I am in the last couple chapters of The Apothecary, by Joan Fallon. So far the book is a 7 out of 10 because I am still stuck in the cycle of reading it. It is one of the few books that doesn’t seem like a chore to get to the end because of Fallon’s ability to keep the plot interesting. In the novel, Umar is accused of the murder of the Califa while hes just trying to investigate what happened and where the poison was bought from.
Umar stared at the tiny patch of sunlight on the wall of his cell; it would not be there for so long. Soon the sun would pass overhead and no more rays of sunshine would be able to enter the dark hole that has become his home; he would be left with the uniform gloom that was the only distinction he had between day and night. He had lost track of how long he’d been in there (pg 283).
In this short quotation at the beginning of chapter 30, we are shown that Umar has been in the cell for a very long time, so long that he has lost track of time and is almost going crazy whenever he doesn’t see the sun, because that is his only source of illumination in the small dark room he’s been kept in.