NOS4a2 sleigh house 1996 - beginning of the "bad mother December..." section

 Ch 25 pg 205 Haverhill

She rides her bike across the bridge to the sleigh house on the other end

Ch 26 pg 207 the other end of the bridge

it's warm and breezey here. she finds the nos4a2 car and there's a kid inside. On this side of the bridge she remembers all her other bridge adventures. she tries to save the kid but he hurts to touch cause he's frozen and he's on charlies side and calls for mr Manx saying he caught the girl.

ch 27 pg 218 a mudroom

she retreats into the house.  she is real worried that this is the end for her.

ch 28 pg 219 a hallway

long halway has green shag carpeting.   

she makes it to the front door and there's charie with her bike

she closes and locks the door and goes back to the kitchetn

ch 29 pg 223 the kitchen

she's gonna go out the back door but the frozen boy is there

she puts some towels in the oven with the turkey, probably trying to burn the house down

charlie pushes her bike into the bridge and Vic has HUGE head pain and the bridge is gone

charlie is coming after her, the oven is on fire and the frozen boy is trying to break the glass door to get in.  She ducks into the pantry.  

ch 30 pg 231 the pantry

She braces the door closed with a mop.  Charlie is starting to cough from the fire smoke.  He says come out and you'll be ok, or stay in there and die in the fire.  She doesn't come out so he says he's leaving, he's got other places.  

ch 31 pg 238 the laundry chute

She goes up the laundry chute to try to escape the fire.  It's a horribly painful endeavor, but she makes it up to the second floor.  Then down the stairs and after some hemming and hawing about where Charlie might be, she goes outside.

ch 32 pg 244 out

she stumbles out to the trees and slowly makes her way parallel to the road making sure to be careful in case anything looks her way she can duck down.  There's a motorcycle.  She yells and he stops and she gets on.  She says the whole deal and probably sounds like a crazy person.  She figures they must be at a high altitude.

ch 33 pg 250 above gunbarrel, colorado

they stop at a country store to call for help.  fat motorcycle boy's name is Louis Carmody.  

They make it to a convenience store and ask for help and theres people there ready and willing to help.

Ch 34 pg 258

The nos4a2 car shows up.

The eye of the Bedlam bride part 2 ch 37 to the end

Ch 37 pg 419

Carl tries to act mad at Odette for ru8bing the ultra rich lady's plans.  But she knows it was a setup.  She tells him not to worry, she's got a plan and its all to make sure mordekai is set for life after this crawl.

Part 2: The Father

Ch 38 pg 432

The game is all messed up.  They though it would let them go to the Bahamas as thats where they had done all their research but then it only gave donut 4 choices and she chose Miami. But when she got there it said it was Iowa.  They breeze through half a dozen card fights by Carl just blowing people up with bombs.  Now we are into the difficult card fights.

Ch 39 pg 441

More card fighting stuff.  They combined uzi jesus and the pestilence guy from the god shrine challenge into 1 dude and hes got a bazooka.

Ch 40 pg 450

They have to climb up a cliff to get to the key spot, which is an area pulled from Iowa.

Ch 41 pg 461

They get to the top and it says its Dallas county Iowa.

They end up in a barn full of turkeys.  Mongo is going crazy eating turkeys.  Carl goes to retrieve him and theres a ghost turkey and it turns out that its a card game master and there's a giant ogre and they have to fight them both at the same time.

Ch 42 pg 473

Its a real bad fight, but they win.  At the end the ogre has a moment of lucidity and telks Carl they are starving. The game masters starve them when not in action.  But Carl can satiate their hunger.  We don't find out how because their crab kills the ogre. Also the turkey was named Tom a d for the whole fight the barn is sliding off the edge of a cliff.  And Carl can't use his bombs because the explode prematurely due to the Iowa strength heaters in the barn.

Ch 43 pg 490

Donut is being all weird and says she wants to do the last fight without Carl.  Carl figues it out.  The bad guy is gonna be his dad.

Ch 44 pg 494

Carl picks up a bunch f stuff.  He tries to pick up a truck but it doesn't work.  Carl's dad's trailer is here.  The game tells them this is going to be from another time.  Carl has to go into the trailer and face his demons. 

Ch 45 pg 500

Carl finds out his dad remarried and had a son.  Carl had a brother named Ash.  He watches as his step mom kills his dad with an overdose of morphine. The game wants him to watch this and leave and go back inside for the fight.  Carl lights the drapes on fire so he doesn't have to do that.

Ch 46 pg 510

Before the boss fight starts the AI tells its life story.  It was an ancient AI that the mantis people found.  They were worried about it so they launched it into the sun, but somehow it survived and it was found and was used to be the AI for this crawl.

This fight is hella fun.  Its a hydra with all the heads being cats or people they knew in life.  Well, not all of them.  Carl didnt actually know his stepmother or half brother in life.  But theyre on heads.

Each head has a different resistance t9 a type of damage and with all his explosive talent Carl's best damage type is fire.  They keep killing heads and they keep growing back until they realize Bea's mom is the fire head and cut it off.  Around then the titular bride card is pulled and starts biting heads off.

The boss has an Alpha Carl card and its lots of fun to have it fight for the bad guys.  As an evil enemy combatant Carl is pretty terrifying. Also he has a cat that is supposedly the cat Bea wanted to replace donut with. 

In the midst of all this the titular bride uses her third eye to break into Carl's mind.  She says pretty soon Carl will do something for her 

Ch 47 pg 533

They talk about their feelings. 

Carl's password for everything is Megatron12 and Bea knew it.  She used it to get into his Facebook and intercept hus DMs.  One dm was a coworker lady asking if he wanted to get drinks.  Bea dm'd Carl's boss and got her fired.

Also she knew about Asher and stepmother  nd didn't tell Carl.

Carl is ripshit at this news.  He's gonna get on a rocketship and fly to wherever she is and burn her house down with explosive lemons.

They gat a trophy for winning the fight.

Cards: lots of cool utility cards. They also had a Frank Q card.  Carl doesn't want to keep that or the Carl card.  No cards based on people. 

You gottA draw the line somewhere 

But donut doesn't want the replacement cat card or this blobby meat wad card for a thing that says it eats dinosaur. 

They decide not to keep any of them.

Trick is, after donut throws away blobby and replacement cat, frank and carl automatically go into the deck.

I suppose they will have to replace them in the next fight.

Ch 48 pg 544

NOS4A2 prologue - beginning of the "sleigh house 1996"

I hate this book cause it doesnt have chapter numbers.

Also, I'm reading the big print version so my page numbers won't match up with anyone reading the normal book.

Prologue 

A lady works at an asylum for the criminally insane.  A child rapist and murderer thats supposed to be a vegetable grabs her arm and threatens her son.  The doctor tells her to take off the rest of the day and tomorrow.  Its Christmas. 

Ch 1 pg 15 haverhill Massachusetts 

There's a girl who has a cool bike and rides it across a dangerous condemned bridge.

Her parents are arguing about where her mom lost her bracelet.

When she comes out the other side she's magically transported to a back alley near the seaside instead of the woods that should be on the other side of the bridge.

Ch 2 pg 30 Terry's primo.sub shop New Hampshire 

Looks like girl will be a going concern.  Her name is Victoria but likes to go by Vic and in her inner monologue calls herself the brat.

The sub shop is where her mom left her bracelet. 

Vic gets it and rides her bike back over the bridge back home.

Ch 3 pg 38 haverville Massachusetts 

The whole bridge situation took a lot out of Vic.  She makes it home and she has a fever and is too weak to stand and her dad catches her when she passes out.

Ch 4 pg 45 home

She's recovering from her ordeal.

Ch 5 pg 50 various locales

Vic decides to forget about the bridge.  Then there's some flashbacks tomother times she used the bridge to find something lost and decided to forget about it.

Pg 55 spicy menace

Ch 6 pg 57 Pennsylvania 

The red hot chili peppers are down with the state of Pennsylvania. 

Bing is a mentally ill man that works at NorChemPharm.  He sees an old ad for Christmas vill3 and writes them a letter saying he wants to work.there.

Christmas ville is where the serial rapist/killer of children in the prologue worked.

Ch 7 pg 73 NorChemPharm

Charles Manx from Christmasland shows upnwith his NOS4A2 rolls Joyce and picks up Bing to talk about his future, possibly at Christmasland or maybe as a murder victim. Only time will tell.

Ch 8 pg 81 highway 432

I think Charles max drugs bing as they drive to Christmas land.  He comes to and they're there.

Ch 9 pg 90 the road to Christmas land

Christmasland isn't a physical place in our world.  Charles Manx describes it as a dream world.  He can only take people there when they are asleep, which is why he drugged Bing. 

The children aren't dead, they're frozen.

Charles says he saves them from their horrible parents.

Bing says he wants to stay in Christmas land.  Charles says he has to earn his way in by helping him kidnap 10 children.

Ch 10 pg 103 the Pennsylvania country side 

They're here to case a girl that Charles wants to "save" from her "whore" mother who from my perspective is just overwhelmed  by doing her best to provide for her daughter by working at a bar.

Pg 109 the librarian 1991

Ch 11 pg 111 haverhill Massachusetts 

This time the thing Vic lost is a picture of her dad as a baby with his mom who died shortly after. The whole ride feels wrong this time.  Like she can't suspend her disbelief and just go with the magic of the thing.  Coming back she feels the bridge is gone for good now.

Ch 12 pg 121 the McQueen house

Vic was gonna go visit her friend before she left for lake winepesake. But she hears her mom talking about how the janitor that saw the bridge fell off the wagon.  So instead of visiting her friend she goes over the bridge again.

Ch 12 pg 128 here iowa

There's a girl on the other end of the bridge that tells Vic she's been waiting for her and knows she needs help wrapping her mind around the bridge. 

Ch 13 the librarian 

The girl's name is Margret.

She had magical scrabble powers.  But at a cost.  Shes got a horrible studder because of it.  And it gets worse the more she uses it.  It'll be interesting to see what Vic's cost is.

Margaret uses her scrabble powers to figure out thay vic could use her powers to find Charles Manx.

Ch 14 pg 156 haverhill Massachusetts 

Vic is in real bad shape.  She can't see out of her left eye.  I'm not sure exactly what the effect is, really bad headache and sight loss could be a lot of different things.  Maybe she's having like small strokes.  Not sure it really matters.  What really matters is that its very bad and the longer she stays the worse it is and that's a pretty decent argument to not use that power anymore.

Ch 15 pg 163 As kingfishers catch fire, dragonfiles draw flame

It's a poem by Garard Manley Hopkins

Disappearances 1991 - 1996

ch 16 pg 167 Various places

A Russian chess champion and her mom are taken.

The only evidence is that the driver that was supposed to pick them up smelled gingerbread before he was knocked out

A boy going on vacation with his family was taken

His driver was discovered in the trunk of his own car

ch 17 pg 172 haverhill

Vic's dad left them when Vic started highschool

She tries riding her bike over the bridge but it doesn't work

ch 18 pg 177 various locals

9 year old girl who's mom is a rich widow

only witness said he heard christmas music

driver was never found, but his hat was and it had blood on it

10 year old boy flying alone

driver was found dead of a heart attack

12 year old girl and her dad get  a rid to a daddy/daughter dance

Months later the mom got a call at 2:30 in the morning with children singing christmas music.  She's pretty sure one of the children was her daughter.

there's forshadowing that bad things are in store for Vic at the hands of Charlie Manx.

ch 19 pg 182 haverhill

Vic and her mom are really not enjoying life

Vic is getting into drugs

MBMBAM says the best cover for anything else you're doing is keep your grades up

Vic is not keeping her grades up either

So her mom is just really having a hard time

She's dating a boy that smokes

ch 20 pg 187

Vic has this idea she's gonna go to her dad's house.

It doesn't work out

ch 21 pg 191 Home

Vic sneaks back into her mom's house via a basement window

ch 22 pg 195 the basement

Vic finds her old bike

it's comically small for her now

but she makes it work

she's angry

she's gonna ride around and find trouble

she finds the bridge

she smells bats

imagine having been around bats so much that you can tell there's bats by a smell

she's gonna get revenge on her parents by disappearing into the bridge

End at 202

Next section starts at 205 haverhill

mass trip

Day 1: salem

Parked at O'Keefe sports complex

It was freezing.  Definitely bring a sweater if we come.her3 again.

Coffee at jaho

Sugar Free Raspberry latte was good.

Breakfast burrito was not

Wish I would have gotten a breakfast sandwich on a cinnamon raison bagel.

Wax museum.  Not bad.

Witch show.  Bad, that said, if the spell ends up improving my short game

Lunch at bit bar

Got the jerk chicken grinder.  Would go back just for that.

SALEM WITCH BOARD MUSEUM

Highlight of the day

Bought a rock for peace for $5

Dinner in Yarmouth at trader Joe's 

Jap chae and fake beef bulgogi. 

Perfect meal.

Day 2 Yarmouth

I love Yarmouth. Im Yarmouth for life.

Breakfast at Ann & Fran's Kitchen

I  got crazy sweet pumpkin spice French toast.

Wish I woulda had the special sweet potato hash.

Provincetown Art Association and Museum

Dinner at captain Parkers pub.

I got the fish sandwich and onion rings.  I wish I would have gotten the clamp chowder sour dough bowl.

Day 3 Martha's vineyard

Coffee at old kings coffee

Sugar-Free Vanilla late was ok.  Blueberry teabread was great.

Bobby B's on Martha's vineyard was bad

Bus tour of the island was good.

Chowder from 

Menemsha Fish Market Was skipable. Gingerbread houses are a must see. Id call this a bucket list thing if I knew they existed. Dinner at THE BARN was amazing But that might be cause im a basic bitch.  I got meatloaf with fig BBQ sauce and garlic mashed potatoes.  The ferry back was weird cause we stopped for 1 minute to pee and then were told the busses back to the parking lot has already left and we would have to wait 2 hours for the next ferry to come ine before the bus would go again. But we whined and the bus ended up taking us back to our car in 20 minutes.

Day 4 salem

The salem witch museum was fine.

It wasn't a museum. It was a show where you sit in the middle and it lights up scenes from the salem witch trials.

Breakfast at odd meter coffee was great.  They do their egg sandwiches over medium so a little  it of yoke comes out and its awesome.

Tea party museum 

Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum

So much more fun than I thought it would be.  Surprisingly emersive experience. 

Old Town Trolley Boston

I LOVE A hop on hop off bus.  Only downside was we kinda lost track of time and ended up on the second to last one so no hopping off for us.

Dinner at Jacqueline's on TWENTY-EIGHT was pretty good.  I got the pappardel and meatballs and it was good.  Shereen got the CHICKEN SORRENTINA.  We should have just ordered that and split it.

Day 5 salem

Breakfast at the ugly mug was worth the wait.  Just go.

Historical "walking" tour was ok, but we spent most of our time in a single house where a rich slave trader was murdered. 

Wish I had done more walking tours or maybe found a self guided one online.

All anyone talks about here is the witch trials, but much later it was the most successful port in America in the early 1800s and as a result there are Tons of giant fancy houses built back then and its kinda cool to just walk around and look at them. 

Being stuck in traffic for 4 hours was not fun and we almost missed out dinner train.

Cape Cod Dinner Train was great.  Even in mostly darkness.  Id definitely do it.again.

Day 6 Yarmouth 

Day 7 go home

Coffee at great awakening

Sugar free oat milk peppermint latte was ok.

M H D ch 8 to the end

Ch 8 pg 193

They do more training.

A french dragon shows up and it amkes Temeraire jealous.   Or maybe insecure is a better word.

There's word that some dragons have been taken and they need to take the place of the crew that's going to save them

Ch 9.pg 232

They are on the move and are attacked.  Lilly is injured quite severely.

They settle into Dover where everyone's wounds are tended to.  Its a little scary when Lilly isn't eating.  But she recovers enough to start eating and that's a good sign. 

One of Will's crew is a 10 year old girl.  She asks for leave.  Pretty much everyone that has asked for leave because they want to visit the ladies of the night in Dover and so Will says no.

Turns out she's another captain's daughter.  Another lady.  She spends the day with her mom and then at night Will and the lady talk about how since dragons live so much longer than people its best that the captains have children their dragons can have a relationship with so its easy to inherit the captainship of the dragon.  She suggests she'd be up for it but she's too busy.  She suggests maybe he and captain Harcore pop out a couple of kids. 

Ch 10 pg 257

Will takes some mail to the navy blockade.  He finds the general stuffiness and holding to propriety, stuff he used to treasure ad a Navy captain. now to be a real bore. 

Temeraire gets to do some fishing and he still loves it.  But maybe next time they should take off his rigging as he makes a real mess of it.

The airforce Admiral is real worried about the state of things and what Napoleon might have up his sleeve.  He intends on taking some aggressive action to get to the  bottom of things once Lilly has recovered.  

Will and Temeraire are to be training to lead a small triforce.  Seems like the Admiral intends to spread the local airforce a little thin so he can send out some serious firepower to France.

Will and lady captain do it.

Ch 11 pg 275

French captain has decided Napoleon is going to win the war and betrays them.  His plan is to abduct Harcourt and Lilly in the hopes bringing back an extra dragon will result in forgiveness. 

Turns out his real orders were to kill Temeraire. His egg was a gift to napoleon from the Chinese.

The reason the French captain was so certain was because the French fleet attacks the British blockade.  Unfortunately for them, the Brotish defense is solid and despite being outnumbered,  the French fleet is beaten and as such we are no longer expecting a French invasion. 

Ch 13 pg 301

Turns out the invasion is still on.  The French have troop carriers that the dragons can carry across the English channel.  

On page 330 Temeraire realizes he has super powers and uses his super breath to shoot down a transport.

The French end up retreating.

Epilogue pg 333

his majesty dragon ch 1 - 7

Ch 1

Laurence is a British naval captain.  

His ship has just overtaken a French ship.

He was very disappointed in the fight.  This French ship is running with a skeleton crew and it looks like they've been through the ringer.  Laurence is a little disgusted that the French ship didnt just surrender at first site.  He finds the reason they fought despite certain failure.  They have a dragon egg.  Its about to hatch.  Adding a dragon to the airforce would be a great victory for Britian.  The problem is someone has to try to bond with the dragon.  If you succeed, your life as you know it is over.  You become a dragon man, you have to live in remote areas far away from society. You will never get to wed or have children.  Your whole life becomes dragon.  They draw straws and a junior officer is given the duty.  But when the dragon hatches he's not up to the task and Laurence has to step in.  He's a dragon man now.

Ch 2 pg 31

Dragon is named Temeraire.  Im just.gunna keep calling.him dragon

  He's gettong.so big.sp fast

They almost screw things up by keeping him below decks too long and can't get him out.  But they do and he's an outside dragon now.  He's also a hero now cause he saved a man thay went overboard. But also hes a dragon so they don't really make a big deal about it.  He's so big that he can go flying with Laurence upon him.  And he can feed himself. 

Ch 3 pg 47

They make it to the island of Funchal.  Not sure who was claiming sovereignty over Funchal at that point, but now it's declared as part of Portugal.  It's way far south west of Morocco in the Atlantic ocean.   They meet with Admiral Croft, who sucks.  There's a dragon expert there that identifies Temeraire as a Chinese Imperial.  

Next stop is Gibraltar.  He gets there and everyone is mean to him cause he's a Navy clodpole.  The guy in charge is named Portland.  It's not important, but it was fun for me.

Ch 4 pg 81

Temeraire does some training and growing in Gibraltar cause he's not big enough to make the flight to England yet.  When it's time to go, Laurence is a bit disgusted at the seemingly haphazard way in which a dragon is loaded up to depart.  The other side of the coin is that it only takes them 15 minutes.  In the navy they'd still be getting ready to swab the deck cause they're waiting for the tide to rise before they head out.  Makes him thinking maybe he's judged the air corpse a little harshly for their frumpy dress.  They don't dress badly cause they don't care about their appearances, it's cause they have a need.  A NEED FOR SPEED!!!!

They fly to Chatham where they're told they're going to scotland.  Most everyone he talks to has some version of a speech akin to "The air force's business is the air force's business and you'll not breath a word of it to anyone ever."  But then they're all coy about it and won't tell him anything.

he stops in at his parents house on the way and everyone is mean to him

during book club I intend to see if we can make a list of the people that are not mean to him and see if it fills up a whole hand or not.

So I guess his mom isn't mean to him.  She's not angry, she's just disappointed.

Ch 5 pg 111

They fly to Scotland and after a bit of settling in Laurence realizes why everyone's so coy about air force training.  Most of the training is done by the Dragons.  If word of this got out it would be an absolute scandal.  Most people don't even know Dragons can talk, much less that they're intelligent beings with their own hopes and dreams and feelings.  I suppose maybe some of that is done by the airforce on purpose as they would like to have people think Dragons are simply beasts of burden.

Laurence goes to the sauna and is shocked to find that's where they keep the dragon eggs.

Lots of young boys in the airforce.  Laurence is good with young boys.  Unlike that Jean Luc Picard, always whining about how uncomfortable he is around children.

Temeraire makes a mess of himself eating and asks around to see where he can clean up.  He's told that dragons don't clean up.  They lick themselves like cats.  In trying to get Temeraire cleaned up, they run across a dragon named Levitas who has been neglected.  I have a feeling Laurence is going to find said captain and kick his ass.  Or at least give him some harsh words.

Ch 6 pg 137

They do lots of training. Laurence makes a friend.  Turns out its Levitas's captain and now he hates him and he hates himself.  Laurence 's first name is Will.  He hates himself.  But he has tons of money so he buys Temeraire a big fancy necklace and feels much better.

Also, there's a lady captain and this realization blows Will's fragile little mind.

ch 7 pg 171

Remember how I talked about training.  That was nothing.  The real training has begun and it is BRUTAL!!!!

They're sent on a rescue mission and shit gets a little wild.  But they make it back ok.

Things are bad down south.  Will and Temeraire are going to war and theyre joining a group led by a woman.  We will see how well Will handles himself.

black Dalia ch 25 to the end

Ch 25

Kay and bucky get bored with married life in less than 2 years.

Xh 26

Bucky is working as an evidence tech now.  He does the job just fine, but its not real police work so it drives him crazy.

Ch 27

He investigates a suicide at Madeleine's neighbors place to find out backstory on her from a new angle.

He ends up tailing her. Shes going out dressed like Betty and picking up soldiers. 

Ch 28

Bucky gets assigned to be a real cop on the night shift in a poor black neighborhood. He makes a lot of arrests by getting dirt on bad guys from the hobos and then starting fights with the bad guys and arresting them.  Hes a good fighter,  so it works pretty good.

Ch 29 

I dont remember chapters 29 through 31

Ch 32

This one's real long.

I dont remember the details.

The long story short is the georgey,  Madeleine's father's "gardner" killed Betty and when Bucky finds him there's a fight and he ends up blowing Georgey's brains out.

Ch 33 pg 300

Bucky goes to see madeline's sister.  She tells him that lee knew Georgie was the killer way back when before he went to Mexico. He blackmailed their dad into giving him money so he could pay people to kill Kay's former pimp. I guess he really didnt care about anything other than protecting Kay.

C H 34 pg 306

Turns out the real killer is Madeleine's mom.  I guess bucky is arresting Madeleine.  

Ch 35 pg 319

Madeleine goes to the insane asylum for Lee's murder.

Bucky gets fired.

Ch 36 pg 322

Kay writes him a letter.  He gets on a plane to go see her.

https://youtu.be/HIWY8UyW9bw?is=kLscxjKbD705UeZn

Ch 37 pg 325

Bucky prays to Betty for a safe landing. 

Afterward 

The author's mom was murdered and it feeds his black Dalia obsession. He seems to recommend that you see the movie based on this book.