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I regret is that this book is not allowed to steep in the Hogwarts experience as much attention as it has to start giving to the intrigue. Some of these microcosmic adventures move along at a breakneck pace… but drawing things out any more would crush the excitement of the book.

There is something about the Christmas break at Hogwarts that is deeply alluring. Idk if it’s the idea of spending a holiday with good friends amid relative privacy in a mostly empty, quiet, and ENORMOUS castle, but it’s a powerful fantasy that is deceptive in its simplicity.

TIL that Shel Silverstein is the guy who wrote the unicorn song, and the Irish Rovers covered it five years or so later

One thing that I didn’t miss reading was the forever dance of Snape, Totally Not a Villain… Or Is He???

My imagination punched hard at the trip from the train to Hogwarts. Yeah, I could spend a lifetime in the wizarding world. Maaaaybe not suffering through brutal Catch 22 teachers like Snape.

Rowling is a TERF but it’s easy to see why everyone fell in love with these books. Knowing everything that is coming, it’s weird going back and seeing all the hints and characters yet to come into their own like Ginny. I can absolutely believe that Rowling had a lot of the major details plotted out based on the buckets of foreshadowing. It’s an absolutely beautiful world.

The whole segment with the Dursleys is in the grand tradition of Ronald Dahl, at least I assume Roald Dahl is most closely associated with horrifically abusive / neglectful caretakers but James and the Giant Peach / Matilda is all I have to go by right now. The language of it all still seems purestrain Dahl, at least. TIL: the line in the book is actually “Harry, yer a wizard”, not “Yer a wizard, Harry.”

MIKE

MY GUY

WHAT IS THIS IN YOUR SEARCH HISTORY

“MOST INFLUENTIAL CHILDREN’S FANTASY BOOKS”?

“HOW HOW DO I NOT FEEL GROSS WHILE READING J.K. ROWLING”?

“ORDER OF THE PHOENIX EXCEPT SIRIUS BLACK DOESN’T GO THROUGH THE DEATH PORTAL”??

YOU CAN’T BE READING THIS SHIT, MIKE

I was kind of cool on this contemporary magical romance but the last 50 pages have kicked this novel into a whole nother gear!! As a music nerd the idea that her dark side spell comes from In the Court of the Crimson King is great, but IIRC the track she is using is the chill ballad, “I Talk to the Wind”, which does NOT fit the mood of driving your best friend into a wreck 🤣😂🤣

SeBASTIAN, my GUY! What is this stuff in your search history? “How not to get beat up by your girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend?” “How do I pressure my best girl friend into running away with me?” “How do I ride a motorcycle from Mexico City to Oslo?” My guy, come ON!

At this point the main thrust of the story is romantic illusions being shattered by reality and how the characters react to that.

I think that the situation with Daniela’s teacher, her crush, illustrates a very important distinction, part of it being that she was more indulging in a fantasy than a reality, and that there is a huge difference between crushing on someone versus them just attempting to take what they feel is available to them just because they intuit some small part of your feelings, as if you belong to them.

Lots of Meche being bitter because she is afraid of being vulnerable. Only to cave in to her old friend’s relentless, imposed intimacy.

lol SHUT UP MECHE. I appreciate that Moreno-Garcia has been slowly seeding in how unlikable a character the MC is, that the only time she feels like she wants Sebastian is when he appears to be getting on with Isadora, and she has definite Bad Girl energy when she conspires with Constantino to bust up their budding romance. It’s a real reaction to the thought of losing your best friend, but still contemptible.

This is somehow more ordinary than I was expecting, not that that’s a bad thing. Meche and her best friend are ❤️soulmates❤️ but as teenagers they’re not romantically inclined toward each other, instead fixating on the most attractive and wealthy kids in their class. Sebastian’s hopeful seems partly receptive, but Meche’s is… unassuming?

Broadly, this book is about discovering magic and trying to use it to “fix” your depressing teenage life with your friends, and exploring—in the present, 21 years later—what the aftereffects of this are, though we really haven’t gotten into it apart from Meche’s cold antagonism for her former best friend, Sebastian.

Part of this book is painfully awkward because the wealth of classic rock references, some of them obscure (at least, idk how many people would be familiar with The Kinks’s Arthur) and achieving magic through music is very much in my wheelhouse of late teens and early 20s and I know that I shouldn’t feel embarrassed, like it isn’t a dead dream, just one that sleeps.

This quickly moved from the bizarre road trip of Oedipa to conspiracy of the muted horn with a bizarre, grotesque play that invokes I think The King In Yellow, just less cosmic horror and more Grand Guignol blood and torture. If this is anything like the obsession of V then I doubt that we will get anything concrete, more like hints as to the true size of the iceberg.

I’m a third of the way through this book and right now it just seems like a mad tour of San Francisco through the eyes of Oedipa Maas. The insanity has the same sort of manic energy as The Whole Sick Crew with Oedipa, for the current time, willing to go along with this, a break from if nothing else her terminally depressed husband who you almost feel sympathy for until she divulges of his affairs with 17-yr-olds.

The notes on the writing of the stories is greatly appreciated, particularly the background of The Hour of the Dragon as well as the fact that the untitled synopsis with the vampire god was Howard’s second attempt at the novel, which was for the British market. The Arthurian references escaped me but I wonder how I could have missed the tone of the piece now that I’ve read the explanatory essay!!

“Untitled Synopsis (A Witch Shall Be Born)”

This framework reveals nothing but the fact that Howard’s sketch of the tale was pretty much complete in its broad strokes… assuming that he moved from the synopses to the draft, which the arrangement of these collections suggests.

“Notes on the Hour of the Dragon”

This is a rough timeline of the military maneuvers of the story; the notes give out entirely once Conan starts to pursue the Heart. It’s clear that Howard had no idea what Conan was going to do in Tarantia, with the whole Countess subplot spinning out from his writing. I think that the second set of days is supposed to be the aligning for the final battle? It’s hard to tell.

“Untitled Synopsis (The Hour of the Dragon)”

This shows a pretty good skeleton for maybe the first half of the novel but some elements, like visiting the temple where the Heart had been kept, were cut out, and quite a few elements were added as Howard fleshed the story out. One very early difference is that the Heart isn’t found until AFTER Xaltotun is revived.

“Untitled Draft”

This is a full treatment of the story in the previous synopsis… or, at least the half that borrows heavily from “Xuthal of the Dusk”. It’s notable for only being tangentially Conan, as Amalric and his bizarrely-phrased affection for Lissa is the MC. It’s also one of Howard’s more racially-charged stories, particularly the opening and closing segments.

“Untitled Synopsis”

So here’s a Conan story that never made it beyond the draft stages. Howard was running low on creative juices or something because this basically cannibalizes one of the stories from the last volume for its first half, “Xuthal of the Dusk”, except a vampire is the beast of the city and it’s not Conan but a youth named Amalric (a name reused in The Hour of the Dragon!!) as hero.

“The Story Thus Far…”

As the notes tell us, serials usually had their own staff write the summaries of the previous chapters. In this unusual instance, Howard wrote the summaries for “The People of the Black Circle”, so they are included here.

“Untitled Synopsis (The People of the Black Circle)”

Nothing unusual here. This is a more or less straight summary, with some of Howard’s poetics, of “The People of the Black Circle”. If anything is notable it’s how much prose he dedicates to setting the scene and establishing action, with his summary getting more and more sparse as he gallops toward the story’s climax.

“A Witch Shall Be Born”

This one is a little less coherent…? The main plot feels novel for Conan. The queen of a small kingdom is ousted by her twin sister, who was born with the mark of the witch and thus left for dead as a baby, and who has come to use her likeness in order to wreak chaos in her birthplace. The demonic horror in this story is surprisingly flimsy.

“The Hour of the Dragon”

Longform Conan started to fall apart toward the end but it’s still a galloping, crazy adventure worth reading. This story is rife with elements that Howard had used in previous Conan stories; some stuff only hinted at include an immortal (and immoral) sex-crazed femme fatale as well as a city that is capable of returning from the ruin of history.

Pretty good so far! The moment I talked about women, Conan was rescued by a fangirl named Zenobia, and when he was being chased, saved and then was saved by a witch named Zalata, and then rescued a countess, Albiona, in a daring prison raid. And he was saved by Not-Indian Hindus who he had not persecuted during his rule?? This book is pretty awesome (but I would not be surprised if Hadrathus tries to use the heart)