Mattyboy

Argh. Third time will have to be the charm with Urvan. But excellent progress and action. Seeri is fun, I hope they didn't ask her too many questions.

Missy on the wing will keep this safe, tonight, I figure

Yay, we're back in business. Um, Kenan's friends need a briefing that Asher's family doesn't wish him well.

I hope Nathan's dick is alright. That was a bit out of character for him.

“Well maybe she sees that you’re about to become a badass instead of a bible hugger,” Whoa, there's a line that digs right down to the foundations.

Yay showdown time! also excited for Luke's Monday plans

Jamie needs to research some ancient knowledge with the lens. The magick might be be a bit complicated, but I understand the ancients had entire industries based on the transformation of powerful villains into cute plushies.

"most of them are frogs and remain frogs. Kiss them all you want, they won’t turn into princes.” Otis nodded dutifully. He had no idea what Missy meant by that" - This is interesting. There were some early guesses that Otis has been homeschooled or not-schooled or had some sort of weird non-standard education. That's a pretty canonical reference to not get - that plus the business with good grandma but terrible mother seem both fairy-tale-ish and like something important. And Otis evaded "what's up with your eye" with both of them, who he trusts moderately now. But we seem to be moving along nicely, and Otis seems to be in better order than he was at the start.

Otis! Haven't heard from you this week! 😈

If "WE" are the ancients, the idea of a well-engineered high-speed rail system is one of the most fantastical and least realistic parts of the story.

I'd suspected what the lawyer said, that Diego's in pretty good legal shape, unless Calvin has an unexpected angle. I'm wondering now if Joyce left something in trust for the boys, in some way that Donna couldn't get at it, but that there actually is something that Calvin thinks he can get his hands on. Good job - Diego briefing Steve, but Bryan's phone still awaits! (I thought we'd get there in this chapter)

This is an empty threat, I think. Even Connor can see that the very likely follow-up questions about why Dex was kicking in the door aren't a conversation he wants. 😈👿

An exciting day! Haven't been very impressed with Dean Preston so far, but I hope he'll feel he should enforce the "no-kidnapping" rule. Dammit @J.El, ZoeDex needs a chance to be Amazing. John is not the answer. Weird about Connor's crew and the catboy... I suppose Slicky's identity would be a delectable Xpress snack, but I don't see that it has much to do with SHIT's party-pooping. 😈👿

"The response was immediate: a swirl of colors throughout his thoughts, and the sense of extreme good humor, and then pages were turning again in his thoughts." The above line is @Geron Kees's description of Jamie using the lens, but "sense of extreme good humor, and then pages were turning again" also makes an excellent description of the reading experience of each chapter.

The sedatives were one thing, but then the kid tampered with his vowels!

Wynderful! Well done about the sensory overload on Wyn's hearing yes, Wren will not be happy with this. A nasty end for Helva, but she had it coming.

I know, but poor Sedwick!

It's been a while since the team has thought of poor Raimey and the short short prince. The prince is doing without, and so Raimey and Morty and Miles are doing without. It's all very well for Jamie and Snave to be founding entire new schools of magickal knowledge, but we must think of poor Sedwick, who seems many chapters away from a climactic resolution to his problem.

"To know that the great rockets soared into the sky four times each day on some mission he could not understand, and had likely been doing so for millennia of time, was nearly overpowering to contemplate. The machines of the ancients displayed a devotion to duty and a resistance to failure that simply could not miss to instill wonder. " well, wonder indeed, and excellent that the plumbing is also operational and presumably self-repairing. But that the rockets are now (probably) purposeless is not yet quite in Jamie's grasp. So, did the shop in town get locked into time-stasis? Are the unwatered plants and the untended willowisps getting out of hand? The exchanges of knowledge with Irik do seem to have reached the status of quite a fine payment to it (him?).

@Laura S. Fox has a story you'll be interested in, then, I expect

Good, good, good. But Zoey might like a little companionship. Didn't Dex come up as a maybe about 30 chapters ago?

A short story from the first Thieves' World book was about a mage whose power came from a secret nobody knew. A bit obscure by now, but it let me guess without it being a spoiler if I was right.

And excellent that Snave doesn't detect anything bad about Flitch or the dark lens. And the boys certainly have a card to play if they have to answer later about neglecting the shop and their instruction to not get up to too much trouble.

I'm kinda guessing it's like the Secret of the Blue Star, but I guess we'll see.

"full of echoes," indeed May 3 : a tiny perfect sentence.