Oh my God The Fifth Elephant tho
“Among the other unwanted baggage that had been heaped on the young Sybil to hamper her progress through life was the injunction to be pleasant to people and say helpful things. People took this to mean that she didn’t think.”
“She was large and she was kind. She hadn’t enjoyed school much. A society of girls is not a good one in which to be large and kind, because people are inclined to interpret that as ‘stupid’ and, worse, ‘deaf’.”
Within pages of this she is bending iron bars over werewolves’ heads. I really wish she’d been able to have a go at Serafine, though, after the way the woman was talking about her at the beginning of the book, as if being friendly, even with people you don’t like, is some kind of weakness.
The Fifth Elephant is where Sybil really starts to flourish as a character, IMO. And the thing is, she’s far from stupid. She really pays attention to people in a manner possibly only surpassed by Carrot, which is how she memorizes whole dwarfish arias to deploy for maximum emotional impact and extensive notes on fat mining to haggle with the Low King. She notices people, and keeps up with them, and because of that she is able to mobilize the entire of the Sto Plains to watch a Goblin performance at a moment’s notice, changing the fate of an entire race.
Sybil is large and she is kind and she can think. She is not stupid. She is not deaf. She takes such an interest in you and everything that’s happening in your life and you are damn lucky that she is kind.
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