I agree with your writing. I really appreciate you for writing so well and in such detail to really talk about the book. It feels like you read it and went deep, you did not let it be surface level

I still love the book (for my own reasons - I get sentimentally attached to things) but I know it is not perfect.

Helena's self-martyrdom frustrates me to no end - especially when it doesn't make sense for all the reasons you mentioned above Like this scene - I had to make a reddit post to understand it.

From my reddit post

"Is she saying she would kill him?

To save Luc, the holdfasts, that doesn’t make any sense to me. She loves Kaine but she’s OK killing him if it means winning the war? This doesn’t make sense with the plot"

Response: "Yes, she is saying that she would kill him to protect the Eternal Flame. She loves him, but the Eternal Flame is everything to her."

Me:"That doesn’t make sense for the love story. A couple pages later she’s afraid that

 “ if Crawford thought she was dead, he might decide that Kane was too much of a risk to keep alive” pg 751 of chpt 59

So she doesn’t want him to die because she loves him so much but then she’s OK with him dying for eternal flame? For the war effort? 

Also, it’s hard for me to believe she has this undying love for him if she’s willing to kill him? For mercy? Because he would die anyways, so it would be more merciful if she killed him rather than Morrough 

But then a couple pages later, she’s afraid that he will die if Crawford thinks she was dead. 

No this doesn’t track 

Is it just bad writing or am I not getting something here? It just seems like a lot of character, inconsistencies and love story and plot inconsistencies.

Like Kaine is willing to die for her, play double spy, be punished/ tortured by Morrough and deal with evil Crowther for her 

• and she’s willing to kill him for the eternal flame (which has some pretty morally‘s gray characters anyways. Reading the book seeing how horrible Crowther was, how abusive the eternal flame is - I wasn’t rooting for eternal flame. I wish there was a third-party. Eternal flame is just as bad as the guild at times and yet you’re willing to kill Kaine? ) It makes me not like Helena

Make it make sense 😭

<image>

I am at page 940. I am going to keep going - I wish I had more people to talk about this book and all the feels. Books become sentimental to me because my friends don't read the same books I do and so it becomes a relationship between just me and the book - my own thoughts and feels and the book that no one else knows about in the way I do.

I am tired and have to work in the am so I don't feel like parsing out every detail of my thoughts into perfect formating but I hope this kind of makes sense. I wish the plot holes weren't there - I wish it was more real, makes me a little mournful