Chapter 10
Kote learns about alar,
the principle of absolute belief that is central to magic, or
"sympathy". Also learns disciplines of Heart of Stone and Seek the
Stone.
We start to see some of
the secrets of how magic works. Kote shows himself to be a determined student. It's interesting to me that we get so much detail about how magic works in this world -- you don't get that most of the time in fantasy, more like "he says some magic words and it happens." So I definitely appreciate this approach. When he explains alar, how many of you tried to do it?
Chapter 11
Kote learns how to bind
two items together, so by moving one the other moves. He starts off with iron
coins and moves on to increasingly more dissimilar things (which is notable
since the more alike the things are, the easier it is to bind them.) Later, Kote
gets in trouble with his mother for singing a bawdy rhyme about Lady Lackless.
Again, I like how magic
works in this world and how certain principles are laid out. The structure of
the book helps in this, in that we do the training with Kote and grow in
understanding with him. At first I wasn't too excited about reading a coming of
age type of story but it actually works well in that it allows the slow reveal
of how the magic works. Also I'm wondering about who Lady Lackless is and when we'll see her in the story (full disclosure - I was reading a blog post about Kingkiller Chronicles and saw someone's dream casting of the characters and saw Lady Lackless among them, so I assume we'll see her before long.)
Chapter 12
Kote's father is trying
to compose a song about the Chandrian, and consults Abenthy. Abenthy notes that
Kote is a prodigy and his parents need to think about his options. He suggests
university. The parents wonder where his talent (and red hair) come from.
Laying more foundation
with a little more background about the Chandrian. Also introduces some
ambiguity about Kote's parentage - where did the red hair come from? Not sure if that's going to be an issue - could it be that these are not his real parents at all? If so its kind of the old Moses origin story and may go a long way in explaining why he's so damn good at everything (it's sort of annoying, isn't it?)
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