Teres

- Tree Friend will then lead them back out into Achar and allow them to “re-establish themselves and the Avarinheim on the barren plains that [run] down to Widewall Bay”

I just realized, this is a bit of paradox, if you take into account everything we know about the Avar. They don't plant things, right? Well, if you're going to grow a forest, it has to start somewhere. You could theoretically wait for it to spread on its own, but unless you plant saplings to help it along, that could take centuries. No new trees for you!

I know I'm being facetious here, but it's fun to point out these little things to highlight just how stupid some of these plot points are, like them going extinct because they like to murder their own children.

- As we have seen already, the plains of Arcness and the Seagrass Plains are not barren at all.

I can let this slide, because if you come from a race that lives in a dense forest, you could easily view open plains as being barren, even when they're nowhere near empty.

- I think that could make for a quite interesting plot, if Douglass were willing to answer those questions. As it is… Douglass will ignore most of this, though we will also not be getting a full-scale reforestation.

Is anyone surprised that she never addresses what could actually be a really cool conflict? Anyone? Aaaaanyone at all? Those of you in the back? No? Didn't think so.

- I had not put much thought to that earlier, but Faraday being Tree Friend is a quite lucky break, because she does have quite some authority, and she is specifically royalty in Skarabost, the area where the Avar would first be coming into if they spread.

Not to mention that they somehow managed to find what is implied to be one of the only people who actually become sympathetic towards the Avar, and is willing to toss away everything she had been brought up to believe in what might be the fastest 180 I've ever seen a character do.

- Douglass needs to explain it a little better, I think.

Nah, she's too busy explaining and re-explaining things we already know, because she apparently thinks her readers have memories worse than a goldfish with Alzheimer's.

- In the body of the BattleAxe lies the “soul of an Icarii Enchanter”. Yes, Axis is stronger than the most powerful Enchanter; we get that he is totally Awesome, Douglass.

Case in point... Stop wanking over Axis, already! We all hate him, and we're not fooled by you insisting that he's actually the Best Thing Ever.

- what she thought was his arrogance caused by the Seneschal’s ignorance is actually the “natural demeanour of an Icarii Enchanter”.

So all of the Icarii Enchanters are arrogant assholes, then? I would not be surprised if this was true.

- The Avar, as wild as they were, abhorred physical violence, let alone murder; any brutal behaviour was extraordinarily rare among them.

THE EVISCERATED BUNNY BEGS TO DIFFER! I am never going to let that go. You can't tell me how peaceful someone is shortly after describing how they tore the still-beating heart out of an animal's chest.

- Then we have the suggestion that the scars are caused by “years of repeated vicious beatings”… which does not work at all. Beatings would simply not cause such narrow scars, nor would they look like this. This is clearly the result of cuts which got infected, so you need a better Red Herring, Douglass.

It makes me wonder if Douglass is interchanging 'beatings' and 'whippings'. Because if she were whipped, long, thin scars like that would be the result.