If I thought my review of Taylor's first book in this series was gushing, this one is going to be plain blubbering. My amazement and adoration of this story deepened with Taylor's maturing story telling and even better writing. And although I finished this book at the end of December, I still think about the characters and story and my heart just aches. This is an amazing, beautiful story. I cannot wait for book 3!
Warning: contains some spoilers.
"There is intimacy in pain." Pg 73
"'Do you know what I have lost because of you?'
She did not know, and didn't want to. Because of you, because of you. She wanted to cover her ears, but her hands were occupied holding blades. 'I'm sorry,' she siad, and her voice sounded so slight after his, and unconvincing even to her own ears." Pg 123
"Why Why can’t they just leave us alone? she wanted to scream, but she didn’t. She knew it was a childish thought, that the wars and hates of the world were too big for her to understand, and that she was no more important in the scheme of things than these moths and adderflies drifting in their shafts of light.
I am important, though, she insisted to herself. And so was Sarazal, and so were the moths and the adderflies, and the slinking skotes, and the star tenzing blooms so small and perfect, and even the tiny biting skinwights, who, after all, were just trying to live.
And Rath was important, too, even if his breath smelled like a lifetime of blood meals and bitten bones." Page 138
"'Another restrictionist?'
Akiva hesitated. 'Maybe.' Did Hazael understand what it meant to him if there was another resurrectionist? Could he guess his hope - that Karou might live again? And what sympathy coud he have for his hopes? Suppose his forgiveness hinged on Karou being dead, as if Akiva's madness might be in the past, something to be gotten over so they could keep on as usual.
There could be no more 'as usual' for Akiva. What could there be?" Pg 143
"Akiva held his swords bitterly. His training was very clear. Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death. There was no other reason to hold a weapon, no other reason to beone.
He didn’t want to be that weapon anymore. Oh, he could desert, he could vanish right now. He didn’t have to be party to this. But it wasn’t enough that he cease to kill chimaera. He had dreamed so much bigger than that once.
The trees were a whisper of green as he and Hazael descended with the others, and the voice that filled his head was one he had heard only once. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master or death is. When Brimstone had spoken those words, they’d meant nothing to Akiva. Now he understood. But how could a soldier change masters?
How, with swords clenched in both hands, could one hope to keep blood from spilling?" Page 145
"So many different kinds of silence, Sveva thought." Page 146
"These weren't her folk, but . . . they were, and maybe that meant that anyone could be anyone's, which was a sort of nice thing to think, with the world falling apart." Page 150
"'These humans are my guests,' she said, and she felt the words come from some iron place within her that hadn't existed an hour ago. She didn't speak loudly, but there was such a change in her voice. Coming from that iron place, it was heavy and true; it wasn't persuasive or desperate, or antagonistic. It just was." Page 246
"Let’s see. You know how, at the end of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet wakes up in the crypt and Romeo’s already dead? He thought she was dead so he killed himself right next to her?”
“Yeah. That was awesome.” A pause, followed by Ow,” suggested elbow punctuation on the part of Mik.
Karou ignored it. “Well, imagine if she woke up and he was still alive, but…” She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. “But he had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.”
After a long pause, Zuzana said in a small voice, “Oh.”
“Yeah,” said Karou, and closed her eyes against the stars." Page 267
"Because it was not Akiva beside her. Of course it wasn't and what ran through Karou's mind in that instant was bitterness, a double pang: one for when she thought it was him.
And one for when she realized it wasn't." Page 289
"Nothing makes you feel so useless as another person's grief." Page 372
"Be your own place of safety, she told herself, straightening." Page 550
"They are creatures grasping at life with stained hands." Page 558
Book 85
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