As of now, two people in my family have read THE BEAST.
Well, it's not actually the beast, it's Passenger, which is THE SEQUEL to The Marbury Lens.
The back of the ARC says it's 480 pages, but it's actually 465. In any event, it is long, but my two readers have torn through it.
I am going to say a few things about Passenger at ALA this summer. I am also going to be signing ARCs of it at ALA on Saturday morning, June 23. Camping out in line is perfectly acceptable, since I am neither loaning out any copies of my own, nor sending any ARCs around. You'll have to get them from the folks in charge.
Sorry.
There are too many surprises in those 465 or 480 pages, and too many spoiler-geeks with Goodreads accounts.
So... no.
And it's kind of a long trip to October 2, which is the official release date.
Which is also a palindrome date.
If you employ the sensible, European method of numerical representations of dates, October 2, 2012 is written:
2-10-2012
...which is a palindrome day.
And that is cool.
You know... you see it in every book I have ever written, my fascination with numbers and patterns and connections and shit like that. It is an obsession I just can't shake.
I wrote a book that is coming out in fall of 2013 (which I will probably be telling you about in a week or so) that has a chapter called Palindromes in it.
Which is also cool.
Anyway, I was talking a bit with a reader about The Marbury Lens and how it relates to Passenger the other day.
This is what I said:
Whether you just take The Marbury Lens at face value or not (as a weird science fiction-type horror story), it is ultimately about how one messed-up event in your life can screw you over forever. The Marbury Lens is about how Jack tries, arguably with varying degrees of success, to deal with that issue despite his obvious flaws and predilection toward blaming himself. Passenger examines the effect of this on others: the people who love Jack. That's the bridge between these two books, and something to think about when you finally get your hands on this 465 or 480-page beast.
