No way a dying mall in Alaska has an open Lush

Man i am just so enamored by the use of language and the themes of identity in this book so far.

The magic: "those precious, perilous scraps of language, that mix of Hebrew and Spanish and Turkish and Greek that arrived in letters carried over land and sea"

It's just fascinating because I only understand Spanish out of all the mentioned languages, but some of the refranes are comprehensible simply because I have that Spanish vocabulary in my head. I just really, really love what she's doing with them, in the context of this story. it is as if she is saying, here is some mixture of time and culture and peoples, one we may not be able to properly sort or discern in a way that is comfortable to the Powers That Be, and all of them come together to create magic.

I also love the casual spanish! there are some hispanic authors i've read who will do the same that Bardugo is doing, just code-switching between english and spanish, and they'll make it so fluid and seamless and lovely. My favorite so far was: "Valentina had a girl who could work milagritos beneath her roof. Just how miraculous were these little miracles?" It's so FUN. Like a little poem or a ditty. Milagritos is so playful, that diminutive form of milagro, the syllables just skip like hopscotch on the tongue. And the follow-up in English carries that playful tone, that nursery rhyme quality to the repetition of miraculous/miracle. I love it from a thematic standpoint, but this is also just really good writing from a technical level.

Damn... ngl those acknowledgements made me feel reallll bad for being annoyed with the significantly lesser coziness of this book after Baldree admitted to being worried about exactly that. I know it's a valid preference to have, but do author's notes like this ever make anyone else feel a bit guilty, even though it's totally morally neutral and faultless on both sides for a book not to work for every reader?

I do like and appreciate this line: "The thing is, I don't want to write the same book over and over. I don't want to pretend that fantasy small-business ownership is the answer to all of life's woes." I think this message came through very clearly in the book, and is a very sensible one. Probably as many readers as didn't enjoy the increase in action would have not enjoyed yet another extended small business reno, so perhaps I shouldn't be greedy haha.

Any guesses for what the next answer to life's woes might look like from Baldree?

ETA: oh, and one other question I have left at the end of this. What does zu-kenda mean??

I can't stop thinking about when Fern caught up with Staysha and she said "You should have stayed put, you're going to break your damn neck." It reads like... concern? After she, and I quote, "brained" her with the lute? I guess it's just interesting to consider that Staysha didn't exactly have an ulterior motive the whole time, and she didn't set out to harm anyone, she seems to just kind of be greedy? And maybe there was a little extra oomph behind the braining given what she overheard from Fern lolol. But now she just wanted to make a clean getaway without further violence.

Also: completely shocked just trying to imagine Breadlee slicing a lute clean in half. Like my brain can't make the physics of it work (because it obviously doesn't, that's why this is Fantasy). I can't manage to picture the knife sharper/stronger, I can only make it work in my brain if the lute is made out of like, fruit. (Yes I'm picturing those knife sharpening videos where they demo on a grape)

I can't quite make up my mind about Hualit. It does seem to me she wants well for Luzia, but she's also clearly holding her cards a bit to her chest. And like... at the end of Ch7 she says "You've fucked us now" to Luzia, but then we find out she sort of orchestrated the situation, herself telling Don Victor about Luzia, and it now seems like she even knew the full degree of danger Luzia was in and didn't properly warn her (which imo isn't quite the same as a set up, but it sure also isn't protecting her to the fullest). Plus who taught her "Simple, stupid, graceless. All the tihngs she's been warned she must be."? Was that Hualit too? Was that protection, or was that driven by her bitterness that she doesn't have a "talent for magic"? Maybe both.

Also - her mom seemed great, but not to badmouth a dead man (and yes yes cultural differences, etc), her dad also has my eyebrow raised a bit since Ch2 with "If you work in a sinner's house it will be the end of your virtue. You will never have a husband or a home of your own." as if there is more value in a hypothetical husband than an actually existent present loving aunt? Idk I just feel like is anyone actually prioritizing what Luzia needs, or just what they want her to need and do and be?