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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 3.75/5
Started: 19 November
Finished: 20 November
Summary:
In 18th Century England, eighteen years after Monty went on his Tour, the Goblin is all grown up: Adrian Montague is a reformist and brilliant writer, but he refuses to use his own name. He's constantly anxious that his fiancee, Lou, hates him, that his writing is awful, that the bite he just ate is going to make him sick. And if the fact that he believes factories should have decent working conditions gets back to his father ... Adrian doesn't know what will happen. He's content writing with a pen name and spending hours reading and talking with Lou.
Then he finds a broken spyglass that his mother used to always carry. But finding it means that she didn't have it with her when she fell off a cliff into the ocean and died. Determined to find what the spyglass means, he begins to research, and ends up coming face to face-to-face with someone he didn't know existed: his older brother, Monty. Reluctantly, the two of them embark on a journey that takes them from Pirate territory to the middle-of-nowhere village where Felicity is hiding, to a glacier in Iceland. As Adrian struggles to understand his sibling's existence and mother's death, he must also come to terms with his anxiety and intrusive thoughts, and learn how to exist in the world with them.
Thoughts:
I loved seeing Monty and Felicity all grown up. It was also amazing to see George and Johanna and Sim and all of the other's characters from the first two books in the series. I loved how realistic and compassionate their progression was. Monty was still struggling with alcohol, but understood how much of an issue it was, and his tries to stay sober were working. I wish we had gotten to see what Sim and Felicity had talked about, and I wish Lou or Percy had also come on the trip so that there could have been some couple's banter, but oh well. The sibling relationship was very nice.
Adrian's head was intense. His anxiety and intrusive thoughts took up a lot of space. But the compassion with which Lee wrote him was lovely. I don't think I'm going to buy the book, but I'm very glad I read it, and I may do a re-read of the rest of the series soon, because it made me remember how amazing Monty and Percy are, and how cool Felicity is.
Words:
Reductive (adj) tending to present a subject or problem in a simplified form, especially one viewed as crude
Vanitas (n) a still-life painting of the 17th century Dutch genre containing symbols of death or change as a reminder of their inevitability
Demagogue (n) a political leader in a democracy who gains popularity by arousing the common people against elites, especially through speeches that whip up the passion of crowds.
Medina (n) second holiest city in Islam
Bishopric (n) a diocese or religion of a church which a bishop governs