The Hod King (The Books of Babel, #3)

by Josiah Bancroft

Even her most fawning friends began to make their excuses, all as transparent as a fart.

Music is like romance; nothing ruins the mood so well as self-consciousness.

As the general took the letter, he observed the man’s bland breakfast. “Hoping to punish a tapeworm, Mr. Pinfield?” he asked with a chuckle.

But you know academics: Why spend one word when you can waste three?”

An unexpected knock on my apartment door is as welcome as the drums of an invading army.

“Death is like what happens to a puddle when the sun comes out. It stops being a puddle and becomes a wisp of a cloud, or a drop of dew in the valley, or foam on an ocean wave.”

The universe breathes in ragged breaths. The body dies. The fungus grows. The loam spreads. The tree roots. The forest burns. The cloud bursts. The flood drowns. The alluvium feeds the fields. In, out. In, out. There is no stasis, no stillness. The source of all misery lies in our insistence that tomorrow be like today. But if it were, if it ever were, it would spell the end of everything. —I Sip a Cup of Wind by Jumet