Status Updates From Signpost to Switzerland

Gack - Lisa!! Oh wow. That was unexpectedly deep. Ouch. I mean, her comments on her future earlier on in the story I found very absorbing. Oof.

Oh man..for all the pretty, pretty protagonists, I am delighted that Lisa exists. But poor Lisa. Oh dear - is this how MEA viewed the world? Beautiful and skinny girls get all of the love, all of the time?! Ouch for all of us normal folk who aren't knock-outs!

(I haven't started reading yet, but I'm getting really optimistic about her and Sigmund going to Sion now! I can see it - she's going to courier the perpetually lost Smith party there, and Sigmund will drive them... That must be them on the cover.)

Yeah, it's as predictable as they come. And somehow I don't mind. MEA has a certain indescribable charm.

Next chapter: "Sigmund".

There is a certain predictability in these stories: spoiled brat is humbled by good-looking older young man and resents him. By dint of her exceptional physical attractiveness, he will fall for the little idiot, and she will come to realise that maybe she loved him all along....

Has this EVER happened in real life? (I'm not beautiful enough to have extremely bad manners written off!). Hmmm.

Camilla is awful (I know a LOT of these types, I'm sorry to say. Most of the people I know, it seems, are like her. But thankfully not all!).

I'm actually enjoying this - MUCH better written than the last two MEA books I've read (The Horns of Danger was a real clunker!). Descriptions of the Kandertal are more complete in this one. The Dettelmann's broken English is a bit off, though, as usual ("But yes!"? Doch ja?)

"Camilla was soon to find that the Swiss were very fond of hand-shaking."

Ha ha ha, very true! And kissing in greeting. But all of this was pre-pandemic....

Black cherry jam. Because it's an immutable law of the MEA universe.

Is that Sion on the cover?!?! :D I love that little town/city!!! I sure hope so!

Train goes through "Basle" - the black cherry jam mention looms! XD

Here we go! Haven't met Camilla yet, but am not expecting to like her much. ;)