Disaster! - Iterations Third and Fourth.

What I got out of these sections were a few ice floes of clever awash in an Arctic Ocean of dumb.

The passage about the windup girl seems the most gratuitous, though I said that about Rudwick, and Keats, both of whom have resurfaced multiple times since, if only in passing mention. But I'd hate to come up with some sort of exciting twist involving a Japanese drink-pouring automaton, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that it was just a pointless aside. I'm actually hoping for some of these plotlines to go unfinished, else it's going to be a slugger of an ending.

The extended sex scene in Sybil Jones's old room comes in a close second. No revelations there, unless you consider filthy gossip about the royal family useful. Maybe the authors felt the passage was needed to paint Mallory in a human light -- troubled, lonely. Mostly it just reminded me how easy it is to make sex lurid and decadent, even in print.

I will tell you what I loved about these two iterations: J. J. Tobias, Esq. What a satisfying little character he was -- everything from the great haircut to the cunning quip about everything taking twice as long as you think. (I really thought there was a natural law about this, but the name eludes me.) He had just the right touches of bashfulness and pride, eagerness to please and anxiety about breaking the law. And I could hear his cockney accent pouring through -- somehow they nailed his dialogue.

Basically I think these two iterations were a mess -- a lot of flashy plot movement all to say "Hey, Mallory's in trouble." I've gathered from reading other reviews that this was the main plot section, that the bulk of the sociopolitical hypothesizing was here -- part of me is disappointed, thinking that everything else will just be cleaning up the plotlines we've left open, but I'm partially relieved for the same reason. Maybe without that big save-the-world relevance they felt their book needed to contain, they can let loose with a bit more humour and ... well ... I'm not really sure what I'd want them to do. Surprise me, I guess.