I loved this book but it did play with my feelings. I feel a bit of grieve towards the older gendarme Odile but at the same time I'm happy that she got out of her misery. By dying yes, but also by gifting herself for a better life ( and edme's life of course ).
Also, there's the " the pira's won't come a second time " because of the change which means she will not get into the vetting program in the ouest 1 nor befriend Edme and Alain...I'm curious about what how that Odile would look like. That could mean that the ouest 1 is NOT the replica of the present which would actually be an issue in case of visits ( e.g. Odile the conseiller approves for a visit to the ouest but the visitor doesn't marry their late on because Odile not - conseiller of the ouest interferred, so the visitor visits someone they don't know ? )
Some people just are less proactive than others or think outside of our box so that did not surprise me that much. Like some people are depressed, sad but may happen when you see your close friend die and you knew you could prevent it.
I think Odile was severly impacted by her experiences - growing with a single mother that wanted to use her to accomplish her own social climbing, being left out and harassed at school, getting valued only trough her misencounter with the piras ( her getting in the vetting only because of that accident ),...and after edme's death she didn’t knew how to grasp the sense of the life right.
I asked myself if she didn't feel accomplice of edme's death - he would probably be alive if she hadn't gotten jealous and everything. And accomplice because she knew and would always know if she won the vetting, like the conseil did for edme. She would have known for the next death, etc
So her way out was to run away.
Also, life seems pretty hellish for the gendarms, so as the only woman there, please, she got the right to be upset.
In the end, wanting as a reader for Odile to act out and go change her past is judging the conseil's rethoric as propaganda- and we all know it's easy to fall in line with rules so properly told. No gendarms would have helped Alain out, no conseillers would have helped Lucie save herself : Odile is not proactive because she's not a hero in a dramatic novel but a citizen of a ruled valley.
