Cane23

You could have easily split this chapter into three or four parts - it would make for a faster read and a “longer” story. Nevertheless, amazing characters and a great plot, as always!

You weren’t wrong - because in a way, it did… just not the “lovers” closer!

We don’t really know who Ben is - but the real issue is that it seems Ben doesn’t know either, even though he’s convinced he does. Some of his discoveries might end up surprising him. The dynamic between Ben and Kieran is incredibly intriguing. In creating him, Ben may have wanted a mirror - but now I wonder if he actually created a The Picture of Dorian Gray. Does Kieran’s dehumanization go hand in hand with Ben’s humanization? And does leaving Rylie mean Kieran is cutting ties with his humanity, while Ben, unwillingly taking Rylie, begins searching for his own, beneath the mask of a monster?

Oh...the 'abomination' - the ugliest word in English language!

How different would this audience look if Ben brought Kieran to meet his parents? Cold, distant, reserved - a cold-blooded performance. Julian would probably die of boredom! 😁

Oh my… I’m one of the people who got completely fooled 😄 you’re good - really good! At the start, though, I was thinking, “wait… why is only one groom buying a suit? what a selfish jerk!” 😂

Nah, he’s more the old, perverted voyeur type! 😂

I’ll borrow the words of another GA author, CasualW - Magnificent and terrifying! I finished Book 1 late last night - well, more accurately, early this morning. I simply couldn’t put it down. It’s wonderful, dark, bizarre, and deeply unsettling. Violent... in the way it gets under your skin. It disturbs you, but in a way that wakes you up and makes you think. In its own way, it IS a love story - just not the one we might have expected. I’m especially struck by the difference in dynamics between Riley and Ben compared to Kieran and Ben, and by who Ben becomes with each of them. (Ben has never talked so much as he does with Riley! 😁) Riley is such a beautiful soul. This book makes it clear why he’s the “heart” of the story - not because he’s emotional, but because he’s human. While the others try to bury their humanity, seeing it as a weakness, Riley wears his openly. A beautiful character - pure in all his imperfection.

So, we can expect Taylor’s big comeback.

I agree. After Book 1, Tyler’s role gradually fades, and now he’s basically gone. And you’re right- more or less, all he ended up doing was making tea and supporting his boyfriend in whatever he had going on with Charlie. To be honest, I still think Book 1 is the best. I really miss the high school adventures of Taine and Charlie. Book 2 was probably the funniest one, but after that, we are stuck in demon bureaucracy. 😁

Oh, I'm sure they're going to put more than the homo in eroticism... Not just Ali - all of them! 😉

Still too early to draw conclusions, or even make predictions, but Ali seems to be playing his role and wearing his mask perfectly. He didn’t come to Lawrence’s room by accident.

For a long time, this hasn’t been just a simple triangle. Tyler is legally married to Taine; Lynix is legally married to Pip; and Simon is basically shared between Pip and Lynix and legally married to Matt (as confirmed in a previous book). Charlie is Taine’s pet, but also a Sovereign Revenant. Charlie and Taine co-parent and regularly have sex, yet Tyler is still, somehow, considered Taine’s soulmate - and both Taine and Pip are very supportive of Charlie and Taine. And all of this is happening while Taine’s ex is still around as a ghost… even if not visible. Did I miss something...?!?

Yeah, this is an even bigger emotional mess than the pink demon dust in book 2. 🤪

You’ve dragged me into reading hell @Topher Lydon... I had no idea this was Book 2, so I started with The Estate and just hoped I’d figure things out as I went along. The first book kept insisting “this is not a love story” … but this one doesn’t say anything - so now I’m suspicious. Is this the love story?

And paradoxically, I find him somewhat likable in this chapter, even though he’s described as a sociopath - someone supposedly without feelings or a conscience.

“What does your conscience say? — ‘You should become the person you are.’” ― Friedrich Nietzsche For Nietzsche, this isn’t about becoming socially better. It’s about stripping away illusion, fear, and borrowed values until what remains is unmistakably yours - and then owning it. That is exactly what Daniel, the main protagonist, does in this novel. Because literature doesn’t offer salvation - it offers clarity. It shows us how someone can come undone… and still move forward. Still choose love. Or solitude. Or silence. ( @CasualWanderer82 'A Bad Education') The Malady of Hunger is not a story about desire, sex, or obsession - it is about the pain of being disconnected from ourselves, and the difficult, often frightening process of becoming whole. But becoming whole doesn't mean a completion - the hunger is never completely satisfied. As @CasualWanderer82 writes in ABE: “I don’t know if anyone becomes complete,” … “But I do believe suffering reveals the architecture beneath the façade. And sometimes, what we find underneath… is more beautiful than what we had before.” If in A Bad Education the author offers a diagnosis - “Desire isn't always a fire that consumes. Sometimes it's a slow, cold hunger that devours you from the inside.” - then this novel offers a way forward. You don’t cure the malady of hunger. You don’t satisfy it or escape it - you become the person who can live with it. The cure for the malady is the malady itself. The hunger is the medicine. The hunger drove me through the glass. (@CasualWanderer82 'The Malady of Hunger'). So why read this book? Because it is “beautiful,” … “sharp. Honest. And just the right kind of cruel.” (@CasualWanderer82 'A Bad Education').

I understand why they oppose the financial demand (souls or whatever), but I’m not sure about their position on Cecil - do they want to keep him, or give him back to his mother?

Is Ben mildly OCD - or maybe not so mild? At first, I thought he was just a kind of “Princess and the Pea” type in beast’s clothing… but there’s something more to him.

Maybe Cecil is not so bad...he could have been Damian!

Thanx but...I think I need to slightly ruin that image 😄 Now that the story is finished, I have to admit I wasn’t such a great mind reader after all - I got a couple of important things completely wrong. First, Daniel and Malik. I really thought it would end with that distant, almost ghost-like moment...just seeing him with a wife and children. I didn’t expect Daniel to go all the way, to actually meet him, step into his life, and have that final encounter. But I realized that my own discomfort with that didn’t matter. It mattered to Daniel. And, honestly, it mattered to the author too - because that hotel scene felt like the moment where Daniel’s soul is pulled out of him and put on the page. One of the most striking “mirror” scenes I’ve read. And I completely misread Margot. Before her conversation with Nora, I saw her as almost Shakespearean or Faulkner-like...a kind of Lady Macbeth figure, someone orchestrating everything from above. But she turned out to be something much more human… and much sadder. Not the architect, but someone trying to preserve a structure that was already built around her. So yes - less mind reading, more learning along the way 🙂

I love this because it shows something we need... Daniel, well...the word “happy” is almost the wrong instrument to measure Daniel with. Happiness implies satisfaction, stability, some sense of completion... but Daniel’s state is clarity + acceptance + ongoing hunger. He explicitly says, “It’ll never be satisfied.” That line alone prevents a conventional reading of happiness, so, no - Daniel is not “happy” in the usual sense. At the end, Daniel is not at peace, he is not fulfilled and not complete. But he is aligned with himself, there is no longer internal lying, self-betrayal and pretending to want what he doesn’t want. That alignment can feel better than happiness, in a certain sense - because it’s real. There is also the price - no traditional relationship, no stable exclusivity...likely no family in the conventional sense. But the deeper price is not social - it’s existential, he gives up the possibility of being completed by another person. Most people build their lives around that hope - Daniel explicitly rejects it. Finally, we can say - Daniel is not happy, but he is no longer lost...and that may be the most he can reach without betraying himself. In previous chapter, Alec asks Daniel, "Are you happy". Daniel answers, “I’m learning to live” ... It's process without clarity. In final scene Daniel says “This is who I am” ... It's clarity without resolution. So, his road is from uncertain existence to conscious existence. Daniel doesn’t arrive at happiness - he arrives at a form of life he can consciously choose, fully aware of its limits and its cost, and that’s why the ending feels both grounded (no illusion) and unsettling (no promise of fulfillment).

There's a protagonist hidden in every sidekick! Riley has this amazing quality, a sort of survival mode, where he keeps you guessing if he’s being serious, joking, or just messing with you.

Charlie was a pretty reckless teenager - I hope Cecil is the only baby arriving at Hartly’s! 😜