“Perchance to Dream”
The dream imagery starting right out the gate, inside the RC, is such a good idea, because it removes any question for the reader whether the mission is just an unusual story. And the imagery itself is perfect, a slightly distorted “offness” without degenerating into lolrandom or a mess of unreadable surreality. The mission scenes in particular feel like the sorts of scenes a PPC agent’s mind might “construct” during a dream. (It was a bit weird for me, too, because I’m reading a book where the characters were hiding in a church, and after I read “Perchance,” I hit a chapter where the church burned down. So hitting another story with both a church and inferno around the same time by coincidence is a little spooky!)
That early assurance that the whole story is clearly a dream makes the ending more unexpected and startling! Did they just have a shared dream, were they actually in a reality warping mission, did Bill Cipher actually do something to cause this? Spooky!
“Alopecoid”
Yeah, that’s a new word for me, perhaps embarrassingly, but we don’t tend to use the Latin or other fancy names much in conversation at the zoo . . . It was a fun idea to explore a continuation of Makes-Things’s scene with Drake, and play more into his Korean roots; at the same time, it’s a bit sad to see him being a bit on the prejudiced side, although I suppose it is a logical conclusion from his jumpy, mistrustful nature. Still, it feels like he ought to know that any species can be written as good or bad; he ought to read Yoon Ha Lee’s Dragon Pearl series at some point! Here’s to hoping his locker of “monster cancellers” serves an actual good use stopping a trespassing Suvian at some point, rather than being used against agents!
Hm. A mummified Makes-Things? Is that a joke about his “death” way back, or is he building a lookalike dummy for some reason? Weird!
The space is missing between the paragraphs that start with, “’But why?’ Charlie asked” and “’Believe me, if I”
—doctorlit doesn’t eat liver, either