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This is a sequel to Westmark (and I'm awaiting the third volume, The Beggar Queen, so please no spoilers for that in comments). ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrissa will be hosting a discussion of all three books, fairly soon. A lot of the characters from Westmark turn up again here, though not all; I suspect this book would make sense on its own, but would not be as strong.
The beggar-girl Mickle is now, to her continued surprise and often dismay, Queen Augusta of Westmark; her beloved Theo was out of the city, on what amounts to a fact-finding mission about the state of the kingdom after the evil prime minister Carabbas's de-facto regency, when Mickle's father died, making her queen while she was still coming to terms with being a princess and heir to the throne.
Fairly quickly, one of Westmark's generals conspires to aid an invasion, preferring an aristocratic foreign king to a ruler who is being called "the beggar queen" and has decidedly common sympathies. Everyone dives into action in a variety of directions, sometimes countering each other and their own intentions: unsurprising, given that horseback is the fastest transport or communications available, and many of the main characters are in disguise at one level or another. Count Las Bambas doesn't seem to have a real identity; Mickle manages to slip between passing herself off as an ordinary young man, and revealing herself as queen and taking command of troops fleeing the field after their traitorous commander ordered them to surrender. (We see him and the Regians plotting the attack, including how many dead on each side before he will surrender his troops.) Theo continues in a variety of disguises, and not only Florian, the rebel leader, but just about everyone in his group of rebels-turned-irregulars is using an alias, either for specific reason or because everyone else is.
Identity and sense of self are a lot of what's going on here: how thoroughly can you disguise yourself, and for how long, before you start to believe it? Can people still consider themselves to be good, gentle, or just if they do things that they consider wrong or vicious, or that they would have called unjust a few months earlier? Theo's role as the fierce guerrilla leader the Kestrel takes enough out of him that, when he is reunited with Mickle and she asks if he still loves her, he can only say "as much as I can" and then explain that he has hated so much for so long that he's not sure what loving is. Dr. Torrens, now Augusta's chief minister, feels forced into censorship policies that remind him, as well as Keller, of Carabbas's: unlike Carabbas, the censorship isn't his goal, but he accepts it.
Alexander makes no attempt to pretend that war is other than hell; he doesn't go into huge amounts of detail about wounds or weapons, but the deaths, soldier and civilian, are real. Various people describe themselves as cowards at different points, for doing basically sane things, and are told by other characters that yes, they have done the right thing. That's hinted at early, when someone tells Queen Augusta that he and his fellow solders will "do or die" and she tells him she would prefer if they just do.
Things end well, for the moment, or as well as they can end after a year of battle in which many have died and much of the harvest has been lost, but there's a third volume, and the description in the card catalog makes it plain that the peace Mickle, Theo, Florian, Connie, and others have won is temporary.
mrissa will be hosting a discussion of all three books, fairly soon. A lot of the characters from Westmark turn up again here, though not all; I suspect this book would make sense on its own, but would not be as strong.The beggar-girl Mickle is now, to her continued surprise and often dismay, Queen Augusta of Westmark; her beloved Theo was out of the city, on what amounts to a fact-finding mission about the state of the kingdom after the evil prime minister Carabbas's de-facto regency, when Mickle's father died, making her queen while she was still coming to terms with being a princess and heir to the throne.
Fairly quickly, one of Westmark's generals conspires to aid an invasion, preferring an aristocratic foreign king to a ruler who is being called "the beggar queen" and has decidedly common sympathies. Everyone dives into action in a variety of directions, sometimes countering each other and their own intentions: unsurprising, given that horseback is the fastest transport or communications available, and many of the main characters are in disguise at one level or another. Count Las Bambas doesn't seem to have a real identity; Mickle manages to slip between passing herself off as an ordinary young man, and revealing herself as queen and taking command of troops fleeing the field after their traitorous commander ordered them to surrender. (We see him and the Regians plotting the attack, including how many dead on each side before he will surrender his troops.) Theo continues in a variety of disguises, and not only Florian, the rebel leader, but just about everyone in his group of rebels-turned-irregulars is using an alias, either for specific reason or because everyone else is.
Identity and sense of self are a lot of what's going on here: how thoroughly can you disguise yourself, and for how long, before you start to believe it? Can people still consider themselves to be good, gentle, or just if they do things that they consider wrong or vicious, or that they would have called unjust a few months earlier? Theo's role as the fierce guerrilla leader the Kestrel takes enough out of him that, when he is reunited with Mickle and she asks if he still loves her, he can only say "as much as I can" and then explain that he has hated so much for so long that he's not sure what loving is. Dr. Torrens, now Augusta's chief minister, feels forced into censorship policies that remind him, as well as Keller, of Carabbas's: unlike Carabbas, the censorship isn't his goal, but he accepts it.
Alexander makes no attempt to pretend that war is other than hell; he doesn't go into huge amounts of detail about wounds or weapons, but the deaths, soldier and civilian, are real. Various people describe themselves as cowards at different points, for doing basically sane things, and are told by other characters that yes, they have done the right thing. That's hinted at early, when someone tells Queen Augusta that he and his fellow solders will "do or die" and she tells him she would prefer if they just do.
Things end well, for the moment, or as well as they can end after a year of battle in which many have died and much of the harvest has been lost, but there's a third volume, and the description in the card catalog makes it plain that the peace Mickle, Theo, Florian, Connie, and others have won is temporary.
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