Emily M’s Reviews > Absolution > Status Update

“that was what freaked Lowry out so much he almost pissed himself: The casual way the Changeling’s molt told him the world was gone already. That it might last a few more decades, but it was fucking toast…Central had meddled in the business of the Forgotten Coast and…Area X had…attempted a beachhead there by redirecting what the Southern Teach itself sent through…at some point in the nearish future”

“The tinkling, pleasant sounds of water against that rough sand and shells, the lighthouse thankfully gone boring, or m sauce they’d gone boring…Yet in the morning, Lowry realized their mistake, for it was not shells that the water lapped against and surged across in the shallow water offshore but bones. Thousands and thousands of bones.”

“All the most important haunted fuckers, from the Director on down…vomited from their mouths all the time about the…’off switch’. As if the mish exped would saunter into Area X and find a huge fucking button…and all just jump up and down on it…and Area C would just go away…What if Area X wasn’t even truly ‘on’ yet and…somewhere there was an on switch. What if they fucking turned Area X on instead?”

Fuck, being in Lowry’s POV is exhausting! The man can’t keep from fucking swearing for two full sentences even in his own fucking head. And he only knows one swear.

“or that’s how it seemed to him, as if he had risen above the bar, the marsh, and was leaving that behind because there was no world now. And there had never really been, and Old Jim was just someone Central had pulled apart and remade. And yet…he had still been himself, a self, underneath it all…There shall be a flame that knows your name. But, perhaps, he knew its name, too.”

“‘Gus Waldron’. What a name for a monster. There wasn’t much in Gus’s pockets, but still more than there should have been - the kind of sloppiness you risked when you recruited a nut of a homegrown operative. Like the folded sheet of control words. Jack had been manipulating him from the outset, and the Rogue…had released Old Jim from Jack’s spell…Shouldn’t he be able to see his life clearly now?”

“‘In theory, they’ve shoved all the evidence from the Dead Town Disaster inside.’ But something already felt off, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it. ‘Did you request they dump it in a brick shithouse with bad vibes, or is that Central giving us the finger?’ ‘It’s not brick.’ ‘You know what I mean. Looks like the place a serial killer takes his victims to.’ ‘I do know what you mean.’”

“‘I’ll ask you again: What do you think happened during the storm?’ ‘Manifestation of the foreign entity’… ‘And how do you define foreign entity?’ ‘An entity that is foreign, sir.’ ‘Can you elaborate?’ Old Jim asked, and he could not keep a current of sarcasm from his voice. ‘An old, old force in the world.’”

“What words did this disembodied harsh-kind voice utter? She didn’t know. ‘It trickles into my ears like water and it sounded like someone had spoken to me from under the sea or the marsh. But, also, I could have imagined it.’”

“‘We’re using the cover of a bunch of stupid Ouija Hicks…They already call the whole coast Active Site X, like they’ve planted a flag…But little do they know, we’ve planted a flag in them.’ ‘What’re they called? These Ouija Hicks?’ ‘The Seance and Science Brigade.’ Old Jim didn’t like brigades, made him think of civil wars and unrest. But also of fools who didn’t clean their weapons.”