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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9580050" data-attributes="member: 7737">It would clear up why Landor lived in Saven, yet built his academy in Freeton — if those are the same place, the “yet” disappears.It would clear up why Carr vaguely remembers Beldon from visiting him one time in Saven. (I may not have quoted this from book 1, but it’s a thing.)It would clear up why, when Marla fled with Carr from Saven, she didn’t go to Freeton — if those are the same place, then obviously you don’t flee location A to go to location A.And of course it would clear up how Arno could need to be confronted at the academy in Freeton and also need to be stopped from chatting up Archcleric Oram in Saven at the same time — because if those are the same place, Carr can kill two birds with one stone.Although we do know from one of our alternate paths in book 1 that we can get forced to make a choice between objectives even when those objectives are (supposedly) in the same location! I’m referring to how Carr wanted to get the spellbooks which he was repeatedly lied to and told were in Landor’s quarters, and Team Good Guys wanted Carr to get the sceptre which they thought were also in Landor’s quarters, so clearly Carr had to choose one and one only of those objectives to pursue because they’re both in the same location.If Carr has to make a pointless choice when the two choices are in the same location by the book’s own insane anti-logic, then why not also force Carr to make a choice about which of two locations to visit that have the same person in both places at the same time?Out of all the insane anti-logic things to complain about in this series, “minor named character gets introduced and killed off in a few paragraphs of backstory” is way down the list. Lots of books do that. And it’s also a very RPG-ish thing we usually accept for the sake of a richer story.So of course I’m going to pick at this minor harmless nit until it is bloody and raw.Well acccctttttually, we left Beldon’s body in the crypt with the thing. No body, no crime!It’s actually more insane than that! According to this book’s The Story So Far, Carr (and Dalris) broke in, stole the sceptre, killed Beldon… and then Carr hung around for “a short time” — long enough to become rivals with Arno and, apparently, to get to know Haslum and Haslum’s character (he’s cautious).Why not? It takes Carr all day to read nine words, it takes Thayne a year to deliver critical intelligence, and it takes Team Good Guys fifteen years to search a small island.Handed it over, or had it seized from them by force?Or maybe that makes him the BEST character to NEED sources inside because he can’t enter undetected. Of course, being detected doesn’t matter now that Beldon is dead, but everyone got super annoyed that the Magic Mouth would scream at Thayne every. Single. Day. Like a car alarm that keeps going off and after the first time nobody looks to see if the car is being stolen but the sound is still super annoying and OMG WHO INVENTED THIS INFERNAL MACHINE?!Just for you, I will make a chart that shows who teaches each spell on the College Arcane paths in book 1. (I’ll need a little time to pull it together.)Yes, definitely! Except the book is at pains to leave our childhood a complete blank, a childhood that could have been used to build up our love for Saven (or Freeton?) where we grew up, our love for the Academy our father built, or our love for the rugged lion-infested beauty of Seagate Island. But none of that build up ever happens. Instead the first book starts when we are already a teenager. The book does make a few attempts to back-date some backstory, though. For example, it tells us how nice Wendel was to us when we needed help, so nice that we respond by abandoning him to the tender mercies of a mob of superstitious peasants.I spat out my coffee laughing!Hmm….Fair. And a very cool part of the world-building of (Ti)Kandia. It feels like the kind of world-building an anthropologist author would do, right? Morris Simon knew from academic training that in the real world, tribes often had competing gods, and if your tribe got its butt kicked by some outsiders, that obviously meant the outsiders and THEIR gods were more powerful than YOUR gods.</blockquote>

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