re: Spooky: well, there is a fairly benign cat-deity that features in the Cthulhu mythos. Given that NOMENCLATURE PENDING seems to find humanity amusing enough to give it a helping hand or two every once in a while, it's not out of the question that a certain Egyptian cat-goddess decides to join in the fun. Though Bob would have some explaining to do regarding a certain white-haired Persian.
re: last scenes showing up again in next books, Mo's POV: Angleton's true nature was foreshadowed as early as The Concrete Jungle when he lets his mask slip, slightly, and Bob describes him as (paraphrased) a walking skeleton with the radioactive fires of hell burning in his eyes. (Sounds a lot like Terrible Majesty from the gamebooks.) Now that Bob's become TEACUP, one only wonders what he looks like when he's commanding the violin to stop what it's doing.
Though I agree that this isn't necessarily the end of Bob and Mo's marriage. They still care about each other, clearly, and their relationship seems relatively healthy (well, quoth Bob, anyway, and we all know how dense he is in regards to the fairer sex: let's hope Mo agrees with him). It's just the matter of a murderous jealous stringed instrument to worry about, which could be a lot worse, relationship-wise.
]]>It'd still make for wonderful stories, but Bob's not playing the trickster-hacker role anymore. To quote the essay: "Some day Bob will grow up, fully understand the ghastly responsibilities that go with his job, shut the hell up, and stop digging. But until then, let us by all means use him as our unquiet guide to the corridors of the Fear Factory." Sure sounds like what's happening to him now--so it'd make sense that we'd have Mo, who may be deadly but who is also a comparative outsider compared to Bob, and Alex, who fulfills the outsider role perfectly, take over for Bob while he gains more and more nightmares taking on his new job as the keeper of the secrets.
]]>Anyway, had another thought regarding our PHANGs. The sheep's blood and goat's blood that they tried didn't work for their parasites; they found that out early. But--those were from dead sheep and dead goats; a dead human's blood doesn't feed the V-parasite either. I think the logical next step would be to test their abilities on blood drawn from living livestock. It's not quite the same as the soul of a living human, but it might be enough to placate the V-parasite for that much longer.
]]>Can't wait for next July, and the next book.
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