Getting the Band Back Together
Lighting the beacons, sounding the horn, making phone calls, or just running around to gather them, sometimes you need a little help from friends. That’s where I’m at in both the World of Warcraft and in my reading of The Rook.
Getting the Band Back Together
In Warcraft, my current series of quests are taking me all over the forrest of Val’sharah to find the Archdruids to take on a mission for me. I’ve already spoken with and listed the aid of the Archdruid of the Claw and the Archdruid of Lore.
Now I need to convince the Archdruid of the Vale that my mission is of utmost urgency.
It’s almost like I’m gathering them up to perform a heist or something.
Calling the Supernatural Court
In The Rook I’m seeing a lot of similarities. Myfanwy just found out about a grave danger to England from the past…the Grafters. These baddies are like the Borg meets Dr. Monroe with a bit of Lord Voldemort thrown in for good measure. To better the odds of winning against them, she calls for a meeting of the Court. These are Britain’s League of Extraordinary Gentlepeople – the leaders of the supernatural Chequay group.
While she doesn’t have to fight battles to get the group together or run errands like I’m doing in Warcraft, she does need to learn a thing or two about who these people are. With her amnesia, she doesn’t know if she’s ever met these people and considering that one of them may have been the cause of her memory loss, she needs all the info she can lay her hands on. Fortunately, her ‘prior’ self left dossiers on them all.
It’s a little like that part of Suicide Squad where we see the files on each of the criminals that make up the team, but this is done well. No repetition, no over the top or blown out of proportion descriptions, just plain introductions to the people we’ll be dealing with for the rest of the novel. You get a sense of these guy’s and gal’s powerful nature by the way they’re spoken of rather than some BS descriptions that make it seem like…wait, I need to let that go…this is about a cool novel, not some dumb movie that I had my high hopes for dashed.
In any case, the Court is like a set of chess pieces. There’s 2 Rooks, a Lord (king), a Lady (queen), 2 Bishops, and 2 Chevalier, and lots of Pawns, though they’re not really members of the Court. It’s all very British and I like it.
Things continue to be interesting too as I learn about not only the members of the Court, but also about Myfanwy and her abilities.