The War Quadrants are an excellent summary of the approach to war in this book. If it helps, The Persian Boy is “brutal and glorious, but mostly for other people, and maybe at some point we could possibly consider not-war as a possibility for a bit, maybe?”

The Oedipus kink is SO STRONG. (I have only read extracts of Return To Night, but they were the most Oedipal extracts, unless the rest of the book is equally so, in which case… yeah.) Though I must consider in this case whether Alexander has Mary’s kink or if Mary has Alexander’s, because in addition to the one Extreme Mother Situation he was born with he then picked up a couple more Mother Situations on the road…