slight, contextless spoilers

“Jack, help me,” he said. “I feel my leg is caught in some stuh-stupid truh-truh-hap and I … I…” Then […] fell on his knees with his hair in his tired face, and Jack got down there with him, and I can hear to tell you no more—only that they comforted each other as well as they could, and, as you probably know from your own bitter experience, that is never quite good enough.”

This really shocked me. 510 pages in and possibly the first 4th wall break direct from narrator to the reader because it is too emotional to have to describe. Some might hate this, scholars must loathe it, but it reallllly worked on me. Hell yeah.

the trap is metaphorical hehe

Because so much of this is rooted in existing texts about Hell it feels quite real, the dilemmas and explanations they provide.

Having just met Archimedes the cat I thought “oh yes, cats can cross over, just like in Coraline” hahaha

This is far more fantasy feeling than I thought. The clothing, the sort of policital structure, the names. For some reason I thought it would be much more formless than a “polite society” but I just entered it so we shall see!

I am REALLY feeling a Percy Jackson thing still. I wonder if Rick Riordan took some cues from this. Just the traveling across the country to the other ocean to (essentially) find a doorway into the underworld…