Preemptive nostalgia for the possible but doubtful

"That's cute," I said.

Evan seeing Jammers teammate talk about how he mentions Evan all of the time. Evan seeing, over the course of the conversation with said teammate, that Jammer never even mentioned magic all that much to him. Evan seeing his friend, who apparently talked about Evan all of the time without bringing up such a prominent part of who he is, being terrified of the things that Evan does.

so especially during the third act, gideon - and by extension, the reader - is hit with WAVE AFTER WAVE of epic climaxes and denouements to plots that she literally was not aware were occurring. she stumbles into the aftermath of a bloody and lethal confrontation between teacher and the second house. she trips into babs’s murder and ianthe’s ascension into lyctorhood. she nearly ruins the crucial pull-back-the-curtain reveal between palamedes and cytherea because she literally tries to run into the middle of it to apologize because she didn’t know that she had been flirting with his almost-fiancée.

when you read the book for the first time, all of these things feel as overwhelming to you as they do to gideon. the uptight military commander is injured and the slightly less uptight military lieutenant is dead?? that prick with the quiff got cannibalized by his evil stick figure bully??? harry potter BLEW UP???

🇨🇳