Post by Dante on Dec 5, 2019 4:37:51 GMT -5
I like the colour scheme for the illustrations and the cover, though Lemony's hand and foot do look somewhat out of proportion.
I enjoyed the way they handled the colour schemes overall, swapping the cover colour pairs for the second half of the series. Of course, a part of me thinks it's a shame that they couldn't cover all the permutations, but you know what they say about red and green.
‘“Is it more beastly to be a murderer or to let one go free?”’ Of course, by the end of the book, Lemony has done both.
I made just the same note.
‘“The most interesting things happen when we’re supposed to be in bed.”’ Isn’t there a quote in ASOUE about bedtime arriving just when things are getting really interesting? Or maybe it’s just in Horseradish.
TGG, p. 109. "It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting."
‘“Gifford and Ghede are not at all like me.”’ This could just be Lemony railing against the leadership in the older generation of VFD. But it could also imply they are on the other side of the schism. I mean, I don’t know if there is really enough evidence to support this, but the disagreement between Gifford/Ghede and Theodora/Qwerty is the closest thing we see to different factions of the organisation working against each other in this series.
My final conclusion is that they're actually on the same side as Lemony - or were, at least; they were just very bad at trying to help. Theodora, meanwhile, is merely clueless - as usual.
Again, I find the thread of the whereabouts of the Bombinating Beast sculpture very confusing, and the existence of the decoy only adds to this.
There's definitely a lot of confusion regarding what secret contents may or may not be in Ellington's bag, but as far as I can tell, the Bombinating Beast was in the second secret compartment beneath the first secret compartment for the entirety of ?3 and up to the denouement of ?4.
Sally Murphy really isn’t a very good actress. Or, at least, she isn’t very good at thinking on her feet and staying calm under duress, which I guess isn’t exactly the same thing, but you’d think such a famous local legend would be able to pull off a more convincing performance.
I think there were missed opportunities with Sally Murphy and very little about her status and actions in ?4 makes sense; I cover this more extensively in my notes, but the Inhumane Society appears to believe that she's dead, and it's not clear how she could have liberated Lizzie Haines.
Walleye, Pocket and Eratosthenes sort of remind me of Ishmael, they way they want to keep the peace at any cost.
I don't know. Ishmael wanted to preserve only his own vision of peace, where Walleye, Pocket, and Eratosthenes are terrified pawns. The librarians are the sort of people who would ahve been cowed by Ishmael, I think.