I don't know yet what's super important, what's kind of important, or what's totally misdirection.

Whilst I find this all interesting, I do kind of hope that Karsa isn't out of the plot for too long as I am very intrigued by him :)

Typical of Erikson, there's never a black or white when it comes to the characters, and I am beginning to feel this way a lot about Cotillion. Halfway through this book and I am beginning to really like him. Of course, him being Patron God of Assassins just sounds so cool and badass!

TS wrote: "Typical of Erikson, there's never a black or white when it comes to the characters, and I am beginning to feel this way a lot about Cotillion. Halfway through this book and I am beginning to really..."

Definitely a badass title! :D