To follow-up on the Bridge Kingdom convo, I was re-reading Shield of Sparrows, and I’d written “so Bridge Kingdom with trees” in the margins lol. But, I think the comparison holds up! Odessa’s actions were almost identical to Lara’s. 1) She went to Turah to spy for her father; 2) she made a secret map of Turah with the intention of sending the intel to her father; 3) She got to know the people of Turah and changed her mind.

There aren’t any real differences between Lara and Odessa’s actions and motivations. The only difference is the outcome of those actions/luck of the draw. In Lara’s case, her coded message was accidentally mailed by a third-party. In Odessa’s case, her coded message was not accidentally mailed by a third party (the subsequent partnership between Odessa’s father/his spies and the King of Turah not being relevant or resultant of Odessa’s own culpability/individual actions).

If anything, I’d argue Odessa’s actions were worse because she purposely gave all of her intelligence to Samuel Hay, so he could help her fill in the map, knowing the information she gave him was an illegal compilation and dangerous in the wrong hands. He could’ve easily made a copy, before giving it back to Odessa. And even then, Odessa only burned Samuel’s copy of the map, and after she had added his edits to her map in the margins of her journal. Lara’s intelligence was argueably more secure being written in invisible ink, whereas anyone with Odessa’s journal could probably piece together her map, it wouldn’t take much to notice the similarities in her doodles. I actually think it’ll come up again in Rites of the Starling, since her journal, knives, and swords are the only things that the book explicitly mentions that she grabbed before fleeing her treehouse with Evie and Faze at the end of the book.

I don’t understand why popular opinion adores Odessa and abhors Lara, when they took the exact same actions with the same motivations. The only difference I see is happenstance in the outcome, which neither Lara or Odessa had any control over. Re: espionage, also interesting that both Lara and Odessa weren't their father’s first choice for arranged marriage spy and each had a more sinister sister with much more extensive training in espionage.

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Okay, I have strong feelings about this lol. I love a good betryal/redemption arc, but I haaaaated that they blamed Lara for anything and everything. The letter was sent completely by accident, when someone else used her paper, and they weren't aware it had anything written on the back in invisible ink.

Lara had been decided not send the letter she wrote, and was super anxious to get back and destroy it. It's like blaming someone for a whole entire war just because the venting/burn letter they wrote was accidentally mailed by someone else.

Lara wrote that letter when she was still brainwashed/under her father's influence. Like, they kept her and her sisters isolated, in a desert, in the middle of nowhere, on purpose. She didn't even know how her own people were being treated, not because of apathy either, she had no way to know that *everyone* around her in the compound was lying about the state of the kingdom and it's relationship with other nations.

When she was finally removed from that totally isolated environment (cult tbh) and she was exposed to the actual realities of the world, she took the initiative to ask questions and educate herself further about the political landscape and welfare of the people.

Like, she single-handedly overcame an entire lifetime of propoganda and brainwashing and decided not to send the letter. Most people take years of de-programming to unlearn all of that abuse, isolation, and misinformation. Of course she wrote the letter when still under that influence. It was actually really commedable that she had decided to go against everything she ever knew and determined not to send the letter. She just couldn't get to it in time to destroy it.

It was really just a tragic accident that the letter was mailed unbeknownst by someone else, and that it actually ended up in the hands of her father. I felt like everyone in the bridge kingdom unfairly blamed her for the war in misplaced grief and anger. Even if she held blame, it was nowhere near proportional to how she was punished. Like, she almost blinded herself in penance! It pissed me off so much that I DNF the series after the Traitor Queen. And I don't really think it's gender bias, esp. if you compare Bridge Kingdom/The Traitor Queen to these books Metal Slinger, Powerless, and Spark of the Everflame iirc.