#apgte

Anyway, Robber's an easy favourite. Not just because he's a hilarious nightmare of a goblin who eagerly follows Catherine's absurd plans without question because the full permission to go ham is something he can't get anywhere else. If he were just that, he would be the funniest character, but not my favourite. No, what makes him my favourite is that moment where Cat asks her people to follow her in breaking from Praes, and he gets that moment where he proves himself to be so much more than that.

They kill us for sport.

He's talking about the Matrons there, of course, but it's not like any of the other factions of Calernia give a shit about his people either, and he knows enough about what's going on that he realises Catherine might well be their best shot out of that horribly abusive mire they've ended up in.

They kill us for sport.

Throughout all his hilarious antics, that undercurrent remains in the background. His hope that Catherine will be the change the goblins need gets put off for a good long while, but it's not like she's not giving him the adventure of a lifetime, so he's not making the biggest deal of it. Yet it remains there.

They kill us for sport.

He doesn't get to live long enough to see that faith in Catherine be rewarded, but Pickler picks up that torch after his death, taking an uncharacteristic interest in goblin politics in honour of his dream, and goddamnit Catherine proves worthy of those years of loyal service, finally breaking the Matrons' hold over what it means to be a goblin by creating an alternative.

It's genuinely one of the best subplots of book 7, and my only criticism is the backseat it takes for so much of the rest of it.

Next up is, of course, our girl Abigail, who pretty much immediately reminded me of what would happen if aSoIaF's Dolorous Edd managed to fail upwards. There are Gods grinning at her, but whether they're Above or Below, or indeed whether they're smiling upon her or laughing at her, is anyone's guess.

Her journey towards becoming the Marshall of Callow is an absolute delight to read, especially because her anxious paranoia and relentless 'I don't want to be here any longer than I need to' energy genuinely translate into canny understanding of the battlefield. Seeing everyone around her think of her as one of the brightest military minds of her generation while she desperately wants to just get the fuck out of there with all her limbs (and later, her general's pension) intact and being seen as a genius isn't helping!

I'm not sure if her many failed retirements are genuinely the result of the Gods continuing to use her as the weirdest example of what 'luck' means in this universe, or if Catherine just kept trolling her again and again.

After that, it's hard to pick a third out of all the remaining ones. Like, there's so much to love about Juniper and Aisha, for example, or our dear Lord of Silent Steps, or hell, even half the shit Larat manages by the end of the Prince's Graveyard.

But I want to take this opportunity to extend my sympathy to Rozala Malanza, because, even if she ends up First Prince by the end, good God this poor woman goes through so much stupid nonsense to get there.

Like, she's the only one to recognise Amadis is a moron for not taking the Army of Callow seriously enough, but she's unfortunately stuck to his broader political faction, so even if she wins here it's likely to be to his credit rather than hers. She manages to actually do a really good job fighting Juniper at the Battle of the Camps, until, you know, Catherine drops a lake on them all.

She manages to claw back a draw despite despising the woman who, you know, dropped a lake on her, and very much in spite of the fucking heroes that are willing to spend her entire army just to fuck up the Black Queen, and as a reward for that, she gets sent up north to fight the army of the dead, which naturally traumatises her quite severely.

It also lets her see that she's been kind of an asshole to the Lycaonese, now that she knows what those guys have to put up with, and she ends up disgusted with herself, just in time to be sent down to the grand farce that is the Prince's Graveyard, and she can get disgusted by the rest of the Princes of Procer.

The woman she loathes not only lets her keep her crown while the other Princes squabble behind her, she also keeps checking her out during negotiations. It's humiliation on humiliation even before she almost gets blamed for a coup attempt on Cordelia (whom she also hates for, you know, killing her mom).

And then she ends up back north again, finally winning a big victory just in time for a Greater Breach to open up right outside the fucking walls.

Just a complete nightmare of a career until she finally wins and gets to rule a broken Principate, yay!

Oh, and then her daughter becomes one of Masego's top students, which I'm sure never kept her awake at night.