2013 fantasy, second volume of a series. Cat's forced into marriage;
Max and the gargoyle investigate a sudden power vacuum; Sam worries
about his wife.
It sometimes feels like a middle volume, and there's not as much
overlap between these threads as one might like. Cat's is the most
interesting, because on one level she knows that her new husband Will
is not by nature a tyrant (and even her father genuinely believed he
was doing the best possible things to fit her to deal with a hostile
world); but at the same time Will, good person as he tries to be,
has pressures put on him by society and is weak enough not to let
Cat's wishes stand in his way. In other words, it's not that these are
uniquely horrible people, or even that every man and every woman is a
horrible person; it's that in order to reach accommodaton with the
world they're living in they have to be horrible to others, and thus
perpetuate it all, while still managing to think of themselves as
decent people in an imperftect world.
There's less world-building to get through this time, but it's clear
that there's a quiet coup going on, and some organisations have been
allowed to get far too much power simply because they're the ones that
are willing to undertake distasteful tasks and not bother Society with
the details. And there seems to be a new power in the offing—which,
given the tenor of the story so far, I assume will be just as vile as
all the others.
There's not much resolution here and the writing is mannered rather
than lively, but the more I think about this book the more positive I
feel about it.