Spoiler clearance: Reaper’s Gale

   Seven hundred pages into Reaper’s Gale. I’d like to say this: the Tiste Edur are the worst invaders ever... The Letherii are dancing circles around them. I mean, the Romans wouldn’t have it. The Greeks wouldn’t have it. Nobody would have it but the Edur. Those Letherii guards are ordered to fetch Tomad and Uruth – and they barge into their private chambers with swords drawn! What would old Mark Anthony do? Five Gaul slaves barging into his room with swords drawn, because Caesar wants to see him? Mark Anthony kills the five obnoxious thugs. Later, he’ll just have to say: ‘Oh, these five? Killed them... Who cares. They’re just Gauls. We have a million of them at hand.’

   But the Tiste Edur continue to tolerate all that. I really do not understand. They let those guys keep their money and their influence and their positions of power, to what end? Isn’t that a bad strategy? They need some sort of Captain Kindly. A Captain-Kindly-of-the-Edur. One who has the balls to rise up and tell the Letherii: ‘Okay, listen up, you guys were vanquished, right? So we will crucify a thousand of you on every major road leading to Letheras, and then, you’ll behave.’

   When the Edur fleets were in Seven Cities, they were the most cruel raiders you’ll ever see. Slaughtered the Anibar. Genocided the peoples of Monkan, of Sepik. Why did they suddenly become so soft? Just cut off a few hundred Letherii heads – all the rest will start to work a lot better, then.