Last time, Katsa kills a mountain lion. Now, she’s going further up the mountain.

wolves and cats that always appeared so suddenly, spitting and roaring, tearing toward them across rock.

The mountains continue to be filled with nothing but starving apex predators for some reason.

Katsa was quick with her bow. The creatures were always dead before they were within range, sometimes before Bitterblue was even aware of their presence.

Insane ones, too. Mountain lions are ambush predators, not ones that roar before they’re anywhere near you, and wolves travel in packs where the survivors would retreat if their prey started killing them. But apparently we’ve stumbled into D&D. The random encounter table came up wolves again, so wolves that fight to the death it is.

For this and other reasons, Bitterblue is getting worn out.

“It’s no use if our rescue kills him,” Oll had said the night they’d rescued Grandfather Tealiff. If Bitterblue collapsed in these mountains, the responsibility would be Katsa’s.

Apparently that was the only time Katsa ever encountered the concept and it’s so alien to her she has to remember the exact words the other person used to try to understand it.

Sometimes referencing past events isn’t the best way to write.

They’re now at the part of the mountain where it snows constantly, because that’s totally how weather works.

She knew from the map that there were no trees in Grella’s Pass.

Because the map meticulously marks the exact start and end of the treeline.

You know, maybe your survival grace should just let you figure out that trees only grow so high and the pass is above that point.

Anyway, at least Katsa’s somewhat practical about this and decides to make snowshoes in advance of that. Why she doesn’t need them already if she’s in the land of constant blizzards is unclear.

She didn’t know what terrain they would find in the pass.

Why not? Your map marks the treeline. That’s terrain.

She pieced together slats of wood

This appears to be how she’s making snowshoes.

Snowshoes are honestly a pretty simple concept. You’re trying to make something to distribute your foot’s weight over a larger area.Take thin green wood, make something roundish, crisscross the in-between section so the total surface area against the ground is larger, make someplace to attach your foot. You can use flat wood, but you don’t have to, and getting slats of wood is far harder and more timeconsuming than just using branches or split branches that are flat on one side. Making snowshoes is going to take a while as it is.

I assume the author looked up a picture of a snowshoe and saw it involved flat crosspieces, and didn’t keep looking to see that other models existed or consider that her character probably wouldn’t manage a professional-style model. Research is good but common sense is important too.

We’re told her wounds are healing fine but she’ll probably have some scars. No one cares, book.

Katsa starts thinking about what else she needs to make. Apparently she still hasn’t made anything to help her carry Bitterblue, despite thinking about how she’s going to need to carry the kid before.

And perhaps a coat for herself, now that Bitterblue was warmer. A coat, from the next wolf or mountain lion they encountered.

…this has only now occurred to her, and not during any of the many times she was shooting them down previously.

I can’t even say Katsa’s an idiot here. This isn’t idiocy. That would mean this is something a human being might ever do. What this is is shitty, shitty writing. The author has only just started thinking about what Katsa will need to do, even though Katsa’s been traveling for days or weeks by now with nothing else to think about.

WHEN KATSA FOUND that she was shivering herself to sleep at night, wrapping her own head and neck with furs, and stamping the numbness out of her feet, she thought they must be nearing Grella’s Pass. It couldn’t be much farther. Because Grella’s Pass would be even colder than this; and Katsa didn’t believe the world could get much colder.

This, though? Idiocy. And a plot hole, since this is not exactly conductive to survival. Does her grace interact with her brain or not? It could tell her where to hit Cousin Badtouch, why can’t it tell her that the fact things are getting unbearable shouldn’t encourage you to think you’re going the right way?

This could actually be a good point to show Katsa is more than her grace. Her graced instincts should be screaming at her to go back down where she’s safe and she could soldier on despite that because it’s Bitterblue’s only hope.

An ice storm erupted one morning as they trudged upward through trees and scrub. For the better part of the morning they were blind, heads bent into the wind, bodies battered by snow and ice.

Oh for –

Cold ground and cold weather are not the same thing. In fact, they are somewhat opposed.

See, hot air holds more moisture than cold air, right? So, warm air goes to colder areas, like, yes, up mountains, and then there’s more water than it can hold and that comes out as rain.

But the colder the air gets, the less total rain it can produce. Antarctica, for example? It’s a very cold desert.

Hail is solid chunks of ice. That means it requires a lot of water in the air to produce it. Two common factors in producing hail in temperate areas is low altitude and warmth. Hail is summer weather. Awesome summer weather.

Oh, also don’t walk around in snowstorms, you’ll fall into a pit and die.

After hours of inexplicably not falling into a pit and dying, the storm stops just as they reach the pass, which they somehow happened to find perfectly despite being blind.

For some reason, only the pass is full of snow because as we all know, snow is thickest at the coldest and windiest points, so only now does Katsa try out her snowshoes. Also, only now does she try out the harness for carrying Bitterblue. Katsa spits upon the idea of testing things in advance just because if they fail you’ll die.

She then tells the kid to stay awake despite Bitterblue already being half dead from cold and exhaustion. Katsa, just dig a hole in the snow and let her warm up. You should want to cross the pass at the beginning of the day anyway.

Katsa continues her brilliant idea by stripping off her furs to cover the kid, because she still hasn’t figured out you can wrap two people in the same coat or that if she collapses and dies Bitterblue will die right afterward. Admittedly, both those are consistent traits. Then she sets off at a run (in crude snowshoes…), constantly shouting to Bitterblue and making Bitterblue shout back. Even though she’s already said they can’t stop, so if Bitterblue does freeze and die it’s not like she could do anything. Then it starts snowing again so she’s doing this all blind. They continue not falling into pits.

The sun starts to set because Katsa was too dumb to take my advice and wait for the next morning, and also, since she’s running around in regular clothes she’s freezing and losing brain function fast.

She gets through the entire pass safely and then back into the treeline. In less than a day. In fact, I’d say it can’t be more than seven hours or so, given that the sun sets earlier in the winter and we know it took them most of the morning to get to the start. Apparently the pass is barely above the treeline.

Katsa does finally collapse from all this, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no way she’ll ever have to do anything like that again, so this means that from here on out, there are no physical challenges for Katsa to face. And it’s not like there was any real suspense during the whole thing, since we know Katsa isn’t going to just die. And she doesn’t even really collapse! She just can’t keep walking, but she still manages to light the fire.

She concentrated fiercely, and on her tenth or eleventh try, a flame sparked and caught a dry corner of wood. Katsa fed pine needles to the flame and nursed it, directed it, and willed it not to die

You know what’s an awesome book? Hatchet. You should read that instead.

Anyway so they build the fire and sit by the fire and go to sleep by the fire and they’re fine because you know all you need to do to stay warm in the freezing cold is sleep in the general vicinity of a flame.

That was an especially dull chapter, particularly for what was going on in it.