namorgan 's review for:

The Summer Palace by C.S. Pacat

4.0

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a sweet epilogue. the one thing I disliked was

Spoiler

Laurent telling the story of Auguste and Damen's fight at Marlas and saying Damen dropped his sword and Auguste gave him time to pick it up because he was noble or something. I feel like that little bit of info should have been mentioned either in the main trilogy or not at all. The Damen x Auguste fight is so important to the main story, it feels strange to be added into a short. (unless it was thrown into the main books and I missed it? I don't remember reading something like that though) Damen won because he is a skilled fighter and Auguste, though just as skilled, had been tired from battle. Idk why that detail cheapened the fight for me. Maybe because we see in three books how skilled Damen is at fighting, in a class of his own, so when I read he dropped his sword in their fight I was like huh? I know he was younger then, but it still felt like a weird detail to add. It felt randomly thrown in to give Auguste more credit maybe? And I don't know much about sword fighting but if you're in a war w/ someone idk why you'd deliberately let your opponent pick their sword back up especially when you know you're tired of fighting and your opponent is fresh. Like I know your fair and just or whatever but that just seems stupid to do lol