5 Comments

I feel like I'm missing something about Aodh. Why is it that the only thing people seem to know him for is once setting a nobleman's hair on fire, when he also killed the kings's two sons during a foiled assassination attempt and forcibly turned the king into his drake? 🧐

Expand full comment
author

Nisha is pressing Aodh on the hair burning because it's something he didn't have much of an excuse for, he basically went out of his way to do that, but killing Fintan's sons and making Fintan immortal happened in the midst of a civil war where it's a little understandable that Aodh wasn't thinking straight and had his hand forced.

And Nisha and others had been telling Aodh 'if you keep burning people's hair for saying Fintan is just good instead of great they're going to turn against him' for years. Plus she knows Aodh already feels guilty about his actions on the Bloody Day, no need to lecture Aodh about something he already knows, while she doesn't entirely trust he understands his full role in creating the environment that eventually led to the Bloody Day.

Expand full comment

Mmm. Alright, but the overall reading experience leaves one with the impression that Aodh is a feared and abhorred outcast because of having burned a guy’s hair one time. (I do strongly approve of the high drama relationship he has with Fintan, however.)

Expand full comment
author

I was afraid of that with the first comment. Also didn’t even intend it to be read as he burned just one person’s hair. Hopefully it was better conveyed in later chapters.

As the first story here this is definitely the roughest in multiple ways, was a struggle to covey the backstory without getting bogged down in details. Definitely one that’d see heavy revision in a collected edition.

Expand full comment

I love the slowly unveiling story, it's so dramatic

Expand full comment