Micah began to feel more and more uneasy. It was as if their words made one pattern while their bodies made completely different ones — discordant, inelegant, nothing like the perfect logic of geometry and equations. The game of Social Graces as Diane's guests played it was frustrating and jangling and somehow, she felt, dangerous. It was like looking at the stars' patterns and realizing that they weren't moving in a way that explained everything but just the opposite, an order of confusion. [loc. 4084]
Various characters bade permanent farewells to others at the end of Season 2: some of them are bearing their losses better than others. Kaab is steely, fearsome and haunted; Rafe is ill-advised and impetuous; and Micah, jarringly, is resident in Tremontaine House. More new characters are introduced, and characters who've been part of the cast since the beginning change and evolve, sometimes in unexpected directions. There are new romances, new ventures, and rising tension between the City and Riverside. And threats from outside the City, too: the arrival of an inspector from Kinwiinik, who has reason to hate Kaab; the continued presence of a military expert who has made an exhaustive study of the City's and the Land's defences; and the Land itself, which still has a taste for blood.
Delightfully complex, with a diverse cast (not just racially or culturally diverse, though they're that too) and a maze of motives, grudges, feuds and affairs: it can become overwhelming, but then we are not Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, whose hand is on all the threads, who plays games with everyone she knows. Only a few are clever and perceptive enough to provide much of a challenge. I'm looking forward to seeing their next moves.
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