Distracting Plot Holes in The Long Price Quartet (Minor Spoilers)

[Hobonicus]

I want to enjoy The Long Price Quartet, I really truly do. The prose, world, and personalities are brilliant and nuanced, but I'm constantly distracted by an awkward plot.

I'm only at the one third mark of A Shadow in Summer, so I realize this may be premature, but I'm worried that there are already multiple issues with the story. It feels artificially complicated, with everyone making wildly unrealistic decisions.

The scheme to remove the andat Seedless is needlessly complex. Why not just kill the poet and be done with it? Marchat already offered to have someone killed, Seedless clearly has no qualms with murder, especially considering how much he hates the poet. A poet, I might add, who is completely unprotected (we're talking about one man who can make or break the entire city's economy... why is he unprotected?) and spends his nights getting wasted in some seedy part of the city.

Murder seems a much easier solution than transporting a pregnant foreigner to the city, getting lucky that Amat (who could speak the girl's language) wouldn't be present for any of it, and after weeks of preparing, finally tricking everyone into aborting a baby on the chance that it emotionally breaks the poet enough to release the andat.

Then for some reason the poet's depression and need for aid from the Dai-kvo is treated like a secret between three main characters. So Otah, a man who presumably will be killed when the Dai-kvo recognizes him, decides to go ask the Dai-kvo's advice. Why hide this from their superiors? Why not just send a courier? Why is it all a secret when aiding a faltering poet is probably one of the Dai-kvo's normal functions?

All this adds up to feel like a story full of forced, artificial drama. None of these situations occur organically. I've heard the books only get better but I'm afraid of the story building on and continuing to create situations that only exist because the author said so. Am I missing something? Please tell me I am. Is this all explained away later?

[williamjm]

This has been brought up in The Long Price thread in the past. I think you do have some points in terms of the lack of security surrounding Heshai (even if they're just to stop accidents happening). However, I think it does make sense that the Galts don't just have him assassinated. Their problem is that if Heshai is murdered then the Khaiem will almost certainly blame them since they would have the most to gain and take action against them. I think at the start of the series it can be difficult to grasp just how terrified the Galts are of the Khaiem's andats and just how powerful the andat are, some andats are capable of destroying the entire Galt continent with a single thought so they're not going to want to do anything that could be linked back to them. Therefore if they want to get rid of Heshai then arranging something that doesn't look like an obvious crime seems a bit less suicidal than arranging an assassination, although I still think it's extremely reckless given that the price of being exposed could be their civilisation being wiped out.