#but Caine and AM share similarities even without him being an antagonist

[the-old-man-has-the-phonebox]

So Caine is confirmed to be inspired by AM from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, right?

…he’s literally just the screaming mouth Ted lacks in the story.

[thesffcorner]

Honor Bound

Honor Bound is the second book in the Honors trilogy written by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre. It follows Zara, who after the events of the first book is now caught stranded in deep space with her Leviathan and her Honors partner. Things pick up immediately, and the dangers Zara faces this time around are much greater than she could have ever imagined. Since book 1 ended on a pretty intense note and some dramatic revelations, this review will definitely have SPOILERS for the first book, because it’s impossible for me to talk about the plot without spoiling what happened in book 1. With that in mind let’s talk about this book. I liked Honor Bound more than I liked Honor Among Thieves, and that’s mostly because it retained all the good parts from book 1, while doing away with some of the things I didn’t much care for. For one, this is a plot that is a lot more action packed; now that we know the Leviathan are at war with the Phage, and so far as we know Nadim and Typhon are the only two Leviathan left in light years, the stakes are much higher and the danger a lot more immediate. We still have the quiet, character building scenes from the first book between Nadim and Zara, but the cast has expanded and they get to do a lot more than just drill weapons into space ships. We also have a new setting; the Silver reminded me of Mos Eisley mixed with Knowhere, mixed with New Samara; it’s a space station full of grifters, pirates, illegal fighting rings and gambling dens, ruled by a Godlike criminal mastermind. The fact that it’s also full of aliens of all kinds made it especially like Knowhere and Mos Eisley; we meet all these new species and kinds of aliens, and we have the characters interacting with a world that so far removed from anything they have known on Earth or even their tour that it was really entertaining to read. Because of this new location and the expanded cast, the humor has also increased; my favorite parts of the book were watching Chao-Xing and Zara interacting as partners in the fighting ring. I really liked what the authors did with the characters, especially C-X; in the first book she was an antagonistic, one note douche, and here she’s a much more nuanced, pretty cool foil to Zara. Since we follow the characters gearing up for war, we spent a good portion of the book with the various characters working on the Silver, to get access to weapons and upgrades for the Leviathans. We also bring back an actual honest to God heist plot, and I was pleased with how well executed it was. The authors excel at character interactions which made even the parts that felt familiar interesting. That’s probably the biggest problem with this series; though I think the characters are well developed and interesting, the Phage as an enemy are genuinely creepy and threatening, and I really like the direction the series is taking with its examinations of relationships between races and aliens, a lot of it just feels well tread. There’s a bit of Star Wars, a bit of the Keiko/Expanse Series, a bit of Guardians of the Galaxy. The heist itself was so much like Temple of Doom/Raiders of the Lost arc, that I wondered for a moment if I had skipped back to reading the Unearthed series. Most to every single action set piece is lifted from somewhere else, or so similar in tone and execution that it might as well be. The other thing that annoyed me about this book, was again, the plot with New Detroit and Zara’s ex. Look, I know I complained in book 1, how I didn’t think the start of the book belonged in this series, how the Honors program itself, and all the build up we spent in New Detroit has no impact on anything that happens afterward. But I didn’t mean bring back Case and the mafia damn it! The interludes we get were simply ridiculous next to this plot about a swarm of near indestructible, mindless aliens that eat Leviathans from the inside out and pilot their carcasses. There is even a point in the book where the guy after Zara is told that his daughter getting robbed is not important enough to have him interject his own man in a program designed by ALIENS to advance humanity so he could have him kill her. That’s the other thing I didn’t get; is that the plan? Is Case supposed to kill Zara? Why? How is that going to help mafia man get his encrypted drug back? Or what, is Case going to kidnap Zara and bring her back to Earth and avoid a political scandal? There are so many more interesting things in the book, and so many more are set up for the next one, like the Godlike being that the Phage was created to exterminate, and humanity’s relationship to the universe, and the Leviathan relationship to humanity, and it has to share time with drug lords from Earth. The most original stuff in these books really are the characters and their relationships. Zara and Nadim were beautiful in this book; I loved the progression of their relationship, how bonded they are and yet how they are still young and fight and have problems with trust and anger. The bit where Nadim gets furious at Zara for shutting him out in her possible moment of death was heartbreaking; I really appreciated Zara was called out on not having the right to make those decisions for him. I also enjoyed the progression in the relationship between Zara and Beatriz. I find it a bit odd that Zara is having more trouble coming to terms with her feelings for a human girl than she did for a literal alien whale spaceship, but nobody's perfect. I also enjoyed how far Beatriz has come as a character; she has grown and changed so much from the scared girl she was the first time she came on board Nadim, who was afraid of space. The one thing I do have to point out with Zara though, was the writing. In book 1, she is described as black, and there’s a lot of focus on her hair and how she takes care of her hair and her curls. Here, I got the sense that the authors were actively trying to make her sound black; there were many points where she uses ‘damn’ and ‘fine’, in a way she had never done in the first book, and it just felt so cringey and awkward. You have to write your characters consistently; why would Zara start using slang now, on a spaceship in space, when she hadn’t, while she still lived in New Detroit? Authors who are not black should just be banned from writing AAVE, or at the very least they should have an actual black person read and correct their dialogue, so it doesn’t sound… well like your mom is trying to be hip with the kids. Outside of those issues, I really did enjoy this book. I am interested and more than a little hype to see how this series will end; I didn’t expect to get as invested as I did, or to like it as much as I did. If you haven’t checked this series out, I really recommend it; it’s a fun ride, with some unique character relationships and some rather interesting existential questions.

goodreads

[darkspellmaster]

You really hate R!Ciel , calling him selfish and jealous when the one with such qualities is no one other than Our!ciel ! I get it , Real Ciel loves his brother in a scary way , but he is only a child . He never looked down at his brother , he even said he is proud of him already . he took care of him very well , the only thing he had done bad to his brother was asking him to give up on his dream but then he let this idea go . Stop saying bullshits just because you are Cie X Lezzi fan.

I”m honestly going to give this answer a longer one during the week since I nedd some time to gather some research on the tropes that I’m seeing in Real Ciel and why I honestly think that the kid is way darker and far more dangerous, and quiet possibly the person that may have been behind the whole situation in his parents murder. At this moment I’m going on a strong hunch and due to the fact that a LOT of Kuroshitsuji’s elements in story telling feel very much influenced by the work of Kaori Yuki, a pioneer of gothic manga, and who’s work still influences a lot of writers to this day. But in order to give you a short reply on your comments…1. I don’t exactly hate Real Ciel, I do not trust him though, and find him rather repulsive for various reasons. One being that he willingly allowed Agni to be killed by a person who was far more brutal then Sebastian has been recently, and honestly seems to have no problem with shooting an innocent person in all this, Soma. Even if he didn’t know who Soma was, he should have, at the very least, not reacted by shooting him then attacking him and wanting to kill him. This is not the actions of someone who has any good intentions. 2. He willingly is keeping Lizzy from her family. Given Edward’s reaction, I doubt that either Frances or Alexis know about what’s going on with their daughter. Now you could argue that they’re in on this, but I really don’t think that’s the case at all. So if he’s honestly a person that could be seen as caring, as Our Ciel has, he would have, at the very least, allowed her to return home with her family, or told her too. It seems that he is either being used by someone, and manipulating Lizzy due to being manipulated himself, or that he’s actually willingly keeping here there and holding her by giving only his side of the story. That is not to say that Our Ciel isn’t at fault for this either, but his actions  are very much reminding me of a character by the name of Jezebel from the God Child Saga by Kaori Yuki, which again I will get into in that longer post. To me the fact that he’s still keeping her there, even if she’s doing so willingly, says a lot about how he’s seen their relationship vs. how Our Ciel has seen her and grown with her. 3. He’s shown signs in various scenes that he’s possessive of Ciel, that he clearly doesn’t want anyone but himself to be with his younger brother. There are moments that his face, when Ciel talks about leaving and going off on his own, showing that he doesn’t want this, and clearly this is setting up for something else, because we’re not seeing inside his head. We’re seeing how he was seen through Our Ciel, meaning that we really don’t know how he perceives his twin, as we’ve only seen what Our Ciel has seen. Thus, the only thing we have is “Ciel is a good person because that’s what he outwardly shows me.” Even though we never see what Real Ciel is thinking since most of the time he’s only voicing some thoughts and not all of what he’s thinking. Second point, do I think that Real Ciel is Jealous and Selfish. Well yes, I do. Consider this…We know that he doesn’t like the idea of Our Ciel leaving him, even suggesting he become a vicar on the estate so he doesn’t go far. To me that’s very telling that he doesn’t think he can manage things without Our Ciel. Our Ciel notes that he’ll have Lizzy and others to help him and Real Ciel seems okay with it, but also not so much. Later on we see Rachel giving a talk to Real Ciel about learning things, as he doesn’t want to be the Earl. This also is important as this is used a lot in stories to give hints that the character is jealous of a sibling or other person that doesn’t have the same responsibilities. Even if Our Ciel is jealous of Real Ciel, it’s clear that he’s jealous of him too over the fact that he won’t be having to be the Earl and make the choices that, eventually Our Ciel has to make, will be very hard for him while Our Ciel gets to make toys and lead a very natural and normal life, something that Real Ciel seems to want to share with him, or want him to share in the role of the Earl. But again without seeing inside his head we don’t know what he’s thinking, and that is part of the reason I’m thinking that there’s something darker with him then what Our Ciel sees. Consequently, with dramatic story telling, usually a twin brother, who even when they are nice to the main character, in dramatic stories, will normally be the Cain to the main character’s Able. I’m suspecting that this will be Real Ciel playing the Cain part. You say he never looked down at his brother, but again this is only the memories that Ciel has shown. Yet we know that Real Ciel can be down right hurtful of others, even if he “doesn’t mean it” as we’ve seen with Lizzy when he told her that he thought that strong women were scary. You can say that that was an innocent comment from a kid who thinks his Aunt is too hard, sure, but it’s still a damaging comment and, given what role Lizzy would have played to Real Ciel, more then likely a Sebastian part in being his right hand and killing people with her skills as a swordswoman, is it any surprise that she reacted the way she did and how it harmed her. Then we see his comments to Our Ciel when he comes in. It’s sweet, but talking down to him. Saying that now that he’s here Our Ciel doesn’t need anyone else. Commenting on his illness, etc. These are not kind words, these are not words that are meant to be nice or sweet or loving. These are words that are digs at Our Ciel for not only taking the ring, but probably for surviving and going forward with his plans. This kid has been warped and clearly his love of his brother is screwing him up to the point that he, again, attacked an innocent young man who had nothing to do with his brother’s revenge plot. Yes he is proud, but being proud could have many many meanings. He could genuinely be proud, or this could be the sort of proud you give your pet when he’s not gone to the bathroom on the floor. Again this very much reminds me of characters from Kaori Yuki’s works, and how the main character Cain of the count Cain saga, had his father, who’s not a nice man at all…trying to kill his son, says that he’s proud of the man he’s become. Coming from an antagonist, which clearly Real Ciel is being set up as -again, killing Agni and shooting Soma - you then have the term proud becoming something far darker in nature. It’s the sort of proud that indicates that he’s just impressed that someone weaker and smaller then him managed to crawl up as high as he has. And given that Real Ciel is supposedly mad at Our Ciel, it seems to be likely that the proud factor comes from the fact that he managed to take on and do things that Real Ciel didn’t think Our Ciel would ever be able to do. Okay let’s take a moment and really look at the fact that we’re seeing this from Our Ciel’s memories. It seems to me that to him Real Ciel was a hero, but we’ve already seen that this isn’t the case with various shots. We know that when the suggestion of the twins going to the school was brought up to Real Ciel he commented that the other students there would be “Fake Brothers” and there was a dead eyed look to him. Then while he does take care of him, he also at the same time doesn’t exactly allow for Our Ciel’s feelings to be considered. As we saw with the whole Halloween moment. Then we have a few other moments including a questionable vanishing act on the birthday, the whole reaction in the carriage ride where they were dropped off, and him sobbing because he was “scared” his thoughts on those under him, etc. We’re shown all the good things because Yana is setting up to show that there’s darker things to Real Ciel. 

And about the whole scene of letting go. I don’t think that’s the case at all. If that was true, why be so against his brother having anyone taking care of him when he shows up. Why is he clearly jealous of Soma being in the house. He Tells him to give up on his dream, but it doesn’t look like he’s over that idea, nor does it seem like in his return that he wants to have Our Ciel be on his own. It’s damn near clear given he tried to kill Soma to get Ciel’s attention. He doesn’t want Ciel to be on his own, that is not normal behavior. It’s one thing to be like “Okay I would rather have you working with me.” and another entirely different thing to say that Our Ciel only needs him, and then kills one of his friends because he’s angry. My view of Real Ciel doesn’t come from my view of Lizzy x Ciel. While I love the relationship, I’m not basing my view on that when it comes to Real Ciel. What I am basing it on is what we’ve seen with Lizzy, his actions against Soma, his comments to Ciel as well as the side glances and actions in the flash backs, and the fact that he very much seems to be a character who has similarities to two very large looming antagonist in Kaori Yuki’s series. That is where I’m getting my views on this. Not from any ship. I hope this at least answers a bit for why I’m looking at Real Ciel the way I am. Thank you for taking the time to write to me about this.