#the leap

[swan2swan]

< Tuesday, July 12, 2016 >

Sammy Gutierrez chills with her friends in the cave as they plan on how to better care for the dinosaurs: putting their heads together, Darius and Sammy come up with a plan to flood a depression with water in order to give the dinosaurs a peaceful place to live.

Unfortunately, Yaz and Ben have to bow out in order to collect the baby dinosaurs and talk about her feelings or something trivial like that. Fortunately, Yaz still has Darius and Brooklynn to help her...but Darius goes to keep the Tyrannosaurs off Sammy's back, which is appreciated. Brooklynn also decides that she would rather run around with dangerous animals than do some dirty work, which is less appreciated.

Thus Sammy is left to work alone...and work, she does. She builds a dam. She climbs a shaky tree. She hauls herself up a cliff, descends into the rank darkness of the tunnels, and struggles with engineering. She finds herself stalked through the labyrrinth by a skeletal foe she thought deceased, and dodges fire and hides in the shadows. Winged beasts descend on her from the sky, forcing her to make her escape by hurling herself off a cliff...

...and she survives. She accomplishes her mission. She's muddy, bloody, scorched, soaked, aching, shaken, and bruised, but she did work today, she accomplished something, and for her farmgirl self, there is no greater joy...except, maybe to feel the warm hand of her beloved friend in her own, and to feel the rush of the sky as they leap into the water together at the end of the day.

Some other stuff happens today, too, but for Sammy Gutierrez, it was Tuesday: the best day of the week.

[bibiuksha]

On the slowest journey ever to read more of Jonathan Stroud's one offs and I cannot recommend this enough

possible for The Leap spoilers under the cut

I must confess I was rather excited for this book. My initial thoughts on it was that it was some type of murder mystery. Reading the first chapter quickly changed my mind though. It is a story grounded in both a hallucinated fantasy and reality and at times really sell you on the fantastical element. In my mind, I knew that what Charlie was feeling was a hallucination, it isn't real. That is what scariest part of it and also is a great literary example of portraying psychosis.

Charlie loved Max. However you would like to interpret that is purely up to your imagination, but it paints a picture of how obsession consumes. Though Charlie is by no means a reliable narrator, especially in her more severe stages of delusion, at the very least it can be gathered that Max and Charlie were close. Through Charlie's perspective, he was the one that would show her adventure. In a way, he showed her what it meant to be free, taking her to different places, doing small town kid things in their little getaway. Charlie speaks of Max fondly both through his personality (though of course it being a Stroud FEMC shes a little hard headed about it) and her physical descriptions of him which I found rather humorous. With her being a kid with a arguably codependent perception of her friend, she does not know how to process her grief. Her grief hits her very hard it sends her into delusion. This book is about grief, loss, and acceptance

These episodes of hallucinations also lead her to harming herself. She literally saw her friend die right in front of her and yet she is holding onto some fantastical delusion that, somehow, he is out there somewhere. Stroud also highlights how these delusions completely take over her mind to the point that she was about to commit suicide. Charlie's brother and her do not get always get along, but without him Charlie probably would have never snapped out of her stupor. Small actions of checking into your friends and family is huge, it can save a life.

Another factor that led to Charlie snapping out of her delusion was how her dream state illustrated Max. He was alive, grown up a little perhaps. It was Charlie's interpretation of Max, but it wasn't Max and it would never be Max. It would never feel right to stay with him, to join him as a dead corpse. Instead, she chose life.

TLDR; really enjoyed the themes in this book and I am still thinking about it months later. It definitely made me think about what other Stroud partnerships would of thought of their other half dying as well

[swan2swan]

Something something about her making every move she can at Biosyn and making sure that they resolved everything within a few hours of their reunion.

[swan2swan]

Okay, I was wondering why Sammy didn't just go around to get up liket they did at the end...but Ben (or someone) made a vine rope.

Ah, and they're looking west. It may be a fake sun, but I'm sure it sets in the right direction. Maybe. BUT THIS IS VITAL.

Absolutely unbeatable episode. Even when using it for land development, it's Moving.

[swan2swan]

WHOOF. That's a lotta photos. But useful ones.

[swan2swan]

Okay, I guess that is the waterfall by the cave. I suspected that...

...but they DEFINITELY changed it.

Which is fine! I don't mind a little retcon! Sometimes you have to do it because an area you mapped out earlier as a background now needs to be used for an action piece, and that that changes things. It doesn't matter1

It's also possible that there's two waterfalls and two entrances. Or the flow changes depending on time of day. Who knows? I WILL. That's why I'm doing this.

[swan2swan]