Reread

Bookburners Reread: Episode 2, “Anywhere But Here”

Welcome aboard, Sal.

Thankfully skipping all the travel and logistics drudgery, Episode two opens with Sal, metaphorical backpack and soup canister in hand, arriving for her first day at work – in Rome. #SceneChange #DemonHuntingGlobeTrotters #AllRoadsLeadToRome #YesIAmAwareHashtagsDon’tWorkLikeThis

Father Menchu meets her at a nondescript door within the Vatican and together we all see the Black Archives of the Societas Librorum Occultorum for the first time. Down an elaborate staircase Sal beholds a massive chamber with thousands upon thousands of seemingly haphazardly placed tombs.

Archavist Asanti is introduced – the fifth and final member of Team Three. Sal immediately has a favorable impression of her and I immediately imagined her as Guinan so moving forward, Asanti will be played by STNG-era Whoopi Goldberg in this reread. #headcannon

As the team’s archavist, Asanti is basically the Queen Bee of the Black Archives and the most badass librarian we can ever hope to meet, tasked with organizing, cataloging, and all the dangerous books the Bookburners nab.

After wading through the sea of books, Sal arrives to her first team meeting. Grace is impatient and all business - this appears to be a consistent character trait. Sal seems to notice a little something between Grace and Father Menchu. #Curious…

The orientation part of her day basically consists of meeting The Orb, which “alerts [the team] when a new magical force appears in the world. It could be that some magical event has occurred. It could be that some sort of creature has . . . emerged from wherever they emerge from. Or that someone has cast a powerful spell. Or it could be as simple as someone opening a magic book.”In sum, as Sal quickly surmises, it’s basically an occult magic eight ball.

Next stop on the “What weird magical things is the Vatican hiding” tour is a visit to see Perry, Sal’s demon-ensorcelled brother. Along the way, Father Mencho provides some details about the larger Society:

Amidst this info dump we get a glimpse of two members of Team Two. A pair of creepy looking fellows, Sal nicknames them Balloon and Stretch and neither seem to be of a friendly ilk… #ominous.

Perry, poor guy, is languishing in a medical ward, deep in a coma. He’s trapped in some sort of spiritual limbo Father Menchu can’t explain and will remain there until they can find a book that will help them figure out how to resuscitate him. Sal is determined to save him, if not necessarily hopeful of her chances.

#SavePerry #SucksToBeSal #PergatoryForLifeA quick scene change finds us in Madrid, Spain, where we meet a lonely man named Gabriel. A quick glance at his life shows a solitary existence in a ramshackle apartment where he is occasionally visited by a few neighbor children. He likes movies and seems to live out a small, quiet life.And then he finds a book. <insert ominous="" music=""></insert>

Finding himself inexplicably drawn to the book, he takes it home, all the while reflecting on his lonely place in life, and begins to read. Things quickly get weird.The book grows warm beneath his fingers. Letters refigure themselves into a language he can read. His deceased parents are suddenly there, speaking to him. His own reflection and consciousness flickers through a diverse array of people and lives. The walls of his apartment fall away and the floor beneath him turns to soil. And then – his hands are melting into the paper…

Back in Rome, the Orb sounds the alarm: MAGIC IS AFOOT.

Team Three assemble!

They fly to Madrid. Meanwhile, back at the Lonely Hearts Clubhouse, the neighbor children go to visit their sad friend Gabriel – and are immediately sucked into the magic that has taken over his apartment.Major props to author Brian Francis Slattery here – he takes our prose down a rabbit hole of beautiful weird and it’s an intriguing change of pace from the usual tone.

The girls didn’t get a chance to see what the apartment really looked like now. For Elena and Victoria, Gabriel’s apartment disappeared. Their own selves disappeared. They became wizard queens, floating in the air and creating kingdoms all around themselves with waves of their wands. They sprouted transparent wings from their backs and became pirate fairies, raiding ships and islands that floated in the sky. They were swooping dragons in a world where the only land was a sheer and never-ending cliff that disappeared into
the clouds above and below them, and cities like gigantic mushrooms grew from trees
that clung to the rocks. At last they were sea creatures they couldn’t have described to themselves, even as they were described in the book. They were slim beings with fins and gills, long, flowing tentacles, braids in their hair. They swam in a pink ocean among eight- eyed leviathans and a web of towns that drifted in the current together like a school of jellyfish.

They didn’t know where they really were, or what was really happening to them.

Though, of course, considerably less awesome for the father of the two girls who eventually goes looking for his daughters, only to find Gabriel’s door locked – and troublingly warm to the touch. He calls the landlord but the door refuses to budge….until it starts to breath.

<insert even="" louder="" ominous="" music="">Back on the plane to Madrid, Sal gets to know her teammates a bit more – or rather, she gets to know Liam more because he’s the only chatterbox willing to humor the new girl. We briefly learn a bit more about him: mainly that he still thinks he might be demon possessed so lives by a strict regiment of diet and exercise: “Trip wires all over my life so if the demon’s still in there, I can tell if it starts taking over.”</insert>

Buuuut other than the “Liam might still be possessed by a demon” bombshell, it seemed to be a really nice moment of teammate bonding. #Yay #GoTeamThree #SomebodyGiveLiamAHugMeanwhile things are escalating in Madrid: a cop arrives on the scene and after a brief struggle with the door was sucked into the vortex of weird magic…

He was a winged serpent in a crystal cave. He was a gargantuan snail with a thousand colonies of sentient insects anchored to his shell. He was a huge, many-legged thing nestled inside a silver egg. When he hatched and spread his wings across the sky, the world would shudder with wonder.

Seriously, I’m a little scared of what goes on in Brian Francis Slattery’s head…but I like it.

Anyway, the team finally arrives and it’s go time. Storm the castle! Save the princess! Or in this case, storm the apartment and save a slew of folks trapped by a magical book. Same difference.

(‘cept no one has guns because this is Europe and shooting a book is just silly.)Like the badass black-ops anti-magic SWAT team they literally are, Sal, Grace, Liam, and Father Menchu bust through the door and into a very, very strange place.

There was no apartment there anymore. It was a pulsing tangle of bone and hair, wood and teeth. Sal could see shapes lurching in the gloom. And Grace was fighting her way in. Something bellowed. Something else screeched.

Sal heads off to find the source while the other teammates deal with creepies, crawlies, and horrifying furniture come to life. Slattery’s descriptions here are really stellar – the weirdness positively oozes from the page and the rising panic of our heroine is palpable.

The first thing she saw was the policeman, lying face up. He was held down by a rug of long, thin fingers that looked like they were made of fat. They were growing from the floor, and they curled all around his body, into his mouth. The walls expanded and collapsed, expanded and collapsed, like a dying lung, panicking. The window at the far end of the room was coated in a translucent layer of skin.

When she finally gets to Gabriel he is half consumed by the magical book. Her mission is to grab the book with an anti-magic shroud and cut off its whiling ways – but suddenly she is sucked in herself!<insert even="" louder="" ominous="" music="">She pops into, seemingly, the world of magic that the book has drawn Gabriel and the girls into. The former is a jovial Goblin king, happily leading a marching band through his fantasy forest. The girls are there too – drousey-eyed prisoners of a magical fever dream. In a flash of police know-how she recognizes the situation: Goblins and magic aside, it’s just another hostage negotiation.</insert>

She talks to the Gabriel Goblin and reminds him that while his magical fantasy might seem well and nice – it all comes down to consent, and he never asked his two neighbor friends if they wanted to join him. He argues that they are happy here – all of them are – and doing just fine. Sal is like “Umm…ya sure about that? Have you seen your apartment recently?”Goblin Gabriel pops out of the magical forest to take a look around reality.Goblin Gabriel is appropriately freaked out.

He can end it – he thinks – and let everyone else go. But he’s too far in, the book has him. He must sacrifice himself to free the girls (and Sal…and the cop…and probably the rest of Team Three). He nobly does so.

#RightInTheFeelsThe magic stops and everything gradually gets un-weird again. The girls are ok, so is the cop. Gabriel manages a few last breaths – and a receives a kind word from Menchu – before succumbing to the magic and dying.Later, after the team hobbles together a thin excuse for the destruction of the apartment, Sal is understandably shaken by her first mission.

Back in Rome they debrief with Asanti, who stays after to counsel the newbie.

“Asanti?” Sal said. “Are all the missions like that?”

“No,” Asanti said. “Some of them are worse. Much worse. But you will see things no one else has seen. Things that, I think, will put you beyond faith. Faith asks you to believe that miracles can happen. You will know that miracles happen because you will have seen them with your own eyes. That’s worth something, I think. Worth the hardship.”

OMG YOU GUYS ASANTI EVEN GIVES AWESOME SAGE WISDOM LIKE GUINAN.

#yassssssssThe episode wraps up with no easy answers – Sal is starting a new life, the realities of which will take time to adjust to. Her brother’s plight will be a weight upon her shoulders for the foreseeable future and there is no escape from that.…just as there is no escape from a ringing cellphone whose caller ID says “Mom and Dad”. Better get that, Sal!

Hope you guys enjoyed this reread of Bookburners Episode 2: “Anywhere but Here”. See you sea-side next week for Margaret Dunlap’s “Fair Weather”!

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