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I'm not so sure about that.

There's a true story, a case out of the 1980's, when some hundreds or low thousands of Hmong people were quietly evacuated from Laos as refugees from the Communist takeover.  (The French called them Montiagnards, and I apologize for my poor spelling.)  They had many problems adjusting to American culture.  Some problems were mostly comic with a whiff of tragedy, like trying to grow rice in living room carpets.  Others were more severe.

One young man of the transplanted Hmong took a shine to an American girl and tried to get her interest.  She had no interest in him, so he did what he would have done back home in Laos: he got together with a bunch of his male friends and they kidnapped her.  They helped him rape her, in order to 'claim' her.

Not understanding their crime under Western culture and American law, they let everyone know what they did.  It was not difficult to convict them.

No rapist from within Western culture would advertise his act, or expect it to be approved by society.  He will know that his act is regarded as deeply wrong, even if he feels justified in it.

Social workers who were trying to help the Hmong assimilate approached the victim and she allowed them to explain things.  In what must surely represent a case for sainthood, she spoke at sentencing after the conviction and asked the judge to imposed a sentence recognizing  the moral and cultural ignorance, a sentence of mercy (which is often harder than simple leniency).

The Hmong culture fulfilled the first and indispensible requirement for a culture: it allowed the Hmong to survive through the centuries, as individuals and as a people.  And if we look carefully, we can find that things like the Stockholm Syndrome are likewise essential to survival of individuals and the human species when only that lowest of cultural requirements is filled.

I hope by this time you are screaming "WE KNOW BETTER!"  Yes, we do.  Not all cultures are equally good and moral, even though some 'lower' cultures may emphasize virtues that we have largely forgotten, or that we revile (the kind of courage necessary to challenge  and defeat a desperate food animal, for instance, or to defeat a neighboring clan's aggression).

Some cultures are better than others.  But all cultures face that indispensible first requirement of self-perpetuation.  A culture is not, and cannot be, a suicide pact.  The only cultures we know are the ones that survived long enough for us to see them, or to see their artifacts.

If Kha has been compromised, what about the earlier adventures, in which Kha's company averted disaster?

Uh-huh.

Regarding the review: 'twas Lewellen, not Valharic, who spoke of breathing.

See discussion here.

Some writers use a lot of words, even though their pieces read very smoothly and swiftly.  Others write prose with few words that nonetheless seems very busy.

Word count is an imperfect measure, but it may be the best we have.  If your writing takes a lot of points to post, it should give your reviewers a relative lot of points, and so should be more attractive to them.

It could also be that a few 'suitable' women have been pushed at him and he's recoiled from their empty heads and hearts, and the experience has pushed him away from the whole business.  Catherine is not in their class, nor they in hers.  That could lead to him becoming more controlled.

Catherine's willingness to stand by her worthless brother might just make Matthew's fire burn all the hotter; this is virtue as he can appreciate it..

Matthew may have been pre-occupied by taking over his position, especially if the circumstances of his father's death were drawn-out or troubling.  He might also have been tied up with fighting and family politics.

Janet, even when Matthew and Black J were playing, it would have been natural for Matthew to have taken the lead.  Later, when John was widowed, the natural tendency to turn to the 'technical' aspects of his work and away from the human parts would increase that effect.

Well, he showed up in the first chapter.  We just don't know who he is.

Just when it looks like Matthew and Catherine have either reached stasis or are an arm's length length from Real Progress, the villain must strike again.

Or Insatiables?

And yet he played well with Matthew as a child.  Impatience could explain him not 'playing well' as an adult.  That, and not being able to live out adventures as he did when he was playing.

See Matthew training and wiping the floor with people--and schooling them, so it's clear they are not toadying.  (Maybe he walks in, then interrupts where necessary.)  Then have Black John critique Matthew privately, leading to a training session where Black John schools Matthew--soundly.  And the discussion turns to strategy, politics, and the human element, and it's clear that Black John is the eternal student who nonetheless asks hard questions.

(Maybe Black John lacks the patience to instruct the lesser students?  Or presses them to learn faster than they can?  He asks others to do things when he wants to husband his patience?)