Blown away by this chapter - absolutely brilliant!
Loved the sections where Osner was speaking directly to the reader and breaking the fourth wall.
"The real clash is not Tíbald and God, Tíbald and Aile, or Marin, or the princes, but you and me. We’re competitors in a chess game. I am white. You are black. I have the first move; the words are the moves with preconceived meanings. Are you manipulated? You must figure them out. The knights do not move in straight lines. What have you concluded about the pilgrim army? Are the princes vain and selfish? Is the Milities Christi bad? Have you determined the innocent and victims?"
"God endangers. God delivers. God retracts. His servants – fires, drought, storms; wicked leaders, them to us, us to them; prodigal children, profligate parents; the tiny cell within the organ wall that surges to a tempest – all on the safe path. Have we not met on the misty mountain? Are we not in their world? The pilgrims did fall. Faceless. Nameless. Like us in a thousand years – silly, illogical people. Our earth is flat as we fly among the planets . . . Our justice. Their justice."
The scene where the people and animals were falling off the cliff was riveting. If I saw that scene in a movie I would have screamed out loud. The descriptions were vivid and terrifying. Beautiful section where Aile dropped her mail shirt over the side of the mountain. I imagined I was right there with her standing on the edge of the cliff.
"There was no sound of its hitting bottom. On the shoulder of her gambeson a stain from the cross. She rubbed it with her fingers. It would not be gone. A lightness took her."
I was really moved by reading the dream section with Tíbald. It reminded me of the story in Genesis of Jacob Wrestling the Angel.
Beautiful writing. I really love this book and can't wait for the next chapter.
Blown away by this chapter - absolutely brilliant!
Loved the sections where Osner was speaking directly to the reader and breaking the fourth wall.
"The real clash is not Tíbald and God, Tíbald and Aile, or Marin, or the princes, but you and me. We’re competitors in a chess game. I am white. You are black. I have the first move; the words are the moves with preconceived meanings. Are you manipulated? You must figure them out. The knights do not move in straight lines. What have you concluded about the pilgrim army? Are the princes vain and selfish? Is the Milities Christi bad? Have you determined the innocent and victims?"
"God endangers. God delivers. God retracts. His servants – fires, drought, storms; wicked leaders, them to us, us to them; prodigal children, profligate parents; the tiny cell within the organ wall that surges to a tempest – all on the safe path. Have we not met on the misty mountain? Are we not in their world? The pilgrims did fall. Faceless. Nameless. Like us in a thousand years – silly, illogical people. Our earth is flat as we fly among the planets . . . Our justice. Their justice."
The scene where the people and animals were falling off the cliff was riveting. If I saw that scene in a movie I would have screamed out loud. The descriptions were vivid and terrifying. Beautiful section where Aile dropped her mail shirt over the side of the mountain. I imagined I was right there with her standing on the edge of the cliff.
"There was no sound of its hitting bottom. On the shoulder of her gambeson a stain from the cross. She rubbed it with her fingers. It would not be gone. A lightness took her."
I was really moved by reading the dream section with Tíbald. It reminded me of the story in Genesis of Jacob Wrestling the Angel.
Beautiful writing. I really love this book and can't wait for the next chapter.