{"id":3644,"date":"2015-12-21T05:00:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T13:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=3644"},"modified":"2015-12-20T21:55:44","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T05:55:44","slug":"mark-reads-melting-stones-chapter-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2015\/12\/mark-reads-melting-stones-chapter-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Melting Stones&#8217;: Chapter 17"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the seventeenth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0<i>Melting Stones<\/i>, NO. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0<i>Melting Stones<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>You know, I get why Rosethorn reacts so strongly to Oswin and Evvy&#8217;s plan. Like Evvy, she&#8217;s dedicated to protecting the person she cares for. Obviously, there&#8217;s another level to this: Evvy is Rosethorn&#8217;s student. That means she&#8217;s required to put Evvy as her highest responsibility. At the same time, Evvy promised Briar that he would watch over Rosethorn, too. So it&#8217;s like they&#8217;re totally going to out-protect each other, isn&#8217;t it? TWO PEOPLE ENTER THE RING, BOTH OF THEM EXIT BECAUSE THEY&#8217;RE BOTH TRYING TO CARRY ONE ANOTHER.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, I jest. Rosethorn knows that despite Evvy&#8217;s talents as a stone mage, she&#8217;s dealing in forces that are far greater than her. (Which makes this all a million times more tense when Luvo later states that Rosethorn\u00c2\u00a0<i>doesn&#8217;t actually truly understand how power the volcano spirits are.<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0Oh god, so it&#8217;s\u00c2\u00a0<i>literally<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0worse than she believe it is!) It is highly likely that she cannot come out of this unscathed. So what&#8217;s the cost of her actions? If\u00c2\u00a0Evvy\u00c2\u00a0tries to save Starns, is she just going to make matters worse, or will she sacrifice herself in the process?<\/p>\n<p>Really, though, it&#8217;s Luvo&#8217;s stern conversation with Evvy that does me in. I trust him implicitly as a character, and there&#8217;s a different context to his advice than there is to Rosethorn&#8217;s. (Though both characters are brutally honest when they need to be!) He certainly wants Evvy to be safe, but he understands the forces at work here better than everyone. I don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s being negative just for the sake of it; everything Luvo says is deliberate. He does not speak impulsively. So when he openly criticizes her use of stones to accent her magic, I believed him. Contrast that with the emotional outburst Evvy has when she needs Meryem to leave. Luvo rarely speaks like she does. (I should point out that I&#8217;m not trying to contrast these two to try and paint Evvy as less reasonable or as irrational; it&#8217;s more that Luvo lacks the impulsiveness you see in humans.)<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s she supposed to do? I don&#8217;t know that there is a perfect answer to that question, and I&#8217;d even argue that it&#8217;s the\u00c2\u00a0<i>wrong<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0question to ask. Evvy does what she thinks can save the most amount of people. And in this case, she&#8217;s pursuing a solution that might save\u00c2\u00a0<i><\/i>Starns, too. It&#8217;s not about what she\u00c2\u00a0<i>should<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0do. Despite that Luvo warns her repeatedly of how dangerous this is, she presses on. She believes that she can at least\u00c2\u00a0<i>try<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to lessen the damage that she caused, you know?<\/p>\n<p>That being said\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 lord. I&#8217;m not going into this ending believing that Evvy won&#8217;t survive. I just don&#8217;t see that as a possible conclusion. But as for everything else? The mountain can explode. Starns can be wiped off the map. Everyone can escape and be fine. Other characters might die. I DON&#8217;T KNOW, THESE ARE ALL BELIEVABLE POSSIBILITIES, AND IT MAKES MY HEART HURT.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hhFIfv&#8211;mg8<\/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 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 seventeenth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0Melting Stones, NO. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Melting Stones.\u00c2\u00a0<\/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-3644","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\/3644","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=3644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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