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She was sixteen years old, unlettered, unworldly, with eyes dark as the rain,
Ah, yes, that dark rain.
“But our employers would not approve. Justice is just a bucket with a hole in the bottom, as my father used to say.
She tugged at the sleeves of the greatcoat for the boy and she buttoned it fast over his bloodied shirt and she turned up the collar and she grunted.
Thats a lot of ands.
“You’ll know him. He’ll be the one what scares you.” “I don’t scare.”
Ugh
Most of all, she knew who he was seeking.
Yeah, we know. You told us.
past men in black silk hats, flower girls with boxes on ropes round their necks, past workmen and sweeps and beggars and out into the murky brown darkness of a rain-thick afternoon, the rain falling darkly, at a slant, the cobblestones pooling in the wet and shining blackly up, for the gaslights were already on,
This sentence is out of control.
7 EVERY STRANGER IS A NEW BEGINNING
Lame
Alice frowned at the implication. She could break his nose in six places before he could blink, but she couldn’t do a thing to stop his foul thoughts.
Why does she need to keep reminding us of her strength? Oh, wait, I know why. She’s one of those characters.
Last of all she took out her Colt Peacemaker and eased back the hammer and turned the oil-smooth chambers slowly and then she pocketed it.
And and and.
The roof was sloped and Marlowe was crouched on his heels clutching his knees to his chest and Alice grabbed him in one arm and their two cases in the other and she tottered and stumbled her way up to the crest of the house.
And
She must have passed out.
Ah yes, you're very tough Mrs Quicke.
He slept in a puddle in an alley somewhere near the river, soaked, and he awoke it was morning again.
*and when he awoke
“There are two sides to everything that is,” she said quietly. “A facing side, and a hidden side, if you will. At any given time, it is so. But imagine that both sides are the facing sides. And that the hidden side is a third side, a side you never see. Inside the coin. The living and the dead are like the two sides of this coin. But there is a third side. And that is what these children are, these … talents.”
Did we need the coin for this? I’m not even sure this metaphor makes much sense.
The train was departing in the dark and she hurried down to the platform, not seeing the monster anywhere. Then she sighted him, climbing up the platform steps,
So, you did see him somewhere.
and then out into the waiting carriages. Miss Quicke was the first awake. Margaret had been cautious and hired a second coach
"Miss Quicke was the first to awake" seems random or misplaced here.
But the man had stopped arguing at least, there was that, as if maybe he’d given up on trying to convince her. He could be so insufferably sure of himself, at times.
Or experienced.
There were stains on the upholstery where the litch had lain. His ropes had been chewed through and left frayed, tangled. The curtains were flapping wildly, in shreds.
This is the second time Margaret!
“Dear God, oh dear God,” she was crying. “For the love of all that’s holy, child,” Margaret snapped, catching sight of her. “Speak plain.”
Dude, she's a civilian.
“Well?” demanded Margaret. She was furious with herself. She’d done everything she could think of to stop this from happening a second time.
Really? Cause drugging him and ropes was exactly what you did last time.
“Say it,” she said bitterly. “Go on. Tell me I should’ve listened to you.” He shook his head. “This ain’t your fault, Margaret.”
I think it is.
But she just scowled and held out a gloved hand and took the weapon from him. She turned it sidelong, expertly, and sighted down the barrel. “I brought him on board,” she said. “So, yes. It is.”
A little too lat for that Maggie. Especially With how arrogant you were being.
She was trying to understand Marlowe’s meaning. He’s found us. He’s here.
Seems pretty easy to understand to me. Or, since you're a little behind, you could just ask him. He's standing right there.
Alice looked at Marlowe. “Is that who you were talking about? Walter Laster?” Marlowe’s eyes were big. “No,” he whispered. “Who, then?” “The other one. The man from the hotel.”
So, she asked right before the transition for dramatic effect, gotcha.
Shapes loomed up out of the dimness, cases and bags and baskets.
Too many lists in this book.
The litch was bent over something, she saw now, and as she neared she glimpsed a pair of shabby brown shoes, one unlaced, and a pair of hairy ankles sticking out of them.
You're to blame for this Margaret.
His voice sounded like a rope drawn over stone.
Having a hard time picturing that. A rasping slither?
Charlie was some ten feet ahead of them by then, clinging to the roof, his head down as if against a driving rain. Very
Or the wind atop a moving train.
And then, as if from a long way off, Margaret Harrogate slowly grit her teeth,
As if from a long way off?
and Jacob Marber, on his knees, raised his slow face.
His slow face?
On the night before Komako Onoe—nine years old, twister of dust, witch child and sister to a dying girl—was to meet Jacob Marber
What is this description?
It gleamed silver and black on the doorstep there and as Komako moved back the reflected light flared and wobbled and slid away.
This description man.
into the coming darkness, the streets gleaming.
I’m going to start recording how many times I see the word gleaming.
The woman’s soft voice, filling then with love: Death is not death, Jacob, and nothing is forever.
Words mean things.
the dark polished wood floors gleaming, their bodies drenched with sweat.
Everything gleams in this book.
I wish there was more time. I must speak plainly.
Why couldn't you before?
her face shrouded in darkness. “JACOB!” she screamed at him, wild and fierce and horrifying.
And what was this? A useless jump scare?
He got dressed now, uneasy, thinking about it, and he folded up the tatami and left it there on the dark gleaming floor.
The floor around her gleamed.
She hesitated. Then she slowly unwrapped the linen bandages, held up her hands. Her small fingers were chapped and red. “They’ve always been like this. Yours aren’t?”
He said to her that he’d had a brother, a twin, who died when they were maybe Komako’s very age.
He raked his hands through his beard. She was maybe the very age he’d been when Henry found him in Vienna. Her eyes were dark and sad. Her hands were wrapped in linen, as if burned.
We . . . we know. You just told us. You know her hands aren't burned. She showed you!
It wasn’t possible, he thought, it just wasn’t possible. You couldn’t trap a fucking drughr in a steamer trunk. Could you?
You have to be kidding me.
the Englishman had stepped smoothly through the rain with his long black coat snapping at his knees and his silk hat dropped in the wet alley and raised his fists in challenge.
And
“But either you shut the fuck up this minute or I unload this Colt into this trunk. Do invisible stop a bullet?” The lid stopped thumping. The trunk fell still.
I'm confused at how weak this thing is.
Mighty fucking stupid, Coulton thought. And then he stepped forward, and swiftly unbuckled the lock, and threw the lid wide.
Really? That's all it took to get you to unlock it?
“I damn near killed you, lass. I thought you was a drughr.”
So it's not a drughr . . . whatever.
Dust is the power to bring darkness into the world, she said.
A lot of things could bring darkness to the world. Why is dustwork so special.
The sandstorm strips away all of the human senses, until a person is no longer a person. They are cut off from their own self. That is the power of dust.
I feel like a sandstorm would be one of those events where you would be all too aware of your senses and humanity.
and huge gleaming locomotives snorted on the tracks.
She saw no sign of Coulton, or Charlie, or Marlowe. No sign of any other life at all, except, in a tall window on the upper floor of the east wing, she caught sight of an old woman,
And the playing kids you literally just mentioned.
