YMMV / Railsea

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The scene where Naphi tries to follow Mocker-Jack down a sinkhole. Many people see it as simply a sign of her insanity, believing she could kill a giant mole—that is currently on fire—with a knife. However, if you think about it, it isn't entirely unlikely that the captain was knowingly trying to off herself; after all, she was pretty obviously derailed by the mutiny earlier, & now she's just watched her philosophy get murdered by something that was not her.
  • Was overthrowing Naphi really Mbenday's intention? It's equally possible that he only wanted her to step down temporarily, as she was very clearly mentally unstable and at risk of hurting or killing herself. If one looks closely, the violent-ish mutiny was entirely done by Vurinam or by Vurinam's suggestion, & Mbenday didn't take part. In other words, he could have simply been trying to protect Naphi only to have his words twisted & used to almost-violently overthrow her & bring her to the point of tring to kill herself. Made even worse by the fact that there's no indication in the book that Mbenday disliked Naphi at all—but after the mutiny, she has no way of knowing if he didn't mean to start it. Basically, Vurinam could have just emotionally destroyed both commending officers of the Medes in one blow by using one of them to overthrow the other & thus avoid blame himself. If this were to be true, than the character of Vurinam becomes a lot darker.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Two of Dero's parents die & he faces nothing but problems for several weeks, & he is still very silly & optimistic.
  • Two of Caldera's parents die & she faces nothing but problems for several weeks, & she is still very optimistic in general.
  • To be fair, they'd had a couple of years to get used to the high probability that their missing parents were dead.