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337 pages, Hardcover
First published May 22, 2014
“Bad Jack is an end-of-level boss.”
“Superhero team-up issue.”
He was treating this as something for Tigerman, because he could only perform it as Tigerman, in Tigerman’s mask.… And Tigerman did not kill, or had not, and did not make his plans with killing in mind.
… that would end it all. Even in this pass, the boy would see the shift in him, in the fiction they had created together, from knight to dragon. He would shy away from a red-handed killer even in his gratitude….
Tigerman, then. It had to be Tigerman, doing things Tigerman’s way. A famous victory, the Sergeant sighed to himself, not an infamous one.
"Real life has no understanding of proper structure," the boy said, "which is why news stories are always made of little lies."
—p.83
His perceptions of copperhood were formed by the dream of England, still. A copper was a bloke in a slightly silly hat who walked the beat, talked to shopkeepers about the price of fish, and sorted out young ruffians. You didn't attack him. It was like attacking a field of wheat, and anyway, you'd have to answer to his mum.
—p.59
It was an irritation to the Sergeant that men who one moment before had been braying for the sexual favours of a fiend could appeal to the Virgin in the next. It smacked of sloppy thinking.
—p.129
Alderaan. The Sergeant was the right age to know what that meant. He had been to see the film the first time around, very young and very amazed as the orange and white starship went over his head, and then even more amazed as its enormous pursuer roared after it, going on and on for ever and shaking the seats. Movies had never seemed so big.
—p.120
"I am a leaf on the wind," he intoned.
The Sergeant had no idea what this meant. He said so.
The boy looked at him as if he were a barbarian or an idiot.
—p.318