SPOILERS for The Nutmeg of Consolation; here’s the non-spoiler post if you got here by mistake.
That’s twice now that Stephen has dodged a serious emotional problem by getting sick at the end of the book. His conflict with Jack over Padeen was genuinely interesting, with deep-held convinctions on both sides and their friendship on the line; and what happens? He gets poisoned by a platypus and voilà, Padeen’s on the ship. Unless there are serious repercussions in the next book (which I doubt somehow, because Jack’s not like that), it’s an authorial cheat. I could kind of rationalize Diana realizing that she loved Stephen after all when he fell down those stairs, you know, with a life really without Stephen flashing before her eyes: but this is a deus ex machina, and those are rarely a good idea these days.
(I suspect, by the way, that this is the kind of thing that annoys me far more than anyone else. Oh well; eventually I’ll feel like listening to the next one.)
Nothing is easy or forgotten in the next–in fact, there are worse repercussions.
Good. I just wish there was some way to have signaled that in this one, so I didn’t go stomping off muttering for so long . . .
So… did you ever go back to the series? Or are you still getting over the ending of The Nutmeg of Consolation?
For what it’s worth, I thought the next book (Clarissa Oakes, or The Truelove for the American trade) was superb.
I’ve just been either in the mood for different stuff or trying to learn Japanese.
I’m coming up on needing something else right now, though, and I may well go back, because Patrick Tull is _so_ comforting and I have a cold.
Sorry to hear about your cold; travel does that to me too. Hope you feel better soon.
“Comforting” is not a term I would apply to Clarissa Oakes, wonderful as Mr. Tull’s readings are. I do look forward to your comments and observations, though.