Well, that one quote was. There rest wasn't very funny.

Anyway, John Manuelito. I wonder if that will be Alex's adventure this year. I mean, it's only halftime, that's a little early ... chasing John Manuelito through the last half of the book? Although, how does this work again.

Spoiler

One step = seven leagues if you're literal, that's like, 35 km. You'd need only 1,000 steps to walk once around the earth :mrgreen: Alex could be in Charmbridge now and anywhere else minutes later. I kinda think that's a little overpowered >_>

Edit: Seriously? As I said, I like it way more than Claudia being her sister. It's not funny at all. Her mother is a vegetable :/

 

Damn, I leave for two days and ... Alex's mom is a cat. A cat I would have sworn was male until this chapter.

Ok, so... I'm of two minds about this as a reader.

On the one hand I'm going WTF 4 SRS? NO WAI. Because seriously, this is weird and it really did come out of the blue as far as I can tell. Yes it ties in with the two Grimm sisters haven both taken an interest in Alex up to this point, but there were also other reasons for that (her headmaster, investigation into her father, etc.). Yes it explains why Galen got the amount of screentime that she did, but I wrote that off to showing an example of how a familiar could behave. It all just seems too coincidental though, somehow.

On the other hand, it makes sense in-universe where it doesn't make sense looking at it objectively. If you take it from Alex's perspective then yes, of course if all of this happened to her mother then it would make some sense for the situation to have worked out as it did. Hecate is more comfortable as a cat, etc. It's only as an objective reader that the whole scenario grates on me slightly.

But it is interesting as hell. Really looking forward to Monday's update!

Apart from that though... I am not sure I like Alex heading off to find John (it isn't said straight out that that is where she's going, but I thought it heavily implied). I guess I just don't understand her obsession with him, though I know she is wary.

In Book 1 we had Alex worrying about someone trying to kill her while discovering who her father was. In Book 2 we had the whole plot revolving around Max and the Lands Below, and like Book 1 Alex had a clear, believable reason for the things she did. The same is true of the third book, where she is obsessing over Max's death.

But it seems to me that this thing with John isn't as solid a motive as any of those other things. He has tried to kill her, sure, but I have trouble envisioning Alex being so crazy as to march off in search of him when she knows he's stronger than she is. That's a bit rash even for Alex (and she is as rash as they come). The driving motive that she had for helping Max, or trying to treat with Death, just doesn't seem to be here as much.

For me anyway. But maybe she's going somewhere else! Like to see the King family (doubtful, since Mrs. King would just send her back to school), or to find her father, or to see Harry Potter.

Speaking of Harry Potter. I rarely think about him when I'm reading AQ, but I have to admit that if he was going to show up at all I'd expect it to be in relation to The Most Deathly Power. Given all the stuff with the Deathly Hallows that he went through he'd have a bit of overlap there. (But I don't expect him to make an appearance, as much fun potential as it has)

Anyway! Looking forward to the next bit. ^^

 

Wait. I haven't read the new chapter, since I'll probably wait until the story is completed now (assuming this is the beginning of the finale), but why isn't she using the seven league boots? If they are real honest-to-god seven league boots, she should be there in five minutes. If they aren't, this changes, of course, but I don't think that is ever said, and even so, then what are they? What do the boots actually do?

 

Ok, newest chapter... Oh, and I'll use spoiler tags for anything in the newest chapter, but my first few comments are about the story up until now. Don't want to spoil things for you guys -- though why wait til it's finished Sesc? Hm, unless you think it's nearing completion, but I thought we still had a good bit of school left to go this year.

I read that part of the chapter to mean that her feet were cold, not that the distance was so long she needed magically enhanced walking boots.

Something that no one has mentioned -- a few chapters ago Alex did some spell, I think it was Doggerel verse, to find her wand. I read the part as giving her some kind of extra connection to Charlie, so that she knew what he was doing somehow without actually seeing him. I'm not sure if I read that wrong, but it's been in the back of my mind. Now with Charlie and Alex probably splitting ways I am expecting that to be expounded upon, unless I read it wrong.

Was John somehow responsible for what happened to Bonnie? I didn't think so, but I could have forgotten. If so that might help with some of my concerns in the previous post -- Alex is determined to find him b/c he keeps missing her and hurting her friends. That I could at least understand on her part.

I think Alex was really rather mean to head off so shortly after talking to Quimley and telling him she didn't intend to go immediately off and find John. She usually tends to at least put up a pretence of things with her Elf friends.

Ok, current chapter:

Spoiler

Looks like I might have been right about Charlie, unless that was just a dream... but I don't think so.

Apparently if Alex's boots can cover distance quickly she doesn't know about it -- she's wondering how to cross 20-30 miles of desert. ...but why isn't she wearing them? The hag was wearing them earlier and walking normally, so it's not like she'd have to take giant league-covering steps, especially if she doesn't know that there's anything special about them.

Argh, what am I trying to say? If she doesn't know that the boots can cover ground quickly, then (1) why did she bring them and (2) if she's not worried about that then why doesn't she wear them? If she thought they'd be useful then again, why isn't she wearing them?

Good chapter all around. I feel like it was fairly "meaty" and that a good bit progressed. I liked her solution to sleeping there at the end.

 

That is what I thought as well, but it seems to me as if the Doggerel verse is what set it off. I.e. It opened that particular connection with her familiar, and now it is left to develop. Or so it seemed.