Greetings and salutations, friends! Sorry for the delay, but I’m here to finish out my read along of A Night in the Lonesome October. I wish I had a good excuse for why I’ve been absent so long, but really it’s all on me. I basically got a taste for not writing a post each night when I was sick and then struggled to muster up the motivation to do it. Especially when the angst hit and my motivation dropped even further. Sometimes it’s hard to keep doing website updates and stuff when it feels like nobody’s reading them. In any case, here’s my little write up for the last seven nights of the book.
Night 25: This chapter’s a fun one for two reasons, with a few subreasons in some cases. The first is naturally with how things pick up with a second death in Owen. All the more because of how sudden it is. All the more twice over since Snuff and co end up accidentally involved since whoever did kill him took advantage of their fire to dispose of the corpse. It helps show off how there’s a lot going on in the Game Snuff (and Jack) simply don’t see and therefore we don’t either. And when they get down to it and start discussing Game politics, it helps confirm a few allegiances that were somewhat hinted at before and gets you thinking at the motives behind the killings. In any case, the other interesting note is in Cheeter’s binding. In the first place because it shows a different side to the familiars; that some of them were conscripts, not volunteers. Most of the time we’ve seen them, they’ve acted like they were fully invested and, for lack of a better term, professional about it all. But this goes to show that isn’t always the case. Some of them are just like the ‘civilian’ animals from earlier in the story forced into doing their best to survive. Plus, the entire description of the binding is incredibly striking, with the shadow pinned to the wall. The unbinding is probably the most detailed example of magic given in the book as well, which makes it stick all the more.
Night 26: While short, this chapter is a very, very curious one. Honestly, it’s hard for me to really say anything because it’s basically all there in the text: there’s a werewolf besides Larry and he knows who Snuff is. It was hinted at earlier, with the ward-screen as mentioned in this chapter, but this is the first confirmation of the fact. All in all, it’s a small piece of the puzzle that’s an excellent set up for an element in the Game to take the rest by utter surprise.
Night 27: And here it is, one of the true paradigm shift chapters. I’ll admit that when I wrote the last description where I mentioned Bubo’s importance, I thought he showed up a bit more than he did. But this is the chapter that shows both how intelligent he is and how he almost managed to throw the entire Game off by accident. The fact that he pieced together the existence and general outline of the Game through second-hand knowledge is striking; the fact that he fooled several skilled Players and one exceptionally experienced Player in Snuff is staggering. And it sets the stage for just how much of the Game has been a red herring all along; that nothing has precisely been as it seems the entire time. It’s also kind of neat how effectively the classic Frankenstein(‘s monster) conflict and rampage occurs entirely off screen and is only hinted at here.
Night 28: Now this chapter is where it all comes together. In a lot of senses. First off, this is the first and only time we’re ever really given an explanation for the game and it comes virtually at the end of the book. Which is fun. It lets you piece things together as you go along and make your own guesses and assumptions, only to confirm or disprove them here. And it also fleshes out a lot of things implied about Jack and Snuff throughout the book; confirms how stagger it is that they’ve participated in more than one Game. In fact, participated in all of the Games. And even putting aside the ‘maybe Jack the Ripper is biblical Cain’, it also prods a little bit on that note of ‘Snuff is definitely a dog and only a dog, nothing else’ since he’s been around far, far longer than a dog has any right to. Looking at it this way: if the biblical twist has any truth to it, he’s been around since the dawn of mankind and was something before he was Jack’s familiar. Not all that many things that could fit that bill. And this chapter also confirms a bit about Larry and his role, that he is a wildcard in every sense of the word. Good stuff with the final showdown so close.
Night 29: A lot of curious things in this chapter, and not all of it obvious. The most notable bit is the fact that Rastov is confirmed as a Closer through and through; that the current score of killed Players is one to one instead of targeted Openers as was previously suspected. And the Count, but his alignment was never confirmed. Because that shifts things heavily away from Jack’s corner by effectively removing an implied Closer behind the scenes. And on the tail of that is the brief, interrupted note that Needle still considers himself as part of the game even though the Count is dead since that throws a huge wrench into the works, both allowing for a ‘mystery Player’ of a sort if the Count set up a contingency to replace him (he did have the Romani ready to help) and the possibility of a Familiar continuing to work independently of their Player after that Player died. But we don’t get any more out of it thanks to the Vicar. the final thing is how the true character of the Great Detective shines through in this chapter. Because it captures a piece of Holmes not often seen these days. A lot of modern adaptations have him fully skeptical of the supernatural, but that wasn’t necessarily the case for the literary Holmes.. (As I recall) Even in the Hound of the Baskervilles, it was less that he refused to believe the hound was a ghost so much as he wasn’t going to leap to that conclusion without looking for alternatives. Because that’s the key to Holmes: common sense didn’t necessarily apply to him. He was willing to believe the Earth was flat because he just didn’t care about that information as it pertained to his interests. And he’d accept the supernatural if it was necessary to uncover the truth. And that shows here since he comes to the conclusion that Snuff must be intelligent and approaches him as an equal. He, just like Bubo, puts together the meat of the Game through sheer observation and that’s a very Holmes thing to do. Furthermore, it goes on to prove that for him it’s all about a certain sense of right and wrong, but not necessarily the common one. He’s willing to put aside everything the Players have done because he can’t bring it to court and he’s not on the case anyway. But he won’t let an innocent girl die when there’s something he can do about it. And that’s also very Holmes. It’s just great and proves that he really is the only true, unequivocal hero of the book. Well, maybe Larry too, but he has problems.
Night 30: This one’s another short one with very little to speak of. Though that’s not to say there isn’t anything important. The fact that nothing much happens gives the whole chapter a very ‘calm before the storm’ feeling; like the one last breath before everything goes off. And what does come through is also very, very important to know going in since it gives the mechanical explanation of the Game. It tells you what to expect in the last chapter before you go in so you know what’s on the table; what the conflict will entail. And it finally confirms the location of the Wands, that Jack has the Closing Wand and, more importantly, Jill has the Opening Wand since that one’s been hinted at less.
Night 31: Ah, the ceremony itself. This one I could say far too much about. But rather, I think it’s best left for your own read because it is the culmination of everything the story’s built too. And it has some incredible imagery throughout as well that makes it worth a read simply to see how someone as skilled as Zelazny can describe a confrontation. With nothing better to do than praise individual moments, I’ll away: firstly the Great Detective’s greatest disguise is truly an excellent resolution of his entire arc through the book and a few needling details throughout that a clever reader could piece together; then there’s my favorite of lines in the book in ‘I stand with him to close you out’ which just oozes gravitas and a very, very, very ironic heroic determination; there’s the final masterstroke of Bubo which, again, a clever reader could piece together and in turn leads to; this chapter contains some truly excellent puns. ‘Any port in a storm’ is subtly hilarious if you remember how the Slitherers were contained. ‘Carpe baculum’ is lowkey the most important piece of the plot and it’s a dumb joke and it’s great [Footnote 1]. And of course, the entire book built up for the pay off of ‘Jack and Jill went up a hill’. What a book. Can’t wait till next year.
Footnote 1: Also, I wasn’t kidding when I said the High Purring One was the true hero of the story.
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