Good catch there...
I did skip with allowances for I could not locate the book. And I really wanted to get the burning shore which probably left the most searing impression on me the most.
I do recall having a rather romantic fixation on 'Thor'. I am sure I loved SoT. But while reading the anders book, found myself having some vague reservations about Ruth.
Yes, the whole process is quite amazing. Both for the pleasure of reading the books again, but also having this bookmark of being a pre-adult when first encountering and now a firmly adult person now...but may be just about
So I only have the whole process of becoming an adult in between to measure myself (I think more than the books) with this reread.
I don't recall loathing centaine quite as much as a child.
[spoiler alert]
God how I loathed her...it was a a psychological window to my own prejudices? I am sure what we detest tells us more of who we are than even what we love...if not as much.
May be it is the remarkable power of WS that he did capture a teenagey character arc and now in my adulthood I am all judgemental? Worth pondering.
But in reading TBS my memory was quite alive until the lion tree. After that may be it was too traumatized by everything else, and conveniently forgot...but even before though, I could not make myself understand how she could abandon these old people who basically gave her life all over again sneak out like a goddamned teenager...but that is it...I feel that centaine never grew out of her spoilt brat and she didnot even seem one in France except when she inveigled stupid promises from Michael, with the harrowing experience of surviving in the ocean first and desert next, one imagines she might have learnt to appreciate life....but she does not.
She appreciates power rather than love. Yeah I did not like her at all. Infact was so shaken by how much I hated her...which seems such a strong emotion even on a fictional character...could not begrudge her any happiness in POTS...but WS had laid the seed of her monstrosity towards Lothar and her other son, and the environment and memory of her protectors, the bushmen, in TBS quite clearly.
Did anyone else read her so negatively?
And should I move this to a new thread on 'Centaine'?