Thomas Disbrow > Recent Status Updates

This feels like halfway though it's the end of the first act. That's right, I said act. If you've only seen the Kubrick movie, you should know the novella is told in three, distinct sections; I'm calling them acts, like a play. It seems fitting considering Burgess' other work in musical composition and as a playwright.

Being the book I read at work on breaks and lunch, the going is a might slow.

Unfortunately, I don't have the book directly in front of me to verify the exact page count, but it is around 230. I think my copy actually has slightly more pages than this says, though; different font size perhaps? I do know chapter 22 ended around page 220, and I met Randall Flagg in that chapter (or was it 23?). That had to be the home of the longest, cohesive sentence I've ever read.

It's the home stretch, and boy, do things really start getting wild! This story is wrapping up with the same over-the-top bravado of every High School kid's first "serious" campaign. The monsters and spooks of the night are amassing by the thousands, which is a big problem as far as The Reckoners are concerned. Oh, you won't read about them in this story, though. The author seems to have forgot about them.

The redundancies continue! They've now shown a steam-powered giant metal man invented by scientist turned necromancer turned fashion designer, Aleksander Deray. Not that it's a problem, given the story's setting, but within the Deadlands lore, only one inventor has figured out automatons—Darius Hellstrome. He was even mentioned in this book. Hopefully, we'll get an explanation, but I'm not holding my breath.

"...the frightened bats fled their refuge and fled like a dark..." Yeah, that is an actual quote, note the quotation marks. I may be devoid of a degree, but even I know you shouldn't be that redundant in one sentence. This has been one hell of a slog. I'm determined to just plow through, though.