“Slyly I said, “So you do like him.”
Markel’s expression was pained. “He’s a familiar sort of stupid, that’s all,” he signed. “Like you at eighteen, but with better hair.”
― Foz Meadows, All the Hidden Paths
All The Hidden Paths picks up a few weeks after the end of A Strange and Stubborn Endurance. Still grieving after the events of the first book, Cae and Velasin are summoned to the capitol by the Asa, Tithena’s queen. Cae is the unwilling heir of his grandmother’s lands, title, and ruling seat in Tithena’s version of Parliament. Stoic as ever, he avoids grieving and opts to power through his pain by being “the strongest husband ever.” This results in him gradually alienating Velasin at the moment they need to present a united front at court.
Velasin is still dealing with the trauma of his assault in the first book. Which makes sense because all of this went down in a one month time period! These guys can’t get a break! Velasin is also still in shock that he can be married to a man and not expect to be demonized, discriminated against, or accosted because of it.
(As a side note, the author writes more about this in the Acknowledgments, including, “I can’t now remember what it was I watched or read that sparked the epiphany; only that something did, and I realised: this is a book about what happens after you come out.”)
The first book focused on Cae and Velasin learning to trust one another while attempting to avoid being assassinated. All The Hidden Paths introduces a brand new assassination plot. The political scheming of the Tithenai court is far more complex than that of Cae’s home city of Qi-Katai. Velasin’s attempts to soothe him introduce more complications. Meanwhile, Asrian, an agent from Ralia, is sent to the capitol to try to honeypot Velasin and Cae and hopefully break up their marriage.
There is a LOT going on in this book. As another reviewer commented, Cae was a bit flat in the first book, but now we get a bit more insight into his character as he copes with his own traumas. Velasin is still as stubborn as ever, but he tries to take care of Cae even when he is actively pushing him away.
This mystery is more interesting than that of the first book, and Asrien is a welcome chaos agent to the do-gooder combo of Cae and Velasin. I love those two idiots but I didn’t like how much time they spent apart as a result of injuries (constant injuries or exhaustion!), insecurity, court bullshit, and plain old avoidance. As usual, Markel (Velasin’s valet and best friend) forces these two idiots to talk and try to work out their issues verbally instead of twisting themselves into knots. They finally do figure it out and are rewarded with some satisfying smutty times, but it takes over 400 pages to get there. Despite this being another heavy-ass book, which is new enough to only be available in hardcover, I tore through it in three days.