Thoughts...
Chapter 41
You asked after the last Vivenna chapter whether we thought her path was too clichéd. I said no then, but this chapter did feel a little clichéd to me, melodramatic in a way very reminiscent of Les Miserables: she's on the streets, begging, she sells her hair, considers prostitution, etc. Partly I think it's a matter of show vs. tell -- you tell us that she sold her hair, that she was beaten, but all we see is her begging and then taking that single dramatic step towards the whores -- it ends up feeling overly dramatic because we didn't experience any of the drama that led up to it. Probably I'm just not sympathetic enough, but because we haven't walked those miles with her, I end up feeling more that she's a wuss rather than empathy for her despair. Granted it's always easier to say these things when you're sitting comfortably indoors and well-fed, but it seems to me that Vivenna has enough Breaths that she could use them to make money legitimately or illegitimately, steal things, break into places, defend herself, etc. Plus if fed, she could sell her hair once or twice a day. Or at least try to get a message to someone (you'd think a civilization with the ability to Awaken/Command would have a good postal system). Instead, she just slinks off and waits to be a victim.
I think the bottom line is that I just don't care for her as a character, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt. She's always been too passive for me to feel much for her. Maybe, hopefully, that's a desired reaction to her. (And I did think that maybe she's acting this way because she isn't carrying any Breath now, that this is what being a Drab is like, but she always had this passive element to her character, so it's not noticeably different.)
I did like that we got to see Nightblood "in action" in this chapter, you've been building up to that and it felt like a good time to remove that veil.
Magic Etc.
One thing that's been a little vague are the overall levels of "technology," societal organization and intellectual sophistication of this world, of Hallendren in particular. That's partly why "BioChroma" does feel a little out of place: it sounds alien to and more sophisticated than the surrounding words. There may be explanations for this that would be interesting to read about: maybe the society is actually in decline since the Manywar and the word is a remnant of that past age of scholarship? Have they really advanced at all since the Manywar? I sometimes picture Hallendren as an over-ripe fruit, past its prime: big, bright and colorful on the outside but gone squishy and bad on the inside. Or yeah, maybe it's just a word that select people use. That might be something interesting to explore with the priests vs. the mercenaries, since at least in our Middle Ages, it was the priests who were the at center of most scholarship (indeed, the maintainers of Greek learning) yet here it's been the mercenary chapters that have provided much of the exposition on BioChromatic metaphysics.
Doesn't Siri comment on the "Vessel" title earlier in the book, in an early conversation with Bluefingers or Tridees? I thought she did, but it may just be my imagination filling in the blanks. (Edit: I did a quick search and I was wrong, it never is explicitly stated what the term means, although I always understood it because Bluefingers does comment very early on that Siri's sole duty is to provide an heir.)
MattD