Melusine

[akirlu]

Idiosynchratic reactions are us.

I'm about 60 pages in and I am...ambivalent. The sections with Mildmay are fine and all, but I have this growing feeling that Felix was irritatingly stupid for the author's convenience, for about the six years prior to the start of the story. Because if Felix wasn't irritatingly stupid, he wouldn't have been in a position required to get the plot going. I'm hoping to be proved wrong about this as events unfold, but right now my impatience with Felix getting himself into this spot in the first place is undermining my sympathy.

Comments

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Errr. I forget -- how much of Felix's backstory do you know at that point. It's difficult, his life.

MKK

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely, difficult life. But precisely because of that, you'd think he would have picked up enough street smarts to 1)get very far the hell away from a dangerous former nemesis once out from under him, rather than, say, mincing around under his nose for another six years, or at least 2)provide self with numerous allies, protections, exit strategies, and bolt-holes to deal with former nemesis if #1 is for some reason impossible.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Especially, mind you, if our hero already knew well enough to joke about it that the most powerful man in the city openly despises him. That is a situation in which reliable allies are, it seems to me, an obvious necessity.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I thought he'd received psychological damage that kept him from doing the obvious things.

Or maybe, sometimes, I'm not as critical a reader as I could be. :-)

MKK

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I thought he'd received psychological damage that kept him from doing the obvious things.

Well, I know what you mean, but. But while I can utterly believe a beaten animal who won't run even if the door's open, what's harder to believe is that once the animal *does* run (especially when running involved a huge amount of effort to start in the first place) I just don't see why it would then stop right outside the gate and stay there, grazing. I would expect that once Felix managed to break free, he would have kept running. Unless we get a compelling reason why he didn't somewhere later in the book, I'm going to be annoyed.