{"id":3612,"date":"2015-11-25T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T13:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=3612"},"modified":"2015-11-20T11:12:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T19:12:46","slug":"mark-reads-melting-stones-chapter-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2015\/11\/mark-reads-melting-stones-chapter-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Melting Stones&#8217;- Chapter 8"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the eighth chapter of <i>Melting Stones<\/i>, I could not have possibly guessed that this is where this book would take me. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to read <i>Melting Stones<\/i>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>What the hell is this???<\/p>\n<p>I realize now that it makes sense that if this is set in a world where ambient magic is a thing, then there <i>has<\/i> to some sort of magical or spiritual force below the earth. I think that means that <i>Melting Stones<\/i> is shaping up to be a book where the antagonist isn&#8217;t a person or even a villain. What if Flare and Carnelian are antagonistic forces? What if their need to escape their home comes to fruition? Then what???<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m getting ahead of myself. (UNDERSTANDABLY SO, THERE&#8217;S SO MUCH THAT MIGHT HAPPEN BECAUSE OF THIS.) Evvy&#8217;s trip down into the magma chamber down in Mount Grace is one of the most surreal things I&#8217;ve read in the <i>Circle of Magic<\/i> books, though in a way, it reminds me of <i>Sandry&#8217;s Book<\/i>. Deep below the earth, Evvy meets a force she didn&#8217;t know existed, and it changes her life forever. Here, though, she&#8217;s utterly alone when she faces Flare and Carnelian, the young and rambunctious spirits who live in the pool of magma beneath Mount Grace. THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS I HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT, Y&#8217;ALL.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Can&#8217;t you feel it? <\/i>The other one had a prettier voice, more like a girl&#8217;s. Her core fire was a darker, cooler orange, like carnelian. I thought it would make a good name for her. <i>How important it is to go up, and <\/i>out<i>?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, I&#8217;m curious. Do these spirits feel a compulsion to break out of the mountain? Is that their sole purpose? I mean, that&#8217;s how I see it, but what a strange existence! Being confined to chambers far beneath where they want to be, having to spend years and decades and maybe even centuries waiting for release. As far as I can tell, that&#8217;s what some of these spirits want. Not all of them, though:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>They aren&#8217;t even like the others, the ones who are old and never want to do anything.<\/i> Carnelian pointed to the lava pool.<\/p>\n<p><i>The <\/i>others. Flare sounded impatient. <i>Like us, only boring and sludgy. They&#8217;re everywhere. <\/i>He pointed like Carnelian had.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the existence we see here. Some of these spirits wait for others to break through the cracks in the wall that separates them from the surface. Which means\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 that&#8217;s a lot of waiting. A LOT OF WAITING. And that explains the atmosphere of this place, which in turn explains why Flare and Carnelian are such eager spirits. They&#8217;ve got one-track minds, and I imagine that&#8217;s related to the heat-fever that Luvo later talks about. It consumes these spirits&#8217; every second of existence, and it became <i>very<\/i> clear that Evvy was ill-suited to keep up with them, not just because her power is being drained, but because this is not a place she should be. I actually started getting nervous about how much time she was spending down there.<\/p>\n<p>I should have been worrying for another reason.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;She said to come back with a coffin, because that&#8217;s hwos he&#8217;s going to ship you to Winding Circle. She was very convincing. Should I believe her?&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Believe nothing else in this world, Jayat, except for the supreme power of Rosethorn&#8217;s anger. <i>Believe in nothing else<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>How is Evvy going to explain this to Rosethorn? I imagine Luvo <i><\/i>could help a little bit by describing the whole &#8220;heat fever&#8221; thing, but is that enough? The &#8220;excitement of magma and the earth&#8217;s strength&#8221; certainly pulled Evvy in, but is that something that Rosethorn will understand? Based on what Luvo and Jayat reveal here, Evvy&#8217;s lost all favor with practically everyone because of her behavior. Granted, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s fair to discount the affect that the heat fever had on her. But I don&#8217;t see any way out of this. She&#8217;s going to be entranced by that place and the experience, and it&#8217;s also impossible to ignore the fact that Mount Grace might become an active volcano sooner rather than later. This is now part of the conflict, and perhaps it&#8217;s even the explanation for all the dead spots aboveground.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Evvy has to deal with Rosethorn first, and that&#8217;s almost worse than a <i>literal volcano<\/i>. ALMOST.<\/p>\n<p>vid<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/markdoesstuff?ty=h\" target=\"_blank\">I am now on Patreon<\/a><\/b>!!! <a href=\"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2015\/05\/updates-european-tour-patreon-h-a-l-p\/\" target=\"_blank\">MANY SURPRISES ARE IN STORE FOR YOU IF YOU SUPPORT ME<\/a>.<br \/>\n&#8211; I\u00c2\u00a0will be at numerous conventions in 2016! <a href=\"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/tour-dates-appearances\/\" target=\"_blank\">Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a><br \/>\n&#8211; My <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/calendar\/embed?src=815s3sbr8clhdi9tn8k7r3tim4%40group.calendar.google.com&amp;ctz=America\/Los_Angeles\">Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0<b>My next Double Features for Mark Watches will be season 1 of\u00c2\u00a0<em>Agent Carter<\/em>, seasons 1 &amp; 2 of\u00c2\u00a0<em>The 100<\/em>, <em>Death Note<\/em>, and\u00c2\u00a0<em>Neon Genesis Evangelion<\/em>. On Mark Reads, Diane Duane&#8217;s <i>Young Wizards<\/i> series will replace the Emelan books.<br \/>\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/markdoesstuff\">Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I&#8217;ve got a community page up that I&#8217;m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the eighth chapter of Melting Stones, I could not have possibly guessed that this is where this book would take me. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to read Melting Stones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[477,505,502],"tags":[482,250],"class_list":["post-3612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emelan","category-melting-stones","category-the-circle-reforged","tag-mark-reads-emelan","tag-tamora-pierce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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