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Wow, what to say about chapter 12?! Did the children really just drink soup made from ground up human bones!!
It’s such a strange set up these two being in this village. It feels very surreal and hard to believe how much danger they are in. I keep thinking it feels like they are at some strange summer camp playing cowboys and Indians, and Alex is not really fleeing for his life while being chased by drugged up tribesmen.
I did enjoy their journeys as their spirit animals. I don’t remember if we knew before that Nadia’s was an eagle. I wonder what is the significance of the three glass eggs?
What an ordeal for Alex to enter to be initiated as a man. Once again I wonder what their parents would think if they knew what he was up to!!
Speaking of which, did Alex literally turn into a jaguar during his initiation ritual, or was the text just being poetic? Those fire ants at the end… I bet he felt like he was dying.
I think it seems perhaps deliberately vague what happens when he changes into his totem animal. He certainly could physically change into an animal but that would seem a big step up in the magic levels compared to what else is going on. I can kind of visualise him simply going there in his mind and the others cheering as they see him prowling and roaring.
Finally finished listening to and then reading this chapter! For whatever reason, this might’ve been the easiest listening experience yet? I didn’t quite get all the details, but I feel like I understood all of the important things to come out of this chapter just by listening to it.
I also knew exactly what Alex was afraid of with regards to consuming the remains of other people, lol. I believe he was thinking of kuru, which is caused by funerary cannibalism, particularly by eating the brain. I think Alex should be safe here, though, because I assume the prion proteins that cause kuru wouldn’t survive cremation, so bones and ashes should presumably be safe, though they’re probably not very appetizing… Boy, he sure has come a long way from his picky eater days, hasn’t he?
Managed to catch that while just listening, too, which I was pretty proud of, haha.
I interpreted it as deliberately ambiguous. I think for the character and everyone around him, it was essentially the same as a literal transformation, so for all intents and purposes he was a jaguar during the ritual whether or not he “actually” transformed.
