I forgot last time to mention that all the chapters now have titles. Chapter 1 was 'Awakening'. Please ask for word attachments of any chapters so that you can enjoy them.
Chapter 2 - Love
I'm not directly comparing each chapter with the old 'Of Bondlings & Blesh' chapters, but I am convinced that the new Odalisque ones are more fulsome, simply more meaty and even silkier clear.
This description I can't remember before:
At Wilfred Addal’s left hand was Captain Major Jonathan Flight, a popinjay with waxed mustachios and whose armour was embellished with ribbon and lace. He considered himself to be a ladies’ man and had often annoyed me with inappropriate attentions.
And now the famous Lord Bustain stands out from the crowd! Two separate passages:
Lord Bustain merely smiled pleasantly – a fatuous expression balanced atop his multiplicity of chins.
There were strawberries for dessert – an especial favourite of mine. On previous birthdays, I had reflected on my good fortune in being born during the strawberry season, but this year that didn’t occur to me. After dessert, Lord Bustain was inclined to linger at the table – he refilled his glass with parsnip wine and belched loudly. Without further remark to the churl, Jenna and I took the stairs leading to the family apartments.
Some important footnotes in this chapter, one about the Blood Victoria and these two:
Surrenity: a term for women pleasuring one another, sometimes – although not always – used abusively. The word stems from Surrey – the practice then being more widespread and respectable in Surrey than elsewhere. Although not considered a felony – as it had been for several decades during the Fourth Condominium of Lundin – it was generally regarded with strong disapproval in the Sixth Condominium of Lundin.
Boobly: a transgression, especially of a sexual nature.
FAVOURITE SNIPPETS IN CHAPTER
Neither did they seem to take an interest in the blood-spattered corpses of four guardsmen lying at their feet. There could be little doubt that the living guards were drunk.
There was an inevitability about this, as though the whipping had taken place centuries ago and we were ghosts doomed to re-enact it until the end of the world.
MY PREFERENCES
Not important, but I'd prefer a semi-colon in these rather than a comma:
perhaps twenty of them, they were difficult to count.
but it was useless, the slave was a good deal stronger than me
Lord Higate defended, Sir Garrafad attacked.
I think that
and to the right of the sewer, stinking in the summer sunshine, which flowed down the middle of the street.
might be better as:
and to the right of the sewer which, stinking in the summer sunshine, flowed down the middle of the street.
TYPO
then seemed change his mind
CHAPTER COMMENT LINKS: http://weirdmonger.blogspot.com/2008/06/odalisque.html
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