I think I'll probably finish this today (I actually can still read v quickly when I can engage the old brain to do it, not that the reading challenge reflects that...) I have enjoyed it, have very much trotted through it and been engaged but I definitely think its pacing is a tad shot. Alice's reflections on things are overlong and often repetitive, but because of where this starts we have to keep having flashbacks, which is fine... but in turn is enabling Kuang to succumb to her 'telling not showing' habit when it comes to defining close or complex character relationships, like she did in Babel.

LEAVE THAT HAG IN HELL ALICE....

is this bit meant to reference that bit in inferno when dante makes an absolute mince of climbing up some wall (in the thieves bolgia bit... maybe?) and virgil is being annoyingly superior at it and generally unhelpful lmao

'Had not Achilles chosen to die in battle?' yeah Alice, and then he wished he bloody well hadn't once he was dead!! That's the whole Odyssey katabasis my dear! 'Rather a slave upon the earth than a king amongst the dead' etc etc! I do not see this panning out well for Alice icl

but alice, the spiteful potshots are the whole fun of dante!! and well... make what you will of aeneid VI I suppose