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Post by Dante on Sept 15, 2015 14:21:06 GMT -5
That was more or less my reaction, too, Bee. It's a very exciting reading experience.
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Post by Agathological on Sept 15, 2015 14:41:51 GMT -5
Duly noted Dante; I shall, hopefully, see you all again soon.
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Post by B. on Sept 15, 2015 15:47:47 GMT -5
Okay, I've finished now. Like, wow. I feel a bit drained too, honestly. I need some time to collect my thoughts. It's a classic Snicket ending.
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Post by Dante on Sept 15, 2015 15:55:42 GMT -5
Interesting that that seems to be a common effect. It's a powerful book. It went places I didn't expect it to go.
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Post by B. on Sept 15, 2015 16:05:25 GMT -5
I think it's better than TPP, and on par with The End. Ultimately though, I don't think you can compare the two, they're both fantastic in their own right.
As a more science inclined individual I found the arrival of the beast and the travel of sound a bit...dubious/comical. But the function of the statue is interesting; I'm pretty sure Antenora originally had that idea all the way back in 2012.
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Post by Linda Rhaldeen on Sept 15, 2015 22:44:15 GMT -5
So jealous of y'all right now.
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Post by Dante on Sept 16, 2015 2:31:20 GMT -5
I think it's better than TPP, and on par with The End. Ultimately though, I don't think you can compare the two, they're both fantastic in their own right.
As a more science inclined individual I found the arrival of the beast and the travel of sound a bit...dubious/comical. But the function of the statue is interesting; I'm pretty sure Antenora originally had that idea all the way back in 2012. ?4, to my mind, is playing many of the same themes from TPP but turning them in a completely different direction. TPP is designed to be open-ended and ambiguous, but ?4 wraps up every single plot and character in a neat little bow and explains their role in the mystery. So I think it's better-executed by design, but you're right that both endings to a series are doing completely different things and trying to be completely different sorts of endings. Still, I do think that ?4 is going in very strong in terms of homaging TPP; the parallels are outrageous.
I was okay with the Bombinating Beast as presented, in that weird fauna have always been a part of the Lemony Snicket universe; just look at TRR. The Bombinating Beast is pretty carefully contextualised afterwards as just another animal, and not anything supernatural or mysthical; its sound works in a way that science has, emphasis mine, "not yet discovered". So I was okay with that, but it helped that I knew it was coming. You're quite right, Antenora had the "Bombinating kazoo" idea way back after the first book; top marks, frankly, and I'm hugely impressed.
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Sept 16, 2015 3:49:00 GMT -5
So jealous of y'all right now. They don't really have the book, of course. They're just bluffing. All those spoilers are probably empty. They have to be, for the sake of my not having exploded with jealousy yet. I'm very reassured by the reception you all seem to be giving it (seriously, some of those could be cover review quotes for the book ). I take that to mean that it does well at handling all of those major concerns we've had as a community - what will happen to Kit, will we meet Beatrice, what's the deal with Hangfire and Armstrong Feint, what's the deal with the BB and the Great Unknown, will we have any answers that interfere with the open ending of the original series, etc. If you've read the book, please don't reply to this without spoiler tags, since I don't want to be any more certain of anything than I already am. On that same note, when can the book be discussed without spoiler tags? I still have weeks before I can get my copy, so I might have to leave for a while.
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Post by flushbribe on Sept 16, 2015 3:52:48 GMT -5
They don't really have the book, of course. They're just bluffing. All those spoilers are probably empty. ...
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Post by Dante on Sept 16, 2015 4:09:21 GMT -5
On that same note, when can the book be discussed without spoiler tags? I still have weeks before I can get my copy, so I might have to leave for a while. Don't worry, spoiler tags will be required up to and beyond the official release date. I'm fully aware that most people won't be reading the book until the week following September 29th, and I'm not going to punish anyone for Egmont and Waterstones's mistake. They don't really have the book, of course. They're just bluffing. All those spoilers are probably empty. ...
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Sept 16, 2015 4:14:38 GMT -5
Much grateful, Dante, thanks. Not grateful for the spoilered replies, though! That's mean! xD
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Post by flushbribe on Sept 16, 2015 5:47:22 GMT -5
A question for those of you who've finished it... How do you feel about where we leave Moxie and the Bellerophons? That paragraph summing up the associates' fates was a bleak one. Were you hoping for anything other than the almost inevitable conclusion we got?
I'm going to give it another steady re-read in the next week or so. I'm still a little confused about Ellington and the statue, and why Hangfire didn't take hold of it during ?3, for example.
And re: the science of the real beast and the noise, I felt it was allowable to serve the moment of magic and terror. It was quite a palpable excitement getting hit with the shock of "no, it's real!" after Handler bluffing us off with the "it's just some octopi" explanation... My only nagging thought was about the speed of the train, and how far away we are from the fire pool at this point and the speed the beast would have had to travel (and the sound would have had to travel...) but I suppose that's just all part of the beast's mystery and power...
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Post by Dante on Sept 16, 2015 7:00:44 GMT -5
Not grateful for the spoilered replies, though! That's mean! xD You'll get to read them later, though. Won't you be surprised when you find out what they said. A question for those of you who've finished it... How do you feel about where we leave Moxie and the Bellerophons? That paragraph summing up the associates' fates was a bleak one. Were you hoping for anything other than the almost inevitable conclusion we got? Are you referring to page 288 - Moxie's mother never calling for her, the Bellerophons' father gone forever? I think it's left somewhat ambiguous whether Snicket has researched these matters on his own (they're things he "knew"), or whether they're matters of human nature, but at the very least, probably a lot of us guesed that this was more or less the case for Mr. Bellerophon. What Hangfire says earlier about Moxie's mother might suggest that she turned away from her profession in self-disgust and gone into a sort of hiding; her departure from the town does seem an awful lot like a cutting of ties with her family, and she certainly doesn't call for her daughter as soon as Moxie expected she would.
But if it's a matter of how I feel... I feel that loss is a crucial part of ATWQ, loss and learning to be yourself. So I think those conclusions regarding Moxie and the Bellerophons are perhaps natural; they're not called back to the past to be taken care of again, but rather have to stand up for themselves now. If they want to save the town, they have to rely on themselves to do it, and be adults themselves.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 16, 2015 7:49:13 GMT -5
Well, well, well.
All sorts of thoughts. This will be a bit random.
Everything within the main plot, the Hangfire/Stain'd plot, is explained as far as I can see, but there is still, in the spirit of The End, much that we do not know. The whole story involving Kit remains a mystery, with hints that we were not reading it rightly before - did Gifford and Ghede, after all, want Lemony to take part in the exploit at the museum? Kit's presence on the train suggests that what is happening in Stain'd is part of the wider story. When Olaf and Beatrice go to the edge of a mysterious forest, is this just a parallel, or will Lemony meet them when he emerges from the Clusterous Forest?
And we are never told what the S. stands for. Unless it stands for Solitude. ('Solitude' is of course the name of the tune, and it is by Duke Ellington.) Theodora does not die, as we thought might happen, though of course she may still be dead before the start of ASOUE.
One wonders just what will happen to Lemony next, and how his plans here can be reconciled with TUA and TBL.
The Bombinating Beast seems to be an amphibian, perhaps explaining the emphasis placed on such creatures in FU13; it can live in air, but grows in water. Is it the Great Unknown? I take it the answer is that we do not know. It was described in the first book as question-mark-like, so when a mysterious underwater question-mark-like being is found, it might be a BB; but equally it might be something else. If the GU is the BB, we have to re-evaluate The End; it means we do now know what happened to the Quagmires, and it isn't happy. But I don't think we do have to read it that way.
Stain'd is saved, and can grow again, making the ending less tragic than we might have thought. And the Swinster Pharmacy is still available to those wishing to travel between worlds. (I doubt that's what Lemony intends, but I think it's a nice theory.)
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Post by B. on Sept 16, 2015 10:44:46 GMT -5
I'm very reassured by the reception you all seem to be giving it (seriously, some of those could be cover review quotes for the book ). Oh my god. Oh my GOd. OH MY GOD. I would love to see this on the front of the book. A question for those of you who've finished it... How do you feel about where we leave Moxie and the Bellerophons? That paragraph summing up the associates' fates was a bleak one. Were you hoping for anything other than the almost inevitable conclusion we got?
I thought it was quite sad that they simply waved Snicket off more than anything, but I found it fitting and poignant. You can almost see how young Lemony's experiences have shaped the older Lemony we know in ATWQ. Where young Lemony is open-minded, fearless and witty, older Lemony is scared, nervous and a bit cynical.
And yes, like Hermes said, it's interesting now to think about where the early Beatrice letters falls in all of this. Some of the letters seem to have been written before ATWQ, yet young Lemony doesn't seem to think of Beatrice once...
Basically the endings of the main plot are all tied up nicely. Lots of things are still left highly ambiguous, there's many interwoven subplots and other goings on like those with Kit, left for us to decipher now. I think that's what makes it such a perfect ending, really.
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