whew!

Instead of working in the airport and on the flight and on the train... I read almost all of "Renegade", the new Marq'ssan book, second in the series after Alanya to Alanya. The jail/torture, physical and psychological, mixed in with the romantic love and sex threads and politics... highly disturbing and cool.  The style won't appeal to everyone, nor the monumental nature of the series, very complicated and with a lot of characters to track. But to me it was pure candy and I know other people who will feel the same.  Well,  candy isn't the right word. Soothing and disturbing all at once, because of exposing layers of reality often unshared. Ideologically perturbing and yet laying out many problems very clearly. 

I burst into tears when Zeldin jumped up to give the history lecture in her cell.  

Often the hardest parts to read weren't the physical elements of torture and imprisonment - they were the extended double-triple-quadruple-think attempts of the various characters to understand themselves, their relationships, their histories and actions.

I double-dogeared the "wall" speech (from the history lecture) to type in later... thinking of Jo. 

This whole weekend of talking, books, ideas... I felt surrounded by wonderfulness. There wasn't enough time to get to know all the people I wished I could know.