LogFAQs > #901335546

Apothecarius Argentum, Vol. 5 (of 6)
https://imgur.com/CMAModq
(oh huh didn't realize that it mirrors)

Zantak, the former royal apothecary and head of the guild, is trying to save his business by forbidding the marketplace to sell him ingredients, and by opening a cafe and trying to make his medicines more pleasing. Primula sets up a medicinal "duel" between the two, and tells Argent to consider Soda's future and stop focusing so much on his own status as a basilisk. Argent wins when Zantak rushes too much and makes a mistake, but afterwards Argent is unable to get a kid to take his bad-tasting medicine, so they both learn a lesson. We'll keep doing these challenges for the title of royal apothecary, and Argent and the guild are going to start exchanging ideas and knowledge.

Garna has been rehired as head chef, entertainingly enough. We get his backstory- he wasn't that into cooking until his Lady really liked his desserts....and then got fat and fired him. She later got addicted to poppy-spiked wine, as did her entire country, which tore itself apart, and that's how he started with poisons. Anyway, his old contacts still want Primula dead, but he refuses, and has in fact been tasting the food to screen out poisons they'd been sneaking in. It's caught up with him, and he ain't doing too hot. He tries to kill himself before the messenger assassin guy can, but turns out Argent had slipped him some antidote. Also, Primula has been working on her cooking for several books now, and has improved to "not that good." She wants people, and Garna especially, to enjoy her cooking. Also, Garna ships Argent and Primula just as hard as everybody else.

And then, acting on info from Garna and Prince Daniel, Argent decides to go to Castoria to seek a cure for himself. The King forbids Argent to return, prompting him to confess to Primula before he leaves. But before Castoria, Argent (with Soda tagging along) swings by to check on Lorca et al and help them with the dye industry. The takeaways here are that basilisks are hunted in Castoria now (Argent cuts and dyes his trademark silver hair as a disguise) and Corda is back, supposedly working with the comically inept villainous prince of Kent but actually just trying to destroy Kent.

My rating: 9/10
More development for characters I like, and setting up for the next big arc....but we only have one more volume, so I am not holding my breath to resolve everything from said arc.
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Look at all those chickens
There's a hunger in the land, there's a reckoning still to be reckoned