penwalla

If we ever choose to invade enemy territory—which we don’t—I would choose Zolya as my first target. Take out Cliffsbane Academy and you take out years of gryphon riders in one strike.

—TACTICS, A PERSONAL MEMOIR BY LIEUTENANT LYRON PANCHEK

Opening quote is about what I assume is the Basgiath equivalent for gryphon riders. Interesting. We'll get to see in a later book, I imagine.

Violet and co. escape the secret interrogation caves. They get the special patch for escaping from their professor.

Scene change immediately. I would have liked a little more, after such a tense couple chapters. Feels like these few paragraphs could have been the end of the last chapter instead. But let's continue.

Dain is avoiding Violet, which she is fine with. Violet's friends are trying to encourage her to get out more. In a vaccuum, this is fine, but they are in the military at military college, so I feel like free time should be at a premium, you know? They're actively at war at the most murdery school of them all. Shouldn't they all be busier? Why do they have every weekend off?

Anyways, we learn that another first year in their squad died due to Gauntlet practice and another second year has died during interrogation practice. As Rhiannon delivers this news, another group of second years from another squad comes by to ask about their new patches, which are classified. Why even have patches if they are classified? Why broadcast that? It's like Dain's classified ability patch. What is the point?

Sidenote: Violet briefly notices a scribe cadet with the hood up passing by and Violet notes it as odd but is immediately distracted. This is foreshadowing, and it's actually skillful.

They all go into Battle Brief to find leaflets sitting at all their desks, which say:

ZOLYA FALLS TO DRAGON FIRE

THE THIRD LARGEST CITY IN THE BRAEVICK PROVINCE HAS FALLEN TO THE BLUE FIRE DRAGONS AND THEIR RIDERS. THOUGH THE CITY AND ITS DRIFTS FOUGHT VALIANTLY, THE TWO-DAY BATTLE ENDED IN POROMISH DEFEAT. ALL WHO DID NOT EVACUATE HAVE PERISHED. AN ESTIMATED TEN THOUSAND LIVES HAVE BEEN LOST, INCLUDING GENERAL FENELLA, THE COMMANDER OF BRAEVICK’S GRYPHON FLEET. ALL TRADE ROUTES TO THE CITY HAVE BEEN BARRICADED TO PREVENT FURTHER LOSS OF LIFE.

Okay! Interesting. This is apparently a proclamation from the Poromish side, but how did it get here? Violet and co. debate this. Violet again uses her scribe knowledge in a useful way by analyzing the printing style and the ink, then by reviewing the process of printing for them. She actually does some good deduction here to determine that either these are fakes meant to test them, or they are real and there's someone(s) rogue in the scribe quadrant.

Yarros attempts to again fill in Violet's backstory by having Professor Markham, the one scribe who teaches, be a vicious taskmaster. Which should have come up way earlier in the series, since he was introduced in Book 1 and trained Violet personally, but whatever, I guess this is hopefully set up for a future plot point.

And...Markham announces to the class that the leaflets were obvious propaganda but that they'll discuss it another day because they're all clearly too hysterical right now. And then fucking Jack Barlowe walks in because it turns out the secret thing Nolon has been doing is mending him???

Wait, what? WHY?

Dammit, Yarros, you were doing so well!

Overall, this was almost a good chapter. Solid set up of future plot points, actual mystery that I'm interested in solving.

Welp. We'll see how this goes.