Apologies for this one being late! My personal life kinda blew up yesterday, so I’m trying to manage that while also trying to maintain this regular posting schedule. Regardless, here is the next block of chapters of Red Queen!
If you would like to read the previous chapter reactions you can find them here.
If you would like to follow along or fill in the gaps, you can get the book here!
This is a woman who invaded my thought, who took me away from my life, who I hate, and still there’s something good. She loves her son. And for all her faults, Maven loves her.
One thing I think a lot of people lose sight of, is that there is a different side to everyone that others don’t or can’t see. Especially in the face of negative emotions. Every person on this planet had someone who loved them and they certainly had their reasons why.
Never have I done anything so difficult as looking into the eyes of a dead man walking.
This experience will get beaten. In this book or the following ones, Mare will face something even harder than that.
I try to speak, but I can only think about the father I’m about to steal from such young children. In the back of my mind, I remember Kilorn crying after his father died. He was young too.
Jesus Christ, Victoria, that was one of the most heart-breaking sentences I have ever read.
In my perfect world, Maven won’t have to hide his heart and I won’t have to hide who I truly am. Cal will have no crown to wear, no throne to protect. These people will have no more walls to hide behind.
There’s a reason why this is only an idealistic fantasy. If you remove the throne, what do you replace it? How do you settle the power vacuum that will result? Do you form a different kind of government? How do you stop that from being corrupt? Do you flip the script and put the Reds in power? How do you prevent the Silvers from being forced into abject conditions?
Lucas holsters his gun, his voice a growl. “Killers don’t have to make sense.”
Killers don’t have to make sense and they rarely ever do
“Was there anything else, dear?” Coming from Elara, the term of endearment feels like an electric shock. She looks paler than ever, her breath coming in shallow pants. She’s afraid. “Anything you remember?”
First of all, the fact that anything feels like an electric shock is amusing considering that Mare can create electricity and lightning. Also, people are more likely to use whatever power they can when they are scared, I don’t know why Elara doesn’t use her power to dig through Mare’s mind to find out what she saw.
You are a lady. Act like it. Act for your life.
Finally it’s hitting her that if she doesn’t act like her life depends on it, she will lose it. Because her life DOES depend on it.
Walsh hugs me, taking me by surprise. “I don’t know how,” she mutters, “but I hope you become a queen one day. Imagine what you could do then? The Red queen.”
And here’s our first reference to the title of the book! I love that it was in a moment of tenderness too, rather than cruelty.
“What I need and what I want are two very different things.”
It’s difficult to think of a quote that is more accurate. I want so many things and I want a better life for me and my family, but what I need is to be able to put a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs.
They’ve spent so long at the top, protected and isolated, that they’ve forgotten they can fall.
You know what they say about high horses, but I don’t know if that fits. More like, they made a mountain to rule from. Toss them off of it.
His kiss is not at all like his brother’s. Maven is more desperate, surprising himself as much as me. He knows I’m sinking fast, a stone dropping through the river. And he wants to drown with me.
THIS. This is what I need in a man. I don’t need someone to try and rescue me every time. I need someone who will see me, accept me and be with me, even if that means sinking with me
But I have to try. If only for Gray Town, for the ones who have never seen the sun.
Reading about Gray Town reminded me a LOT of the Stacks from Ready Player One, but I didn’t include it to keep the same kind of impact for someone who has never read it. It was hard to believe that there was people who had a life harder than Mare and Kilorn did, but there they were.
Not everyone is special. Lucas told me that once. I didn’t know he meant Silvers too.
Lucas doing nothing but spitting facts!
Strangely, Evangeline is not her usual cool self; I can see her hands shaking. She’s afraid. She wanted the spotlight, she wanted to be Cal’s bride, and yet she’s scared of it. How can that be?
Because up until now, you only saw Evangeline as a human weapon that was pointed right at you. She was groomed and pressured into this by her family not knowing what that meant. She has now had a very close call and knows that it is only going to get worse before it gets better. The only battle experience she likely knows is the training she has had all her life. Training is scripted and sparring is non-fatal.
For their lives, for their children’s lives, they will give up what little freedom they had left.
If you want to control a populace, you find a way to threaten the ones that they love and they will fall into line, no matter how much it hurts them.
Of course Julian would leave me another story, another collection of words to comfort me when he no longer can.
This is such a sweet, but impactful gesture when you read what is inside it. I’m sad that Julian has gone.
“You can stop this, Cal. You will be king, and you can stop this war, you can save thousands, millions, from generations of glorified slavery, if you say enough.”
It is far too easy to fall back onto tradition and what has been working when life gets uncertain or when life is threatened, even if it’s not the right thing to do. I am very much hoping that Cal changes his mind.
Conclusion
A LOT happened in these chapters! This was a good burst of action, panic and politics which is an excellent change from the subtle war of words. We only have one more block of chapters, final comments and then we are onto Shaedes of Power, but for now, we get to see the Red Queen rise into her power with any luck.
If you would like to follow along or fill in the gaps, you can get the book here!
Bookish Mumma 
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