Last time, apparently the main fantasy element of the books is the way the wilderness works.

THE INN SAT in what passed for a clearing here in the south of Sunder, but would have been called a forest anywhere else. There was space between oaks and maples for the inn, a stable, a barn, and a patch of garden; and enough open sky to allow sunlight to flicker down and reflect the surrounding trees in the windows of the buildings.

I can’t decide if I like or hate this opening.

I’m having a kneejerk reaction that says something either is or isn’t a clearing. But the description is actually good and I really like the idea of people having different standards for things – this is the first natural sounding difference between countries we’ve seen. But no one’s explained how you can have trees everywhere in the first place. Humans cut down trees fast. And an inn is going to require far more wood than just a family – why wouldn’t you cut down the trees right next to your house and shading your garden first? (I mean, maybe not the maples, but they don’t seem to be eating acorns.)

We’re told there’s plenty of traffic at the inn because of trade, despite the fact it makes little sense for a trade route to detour up into the mountains along their way and if it’s people getting stuff from the mountains, they should have run into those people first.

We are told trade goods! Brace yourselves:

Merchants bore Lienid tomatoes, grapes, apricots; Lienid jewelry and ornaments; and fish found only in Lienid’s seas, north from the Sunderan port cities, up into the Middluns, to Wester, Nander, and Estill. And southward from those same kingdoms came freshwater fish, grains and hay, corn, potatoes, carrots—all the things a people who live in the forests want—and herbs and apples and pears

So the fact this is a hodgepodge of different countries’ foods has been covered.

What’s really bizarre is how the food seems to operate in a separate universe than the actual plants.

First off:

You have oaks? Eat acorns. You have corn? You don’t need miscellaneous grains as well.

If there’s maple trees, there’s cheap sugar around (maybe that’s how they can make chocolate cake). Why isn’t there maple syrup anywhere?

And if people have apple and pear trees, why don’t they plant them around their inns and houses? Who’s growing these things? All it says here is apparently people in forests want plants that normally grow perfectly well in forests.

(And why would you export Lienid jewelry when you keep saying only they wear it?)

Next:

The only food on this list that’s picky about climate is grapes. Tomatoes are an annual, so you don’t need to worry so much about frost killing them. Apricots can take quite cold weather.

And notice there’s none of the boring foods here. No turnips, no peas, no cabbage.

Finally:

You cannot ship tomatoes long distances. Or grapes, or apricots. It’s possible that a king like Pandaman might be able to import these things at ruinous cost, but it should be pointed out that even in our modern day, even with refrigerated everything, we had to specially breed our fruits and vegetables to withstand being shipped, and that’s with trucks and planes transporting them, not ships and carts. There is no way in hell there are merchants just running around with vast quantities of easily bruised, fast-rotting fruit across countries.

What you import from warmer countries are things like oranges that withstand shipping long distances, or else you process the fruit beforehand – you dry it, or turn it into a wine, or pickle it, or make jam. And that’s still going to be incredibly expensive compared to eating the local food, because transporting it takes a lot of work.

Also, the book claims people are also transporting Monsean cider. No, they’re not.

The reason people drink cider is because it’s really easy to make and the ingredients are easy to get. It is not easy to transport – like any drink, you’re mostly carting around water. And like any fermenting drink, temperature changes do bad things to it, so even if people would like to try it, the further you transport the more likely it turns undrinkable. There’s no way the country we’re repeatedly told is isolated is supplying cider to others.

This impossible cider is now a plot point – Katsa sees a trader at the inn with a cart full of unknown barrels and guesses him to be Monsean because he must be fresh from the ports if he hasn’t sold stuff yet, so she thinks they shouldn’t go near the inn. She says they’ll keep going because there’s a “storekeeper” who’s a council sympathizer nearby that Ragamuffin must have put on the map. Which implies that the map should be nothing but sympathizer dots and explanations about they are and how to find them, since there’s no way Ragamuffin could have expected them to go this way. Also, that sympathizers are absolutely everywhere. And also that no one’s even trying hard to keep the lists of them a secret.

“The story may not have reached this far. We’re some distance from the ports and the mountain pass, and this place is isolated.”

Isolated trading hub. God, book. Think.

Bitterblue attempts to reason with Katsa that if she’s worried about someone being hit by Leck’s grace it doesn’t matter if they support the council or not, so why can’t they go to the inn and have an egg?

When moments later Katsa and Bitterblue resumed their trek through the Sunderan forest, Katsa had four eggs inside her sleeve and a frozen pumpkin on her shoulder.

Do you know that the book doesn’t say? It doesn’t say Katsa left any money for this.

It’s possible she doesn’t have any – she didn’t say she took the gold when they released the horse. But she presumably did, since she mentioned what they left behind before and since it doesn’t come up as a problem in staying at the inn. And even if she didn’t, she could leave one of the pelts she’s wrapped in. If she crossed the pass without wearing any, she won’t die now if she takes off just one.

Katsa doesn’t even think that she’d like to leave money. They have something she wants, so she takes it.

Then she goes to find the man who supports the council because of how they care about justice and stopping people from just taking what they want.

He was a man of average height and average build, had a sturdy, no-nonsense wife and an inordinate number of children who seemed to run the gamut from infancy to Katsa’s age and older.
…
Katsa wished, as the day progressed and more and more children issued from the building to feed the chickens, to help the merchants unload their goods, to play and fight, and squabble in the yard, that this Council contact had not taken his duty to procreate quite so seriously.

Katsa also doesn’t think about the fact she’s dragging these people into the business with Leck – but then, she hasn’t even thought about how while she’s focused on protecting Bitterblue, lots of other little girls are still trapped with the guy.

Also, what duty to procreate? There’s been no sign of religion, everyone else seems to have one or two kids, and no one seems particularly invested in inheritance.

Anyway, at night she goes to bother him and asks him if he’s heard anything from Monsea. Nope. Then she shows who they are and he lets them in and brings food.

We need information,” she said. “We need counsel. We need baths and any clothing—preferably boy’s clothing—you might be able to spare.

No word about paying for this either. She goes on to take two heated baths.

I mean, yes, they’re giving her things because they’re grateful for the council, but – Katsa has stuff she doesn’t need. Why not give them some money?

Anyway, Katsa tells them she came through the pass, which isn’t relevant and is giving Leck information he might be able to use, because the author needs everyone to look really impressed at her. She explains Leck’s grace and stuff.

burning their old, tattered garments.

It’s not explicitly stated this includes the pelts, but given most of Bitterblue’s clothing was pelts, it probably does. What an enormous waste.

They go to bed finally and Katsa explains that she told them almost the whole truth, but she didn’t give their destination and she lied about Metaleyes dying.

killed by Leck’s guards when he’d tried to murder the Monsean king.

Lied very, very stupidly. The guards know he escaped. What the author presumably meant here was that he died of the wounds afterward, but that’s not even close to what she said.

Katsa thinks she wishes that she could take Bitterblue back to Ragamuffin and friends but can’t.

Unthinkable to hide the child in such an obvious place, and so close to Leck’s dominion; unthinkable to take this crisis to those Katsa held most dear. She would not entangle Raffin with a man who took away all reason, and warped intention. She would not lead Leck to her friends. She would not involve her friends at all

Because taking her to Lienid is so much less obvious, and because as long as she doesn’t actually go there while hiding, it’s impossible that Leck would try to find her by going to the obvious place.