Aww, crap! I wish I could eat cakes, but I'm allergic to eggs.
(This should be in the Hate thread, but oh well...)
Anywhos, as you people already know (thanks to my constant annoying boasts), I've been reading
Young Sherlock Holmes - Red Leech. Although I haven't finished it yet, I must say it's a fantastic read! The plot thickens, and the conspiracy deepens, as each page is read. Sherlock finds himself trapped in a spiral of crime-fest that endangers his friends. Gruesome villains, lurking danger, and intense thrill. Only problem is that the novel isn't fast paced, and thus putting off some fans, and yet it's quite hard to put it down. I find myself constantly saying, "Only one more page. Just
one more page. No, another page. Yet
another page." It's worth noting, though, that we hardly see many American characters in Sherlock Holmes franchise, and yet when they do appear (like in the novel Study in Scarlet) they're goddamned awesome!
That said, I've become a fan of Amyus Crowe, Sherlock's American teacher (Shut up! The soundtrack fits the character). While Sherlock inherits intelligence and wisdom from his brother, Mycroft, and develops love for music from the Irish, Rufus Stone, Amyus teaches Sherlock everything he needs to know about harnessing knowledge, deciphering codes, tracking criminals, mastering disguises, espionage, deducing clues and, hell, how to get away from trouble. Crowe is a cowboy, and a huge, Hercules-like, powerful one at that. He's fast, headstrong, and an elite Tracker (aka, Head Hunter / Hunter of Men). What an American like him is doing in England is anyone's guess in
the previous novel Death Cloud, but in this sequel his development is clear: apparently the assassin of Abe Lincoln has cheated death and has fled to Europe, and is not alone. Despite the unification of States, there is a conspiracy going on that can shatter the entire nation of America. This means that Amyus and his daughter, Virginia, need to go back, and somehow Sherlock and his buddy Matty are deeply involved in all of this.
Fascinating: Run and hide, fight for survival, race against time for the sake of your friend. We even witness Sherlock attempt to decipher a code while running all the way to his Hotel at New York to pursue the criminals before they escape the city. And before that, when he noticed an assassin following him, his quick thinking saved him and his friends from being potential targets of the conspirators. He even disguised himself so well, with techniques convincing enough to work in real life, that he stood in broad daylight only six feet closer to his pursuer, who was still trying to find where Sherlock disappeared to, all the while having the boy pursuing him instead. Ironic, aye?
And all the while, I had L's soundtrack going through my head. And while they were on their way to America, they had eight days of journey on ship. Even then there was no safe haven for the heroes.
Even then they had to deal with a hired assassin, with no way out in the ocean. The battle at the heart of the ship, the boilers, the hottest place you'd ever be where coal is constantly burning, where you'd fear being crushed under axles or cogs, or burned to crisp even. Breathtaking, I say,
and all the while I had this evil bastard's soundtrack playing in my head!But when the last day drew near and they saw land, they would arrive to the New World. America! A continent so new, so different, vast and majestic; an entirely new culture to drown yourself in. And I could imagine Sherlock standing on the deck, with the voyage coming to an end as they reach the mystical land never before seen,
and I imagined this the typical Chrono Cross way with the music Dream that Time Dreams. And this made me wonder about myself: that I was being melodramatic. Obviously, I've got friends at the US, and I've heard much about it. It's an International Capital, it's grand, but it has always been there since the day I was born. At least to me, this was nothing new, and yet while reading those passages in the book (or listening to that music) it often seemed to me that this was else. I really can't explain the feeling: it was travelling to a world that you never knew existed, like Serge travelling to the other dimension for he first time, or Crono visiting the glorious Kingdom of Zeal for the first time.
To every proud American/Mexican/Canadian/South American in this forum: I'd like to ask you something. To most of you it probably wouldn't be any different because you were born there and lived your whole life in your native country. But when you consider that the gigantic country you're currently living in was once a mysterious continent untouched, that it was once a part of the world never known to man, an entirely New World, what do you feel?
