This is the tenth blog installment of Read & React for The Fifth Season. If you’re new to the series check out the first installment here. Eventually I hope to take my notes from this and transform them into a Spoiler Free Review, but this segment will definitely be filled with spoilers since it is my thoughts as I go through the book. Reader be warned, this post is meant for discussion purposes; avert your eyes now if you wish to avoid spoilers.
9: Syenite among the enemy
WOAH CHANGE OF PACE – we’re not switching between Essun and everyone else every other chapter anymore! (Not that I’m complaining; chapter 8 was a roller-coaster ride and I need more.) Alabaster and Syen have made it to the place of their mission in Allia where they are greeted with prejudice. Alabaster, however, knows how to play their political game to receive basic decency from their government (which would have – should have – been afforded them in the first place if not for their being orogenes). (I’m beginning to really like Alabaster.)
They stay overnight in an in and order various foods, and we learn that once someone is at the seventh or eighth ring they lose themselves in the earth and no longer feel basic human needs like hunger. (Only later during what feels like a fever-dream of sorts we learn that something in Alabaster’s food was poisoned [probably with botulism since the descriptor is of a vegetable can with a bent lid] and with the help of Syen he was able to use focus to remove the poison.) In the morning, Syen notices that an amethyst obelisk has definitely moved closer to the shore. (I’m getting the feeling that somehow whatever Alabaster did may have to do with the obelisks?)
IN SUMMARY
Important Places:
Allia – a coastal city a week’s journey from the node outside of Adea Heights
Important Things:
parallel scaling – the thing Alabaster keeps doing to harness Syen’s power (like a yoke letting two animals share the load of a cart)
Amethyst Obelisk – apparently they can move
Important People:
Asael Leadership Allia – a lieutenant governor of Allia
Personal Point of Interest
temtyr fillet – a type of fish, served as a delicacy in Yumenes
hearty seafood stew – garnished with cream and a dollop of some kind of beet chutney
garlic yams and caramelized silvabees – a side dish served with the temtyr fillet
TheBookishSock 