Just finished this story this morning after a lengthy scouring around to make sure I really had discovered everything I could everywhere else and then a reluctantly taking the sample, knowing the pain it would bring and wishing there were some other way.
I’ll echo everyone else’s praise of the story, the mechanics did certainly make it feel like you were piecing together a mystery via exploration and connection, the story was personal and focused on a very small aspect of the Neath once again, like the Devil, Heart and Zee, but profoundly effective because of it. I do like that Isery could be involved as well, though I thought they’d pull a little more clout at the honey den than they did. Even if the Gimlet-Eyed Proprietor was well versed in their own ventures of Red Honey…this is the Cat’s Chiefest Claw we’re talking about. You do not cross or disrespect them. Does make me wonder what Leopold thinks of this trade and how it affects the exports from his Cage Gardens, or if he perhaps has a stake in this Den too somehow.
I felt the ‘refreshing’ of your disguise in the House of Charity by doing chores and acting like an Unfortunate was initially a little disconnected and thus easy to miss, mostly because it was described as physical and ‘slipping’ and falling apart. Perhaps just a little rewording to indicate the more performed or character aspects of it as opposed to the fragility of the costume itself. Otherwise I greatly enjoyed that area, both in description and in mechanic.
My only major sort of grumble about the choice in theories at the end is that I do not see what exactly I learned from the memories of the Vagabond at the end that would enable me to make the existentially minded decision to not focus so much on the impossible to change choice of the past, but rather to find the meaning in what is available now in the present, in what she has accomplished and what she can change. It said I was lacking just one evidence of betrayal, but nothing revealed in those memories was anything new that I hadn’t already heard from the Rake or inferred from the evidence discovered elsewhere. In fact, the Vagabond seemed wholeheartedly invested in the meaning of her caring, reforming actions, even with that moment of doubt as she saw his expression. The only thing I could think of was that you got the insight into her personality, life and motivations on the surface before she decided to come to the Neath, and indeed, the ending text seems to reflect her focusing more on that if you choose that theory. But if that’s the case, then it doesn’t really fit that it’s evidence of betrayal you are lacking, just more lover’s sacrifice, or an entirely new quality…say, the Melancholy of Privilege?
Still though, the fact I feel so strongly about it speaks well to the writing and to the conflicting nature of the choices and the weight of the consequences of those choices, which I know is your first and foremost goal at Failbetter! Well done, and hope you all have a good December~
