56 pages • 1 hour read
Victoria AveyardGlass Sword
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 21-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary
The man’s name is Jon, and he tells the group their friends will return from their mission wounded but successful and that Mare’s group would have been captured if he hadn’t met them when he did. Julian Jacos is scheduled for execution, which Maven plans to use to draw Mare and Cal. Julian is being kept at a prison outfitted to hold Silvers and newbloods, and the queen plans to turn the newbloods into weapons. While the others don’t trust anything Jon says, Mare does, appreciating the irony that “I can’t trust my own friends, but here I am, allying myself with a cursed stranger” (301).
The group returns to the jet, where their friends arrive wounded, just as Jon predicted. Jon stays behind, telling Mare to fly immediately to a specific location and protect what she finds there if she wants to save her imprisoned friends. He also tells her to tell Farley “yes” when the moment comes and to follow her destiny, which is “to rise. And rise alone” (306).
Chapter 22 Summary
The group flies to the place Jon indicated, where they find Cameron Cole, a newblood who escaped from the prison where Julian’s being held. She’s on her way to free her brother from the troop of child soldiers and runs before Mare can convince her to join their group. Mare sends Shade to capture Cameron, hating herself because “I told myself I would give everyone a choice” (314).
Aboard the jet, Cameron and Mare argue—Mare insisting Cameron has to help them and Cameron refusing to play into Mare’s game of collecting people she deems special. Mare grows more and more agitated at Cameron’s words, losing control when Cameron says that Mare’s cause means someday “a newblood king will sit the throne you built him on the skulls of children” (319). Mare lashes out, expecting her lightning to tear apart the jet, but instead, her power fades to nothing. Cameron is just as terrified, not realizing her ability is silencing Mare, and she panics until Cal talks her into control. Mare’s ability floods back, and she offers Cameron a trade. In exchange for helping them break Julian out, they’ll “make you the deadliest person in the world” (321).
Chapter 23 Summary
Back at base, Cameron explains the prison—little light, Silent Stone in all the cells, and retractable catwalks between the different levels. Cal suggests freeing the Silvers as well as the newbloods, which sends the gathered into a rage, before he explains that the captured Silvers don’t believe the lies about Maven and would be an excellent distraction. He adds that Julian will be among the Silvers, not newbloods, and Mare jolts with the realization she’d forgotten that his “blood was not the same color as mine” (329). Cameron tries to discredit Mare, arguing that Mare will let the child soldiers die to rescue Silvers and newbloods. Kilorn, who hasn’t spoken to Mare in weeks, vouches for how many she’s saved, and his word carries enough weight to rally the group to the rescue mission.
After the meeting, Mare goes outside to practice with her lightning. Kilorn follows, and they talk for the first time in weeks. Mare misses the easy comfort she and Kilorn used to have but knows she can’t have it back. People need her, and instead of relying on Kilorn, she needs to be “someone who doesn’t rely on anything but her own strength” (336).
Chapter 24 Summary
The next three days leading up to the prison break are intense and exhausting. Cameron struggles to get her ability under control, and Mare worries nonstop about what will happen if they fail. On her way to find Cal, Mare runs into Shade and Farley coming from the sleeping quarters. Mare is annoyed her brother didn’t tell her about him and Farley being a couple, but her annoyance quickly gives way to happiness for them, “a foreign feeling in so many days of despair” (345).
Mare finds Cal glaring at a map of the prison he drew from Cameron’s description. He is beyond terrified and acts like a “stupefied flirt” until Mare confesses she’s just as scared. They both miss who they thought Maven was, and Cal fears that if Maven is at the prison, he won’t be able to stop himself from killing his brother. To distract him, Mare asks for information on the prison. Cal believes it’s a death trap until Mare points out that Silvers, including Cal, don’t know how to fight newblood powers they’ve never seen. Reinvigorated, Cal sends Mare back out to train with a kiss “that is far too short for my liking” (351).
Chapter 25 Summary
The flight to the prison is quiet and tense. Seeing Mare’s worried expression, Cal asks, “Who has the advantage?” (357), something the battle trainer in the palace would ask during training. The question is both jarring and soothing, and it lets Mare focus on the mission. When they get closer, Cal calls in with the radio code for Maven’s arrival, and the shapeshifter newblood takes on Maven’s appearance, which unsettles Mare.
The prison guards seem suspicious but don’t stop Mare’s group. The prison is as Cameron described: levels of cells with a constant scent of dankness and blood. Once inside, the prison guards ask if Maven’s lookalike would like to see the queen, and the entire group is horrified to learn Maven’s mother is there. The group’s reactions give them away, and they attack, taking down the Silvers in a few minutes. The shapeshifter changes to resemble the now-dead prison guard captain, relieving Mare more than she expected because “even a fake Maven is nearly too much for me to bear” (367).
In the first cell block, the group orders the metal-controller guards to raise the catwalks and get the prisoners out of their cells. Believing Maven is there, the guards do as ordered, and Mare’s group kills them when all the prisoners are out. Mare yells for the newbloods to fight because they are all getting out alive. She hates herself for the lie, but “if my deceit saves even one of them, it is worth the cost to my soul” (371).
Chapters 21-25 Analysis
The introduction of Jon and his information about Julian jumpstart the climactic sequence of the novel. Julian was rumored to be alive and possibly working with Maven, but Jon’s information offers the truth—that Julian refuses to help Maven or believe the lies manufactured by the crown. The prison where Julian is being held shows how quickly power will turn on its own to preserve itself. The imprisoned Silvers may have been loyal to Cal and his father, but they don’t trust Maven or the queen. As a result, Maven throws them in with the newbloods, even though they are Silvers and meant to be the power elite. This action suggests that Maven is paranoid of anyone who questions him and is willing to act swiftly to ensure his lies are not discovered.
Mare faces things about herself and her future in these chapters. In Chapter 21, Jon predicts she will rise alone, which triggers Mare’s fear that she is alone, even though friends and allies surround her. In Chapter 22, Mare tells Shade to capture Cameron, going back on her word to give all newbloods a choice about joining the resistance. In the past, Mare had no problem offering the choice because there wasn’t an urgent need. The timing and severity of the conflict were less clear, and losing newbloods didn’t feel like a detriment to the cause. Cameron is different, both because of her power and her knowledge. Cameron is the ultimate weapon against Silvers—able to shut down their powers. Unlike newbloods, Silvers have no experience living without their powers, which makes silencing more of a threat to them. Cameron also knows the layout and dangers of the prison, information Mare needs on a short timeline. If there were more time, Mare might have offered Cameron a choice, but with the deadline to break Julian out only days away, Mare is forced to make difficult decisions that take away freedom of choice. The timeline and urgency change how Mare operates, foregrounding another aspect of the theme of The Different People We Become. She must act differently based on the circumstances, even if this is not her preference and makes her uncomfortable.
In Chapter 22, Cameron says Mare will make way for a newblood king to sit on the kingdom’s throne. This observation calls to how power can corrupt anyone, even those trying to ensure no one has too much power. In the story world history, Silvers were a mutation of Reds, and their powers allowed them to oppress the Reds. Now in the story’s present, newbloods are more powerful than Silvers, and Cameron’s words suggest that Mare (or any other newblood) has the potential to become as power-hungry as the Silvers they work to unseat. The words trigger Mare’s anger and protective instincts. She wants to believe she is doing the right thing to help people, and Cameron’s words make her question whether her effort will result in a worse situation for Reds and Silvers alike. She also doesn’t want to believe she is capable of doing what the Silvers have done, and she gets so upset because she knows that she has such potential. Cameron continues her verbal attacks against Mare in Chapter 23, saying Mare cares only about newbloods and not the Red child soldiers. Cameron’s anger and fear make her volatile and desperate, and she says things she doesn’t truly believe because she doesn’t want to accept her newblood nature.
The entirety of Chapter 24 foreshadows the losses the group will sustain throughout the rest of the book. Cameron struggling with her silencing power foreshadows how Mare will end the book under a highly controlled silence as Maven’s prisoner. Shade and Farley are returning from the sleeping quarters because they snuck away to be intimate. This is the moment common in fantasy novels, where a couple experiences a final few moments of joy before one of them is killed. Mare’s learning that Farley and Shade are together seals Shade’s fate and foreshadows Farley being pregnant with his child, something that is only partially revealed by the end of the book. The strange flirtation between Mare and a frantic Cal shows Cal at what seems to be his worst. He is desperately searching for a way to make sure everyone gets out of the prison alive, and his inability to do so makes him want to just enjoy time with Mare because he fears he will lose her. This is both foreshadowing and irony—irony that he doesn’t lose her at the prison but does later on and foreshadowing the loss itself.
At the end of Chapter 24, Mare convinces Cal that the newblood powers give them an edge, and the reader sees the result of Cal’s planning in Chapter 25. The newbloods use their unique abilities, such as shapeshifting and Cameron’s silencing, to infiltrate the prison and easily dispatch the Silver guards. The element of surprise combined with powers the Silvers don’t understand symbolizes how having experience with something doesn’t mean a person completely understands it. The Silvers understand their own powers and those they’ve encountered from their fellows, but they have little or no experience with the newbloods, so they don’t know how to fight them.
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By Victoria Aveyard
