More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Marlowe is a good man and a competent detective, but he notices what anyone would notice: the extraordinary. He spots bloodstains and mad men in red pajamas. I see the things more extraordinary still, the things no one else sees. But you—you notice mailboxes and wastebaskets and . . . and people. One who can see the ordinary is extraordinary indeed, Abigail Rook. Any other questions?”
Until that moment, the events of the day had all been new and remarkable, but being left behind was one area in which I had countless hours of experience.
It wasn’t that I did not believe in ghosts; it was that I believed in them in the same noncommittal way that I believed in giant squids or lucky coins or Belgium. They were things that probably existed, but I had never had any occasion to really care one way or another.
She has saved this town and its people from countless monsters countless times. That the battles are usually in her head does not lessen the bravery of it. The hardest battles always are.”
“Monsters are easy, Miss Rook. They’re monsters. But a monster in a suit? That’s basically just a wicked man, and a wicked man is a more dangerous thing by far.”
Science and magic, beauty and bedlam, things that ought to be at odds—they just don’t follow the same rules when Jackaby’s involved.
“Culture and lore shape our societal expectations—and Marlowe has no doubt internalized countless archetypes of wicked women. La Llorona and her slaughtered children, Sirens and their shipwrecks, Eve and the apple.”
“I suppose I am curious, first. I’ll let myself be afraid when my curiosity is satisfied—and as my curiosity will only be satisfied when I’ve looked our murderer in the face, it is unlikely I shall need to spend much time in fear.”
Happiness is bliss—but ignorance is anesthetic,
“but he only knows how to slay dragons. This world is full of dragon-slayers. What we need are a few more people who aren’t too proud to listen to a fish.”
I have spent my entire life preparing for adventure, and then watching from the front step while it left without me.
