IN A GARDEN BURNING GOLD read-along and recap, pt 3
chapters 21 through 30 plus plenty of commentary and behind the scenes info!
welcome back to part 3 of the IN A GARDEN BURNING GOLD read-along! we’ve got lots to cover so i’ll spare u the long intro aside from a reminder that i’ll be launching the sequel at porter square books in cambridge, MA on may 1st! come say hi!
drop a comment below with any questions (about GARDEN, the launch event, or anything really!) and with that out of the way let’s gooooooo
RECAP
Chapter Twenty-One
we left off with rhea having a crisis about her mom being a saint so while she’s busy processing that let’s check in with lexos
he’s back at home sorting Baba’s mail (lexos is super grown up and independent and powerful you guys) when he finds some info from one of the Stewards suggesting that things are getting even more dicey and Baba’s hold on the country is almost gone
lexos decides to invite himself to Tarro Domina’s house bc tarro has lots of money and power and would be a great ally—luckily Baba had the same idea although he is considerably less excited about it1
Chapter Twenty-Two
back with rhea she’s having trouble parsing through what it means that her mom Irini was a saint. like okay so irini
survived the massacre of the saints when luco domina killed them all (and retained her power as a saint) (maybe even passed it onto her kids in some manner) (who can say)2
hid out in disguise as saint worship was outlawed and survived
married Baba for protection back when Baba was a general in a Steward’s army
died mysteriously at the age of like 900 fuckin years old
rhea concludes that irini has lived her life in accordance with one rule: survive, no matter what. as the world changed around her, irini adapted and evolved however she had to, even marrying someone aligned with the Stewards/Stratagiozis who would’ve killed her if they’d known the truth
and looking at her own situation and the precariousness of Baba’s rule/his probable fall from power, rhea wonders if maybe she needs to do the same thing. adapt and evolve and hey! she’s already got the married bit handled! so convenient!
so she tells michali 1) she’s had a big change of heart and wants to join him and the Sxoriza! and 2) also her mom is a saint
michali: i mean. i don’t believe either of those things but sure let’s run with it for a second
Chapter Twenty-Three
to figure out how serious rhea is about her new vibe, michali introduces rhea to Piros a refugee from a nearby country3 who is a high-ranking member of the Sxoriza
piros explains that the Sxoriza is like wholly anti-federation rather than just separatist (bc of course Baba and Lexos have the wrong idea) and goes over the organization’s plans with rhea and she’s like
“okay but… y’all could be much more effective? i could help you take over Stratathoma and make Thyzakos fully independent like i know all the relevant Special Secrets and you won’t even have to risk the lives of your people! all i want in return is my family’s safety”
after some argument they all agree but ALSO! michali shows rhea some old saint worship relics including a portrait of rhea’s mom and he’s like wait you guys look baaaasically identical tho? maybe there’s something fun we could do with that
Chapter Twenty-Four
the fun thing ends up being “rhea dresses up like her dead mom to convince the Sxoriza that things are Great, Actually and that they should all be super committed to the cause even though they all think michali is still gonna die at the end of winter given that he’s married to Thyspira”
the less fun thing ends up being that stepping into her mother’s shoes and letting people kneel in front of her/worship her/ask her blessing gives rhea something of a nervous breakdown
she tries to come clean with michali about playing him and he’s like “no i fully got that. you are not slick my dude. but i like you i really think this could be something and i really think YOU could be something (i.e. better, not a piece of shit, etc etc)”
and rhea decides “fuck it yeah let’s go!!!! for real this time!! also kill my dad that’s fine!!”4
Chapter Twenty-Five
lexos goes international!!!! our boy is in Vuomorra the capital of Trefazio5 to make better friends with tarro
at dinner tarro’s second (i.e. tarro’s lexos) is killed which means the next oldest of tarro’s bajillion children will take the position
it also means that lexos has to attend a funeral and he did NOT pack for that. luckily for him stavra shows up and makes him do a fashion show with his outfit options6
Chapter Twenty-Six
funeral time blah blah blah WHATEVER the POINT!!!!! is that in this chapter!!! we meet [john cena announcer voice] FALKA DOMINAAAAAAAA
i’m deeply obsessed with her7
falka is tarro’s new second and is Pointedly Curious about rhea and irini (and we know from a little drop in of her name in chpt 23 that she is feeding info to the Sxoriza) (lexos does not know) (he almost never knows)8
Chapter Twenty-Seven
lexos gets a letter from rhea that’s a little too breezy9 in its assertion that michali is not, as they say, rebel scum and is like "wait why is rhea being so weird oh fuck she's gonna let this mike dude live isn't she"
this is very bad news for lexos so of course like the genius he is he decides to console himself by drinking heavily……. only to find that during his night on the town with stavra falka has framed him for an attempt on tarro’s life and now he’s being exiled from Trefazio
oops
lexos leaves vuomorra as “closing time” by semisonic plays in the background10
Chapter Twenty-Eight
back in rhea-world it’s winter festival time! rhea piros and michali go over the plan—tomorrow morning they’ll fake michali’s death and pretend like everything’s normal but then when rhea gets back to Stratathoma she’ll sneak the Sxoriza into the building and they’ll kill Baba
huh is that a white bird over there? no why do you ask
Chapter Twenty-Nine
lexos may have crashed and burned in Trefazio but he’s not ready to go home yet! mostly because Baba will kick his ass if he does!
instead he goes to Agiokon to visit Zita (Stavra’s mom and an all around baller) bc maybe she can help him fix the mess he’s made. he asks her to call a meeting of the other Stratagiozi, sans Baba, so that he can try to make things right, and she’s like “orrrrrr what if tarro and falka were ALSO not there and we could plot against them”
Chapter Thirty
rhea wakes up ready to fake michali’s death except
too late!! he’s dead! like dead dead somebody slit his throat while he was lying next to rhea
she looks out the window and sees that fuckin white bird and finally places it—it’s lexos’s robot pigeon
lexos. LEXOS did this!!!! rhea’s gonna kill him
we’re 3/4 of the way through! things are not looking good for pretty much anybody except maybe stavra who i think objectively got the better room in the palace at vuomorra
additional thoughts
i loooooved writing lexos in trefazio. he’s put so much of his self worth into the idea that he knows what’s best and he knows what to do and he’s the reliable sibling and is taking care of everything so turning him into a fish out of water is like the ultimate ego wound for him (for now anyway. there is so much worse to come lol)
but as much fun as it is writing the kids away from home it is even better writing them back in the family unit and you KNOW we’ve got a ton of that coming in the last quarter of the book
i think a lot about symmetry when i write, in part bc i think readers respond to symmetry in a story just the way people respond to symmetry in a person’s face and in part bc i have OCD lmao11. but seriously it’s a classic move to end a story by sticking your characters back where they started, only Look How Much They’ve Changed.12 so i knew i wanted to get the kids all back to Stratathoma for the last quarter of the book, and even into scenes that more specifically and exactly mirror the first quarter. i also knew that i wanted the whole duology to have the same symmetry when you zoom out buuuuut without leaving readers like "oh my GOD do we REALLY have to do this again???" (does that count as a spoiler? idk i feel like if you've read any of GARDEN maybe you can feel the kind of like.... cyclical nature of it? it's kind of like what i was talking about before in a footnote re: rhea replacing Baba with Michali like the Argyrosi kids are being pulled in by a very specific gravity and we're watching them figure out if they can or even want to break it)
i think POV was really the tool that helped me out with endings and symmetry bc each of the kids is gonna care about different things when they're moving through the same setting. plus they're each gonna be following different arcs so one kid coming home might feel triumphant while for another it might feel like defeat, etc etc.
so as you go into the last quarter of the book you can keep an eye out for mirrors and echoes of the beginning but also! pls know that it’s a constant struggle for me to not pursue my wildest dream i.e. a book that is symmetrical on every level down to the sentence like you could read it as a palindrome
what a book that would be
i mean it would be complete fucking nonsense but!!! so beautiful!
next time: chapters 31-epilogue, april 28
we finish up the book with next week’s post which means you will be all prepped and ready to dive into the sequel, IN AN ORCHARD GROWN FROM ASH
i left out the board game scene bc i’m not trying to write a recap as long as the book itself but Soldier’s Teeth/Saint’s Grave is one of my favorite little worldbuilding details! i imagined it as looking like a backgammon board but like. circular. my Greek grandparents had really beautiful backgammon boards at their house and the colors of the triangles/the texture of the little discs (pieces? tokens?) are a super vivid memory for me
the sequel. the sequel can say.
GARDEN is focused primarily on Thyzakos, with added locations in Trefazio and Merkher (Agiokon) but ORCHARD will expand that and you’ll get to see some of Amolova and a bunch more Chuzha
i talked about this some in the last post re: filter words and subjectivity but here too rhea is making a huge leap and she really thinks she means it! she does! but i’m hoping that to a reader it seems maybe…. not dubious but like. more of the same. rhea’s spent her whole life defining herself according to her dad and hoping to earn his love/trust/respect and she’s kind of just swapped somebody else and a different kind of love into that place
referred to, respectively, in my first draft of this book as Fake!Rome and Fake!Italy and although i think both analogues got more complex as i drafted/revised the bones are ABSOLUTELY still there lmao
i really wanted to get stavra and chrysanthi in the same room in GARDEN but i could never find a way for it to happen that made sense. don’t worry tho i fixed that glaring omission for the sequel
and i’m not the only one!!!!! i tried to cram rhea meeting falka into this book like 9 times and it just didn’t work out like why would falka be there how did she travel etc etc but you better believe that was goal number two (for goal number one see footnote 6) in ORCHARD
this book was a lot of fun but maybe the MOST fun thing was constantly putting lexos in scenes with women he is vastly outmatched by (stavra, falka, chrysanthi, zita, nastia, i’m probably forgetting someone) (i am purposefully leaving rhea off the list though bc she’s her own specific kind of trashfire)
see also: monica geller
favorite part from this chapter is lexos being like “wowwww falka isn’t like other girls” and stavra being like “???? you fucking donut”
this is not like a “omg my room is so neat i’m so OCD” joke this is like “no i literally have diagnosed OCD” but it’s still funny u feel
we’re gonna just. look how i met your mother dead in the eyes and then move on. we’re not talking about it. that’s a whole other 10000 word newsletter