Jaycee Woods

Formatting Ch 32 “The Feint” of Boudica and The Butcher, I read unveiling of The Butcher’s No Quarter Flag.

Good bones in that draft. After the “Squared Away” chapter, Boudica was reconciled to focusing on her mission to save Gideon from the effects of his choices in the war on his soul.

While with him in the meeting tent, she is focused on him and her love of him while all the war talk between the general and his staff occurs. The contrast is a bit jarring so as I am reading I challenge myself, “Really? This is a bit much.” But then the twist, Miles and Ella enter to give the flag to Gideon, the general, as a gift made from fabric confiscated after the battle at the smuggler’s camp. The flag pleases both Gideon and his XO Cyrus, but it horrifies Boudica as the flag symbolizes what his choices in the war had done to Gideon.

Instead of her confidence and resolve from the last chapter making her challenge easy, she has to confront a new internal challenge to overcome. The sudden evident shift in Boudica was essential and would have been less effective if she hadn’t been ignoring the war around her before that moment.

With women there is that stereotypical moment begging for validation, when she asks the guy essentially, “Why do you like me? Cuz I know all my own faults that I try to hide from the world.” Gideon’s response to Boudica on that question was her courage. They met on the battlefield; as her comrades were falling or fleeing, she charged right at him swinging her rifle like a club because she had no ammo, then he knocked her ass out cold, almost killing her by accident. Asclepia is more intelligent. Olga is wiser. Gideon’s late wife was more beautiful and taller. In overcoming her challenge, courage is the essential attribute that Boudica needed in this story that differentiated her so she would succeed.