Well! Summer is over and I can get back to doing stuff. Wonderful!

Now I get to…go back to this awful book.

…As I said months back, we are at least in the home stretch here. We’re now entering Part 7 – Landings. And we get two quotes!

Our country is challenged at home and abroad . . . it is our will that is being tried and not our strength.
—PRESIDENT JOHNSON on Vietnam and the school campus war protests, 1968
I have every faith that this devastating national conflict shall be resolved, and that the accord between both sides shall also serve as an ultimate solution to the feral teenage problem. But until that glorious day, I am instituting an eight p.m. curfew for anyone under the age of eighteen.
—PRESIDENT MOSS on the Heartland War, two weeks prior to his assassination by militant New Jersey separatists

Although the author’s obviously trying to draw a comparison here, what really stands out is how different the two quotes are. When you look at the first quote, it just makes it obvious how clumsy the second one is, prioritizing what the author wants said over sounding like an actual presidential speech.

Incidentally, pretty sure specifying New Jersey is just there because the author heard detail is good, because I don’t believe there’s any thought given to why New Jersey wanted to be separatists midway through a war that’s supposedly about two sides who care too much about policing what the other side does, unless this is a very roundabout way of saying they’re all godless sluts who wanted free abortions every Sunday.

We then get a quick two paragraph chapter explaining that the plane (you remember, the one hijacked by the Goblin King) has decided the best place to crash is in a giant saltwater lake in South California. In another book, a book where New Jersey separatists meant anything, which state you happen to crash in might matter. California is a pretty liberal place…but they can be rather selfish and short-sighted when it comes to policies that don’t directly benefit them. I could easily see them as being very progressive socially and yet still okay with sweet, sweet childmurder organs. There’s also considerations like how populated a place is, and how survivable it’ll be for a bunch of homeless kids who have to hole up somewhere.

None of this matters. Pretty sure the point of the crash being here is just he liked the idea of a deadly salt lake.

the jet comes in for what airlines ridiculously call “a water landing.”
It does not go well.

This is sort of true.

Here’s a list of valid reasons to make a water landing:

1) HOLY SHIT EVERYTHING JUST EXPLODED AND WE ARE CRASHING NO TIME TO FIND A PLACE TO LAND

Planes are designed to land on solid surfaces. Also, solid surfaces don’t swallow you whole if you don’t leave the plane fast enough after a landing. This is probably happening because he said the landing gear got wrecked earlier, but there’s really little difference at high speed between ground and water until you’ve slowed to a stop.

Planes land in water when they’re in a place where water is the only flat option. I think if you fly to Mexico and back, you probably had a chance to find a better area.

And it’s not like it’d have been impossible to do this – this is an old, crappy plane clumsily restored by self-taught kids. It would be fine to just say that they were aiming for a particular location but there was an engine failure suddenly.

Interestingly, the one benefit of water landings, the “softer” part, isn’t going to be true anyway because being goblin is suffering. We go on to the next chapter, featuring our second to last glimpse of Connor2.

No seatbelts, no seats. No way to brace themselves for a crash landing. “Lock your elbows together! Hook your legs around each other,” Starkey tells them. “We’ll be one another ’s seatbelts.”

…

Inside, the mob of kids is launched from the floorboards and pulled apart by centrifugal force, thrown in two separate clusters to either end of the main cabin. The hooking of arms actually saves many of them, as they’re cushioned by the bodies around them, but those on the outside of the tumbling crush of kids—those acting as the cushions—become the sacrifices. Many of them are killed as they’re slammed against the hard surfaces of the Dreamliner.

Also, the weapons they packed this with come out (who designed this plane?) and one is a grenade that goes off. Now they’re sinking faster. Bam – the girl who was working in food services and then became a follower but not like a proper follower because she’s still too uppity – gets out a life raft and heads out, but Connor2 remembers that ditching everybody means nobody follows you, so he stays a bit telling the kids to take the guns on their way out. Also the fuel is on fire, meaning they evidently had plenty of fuel and could’ve found somewhere less sinking and drowning to come down at.

Starkey determines right then and there to save only those who can make it out on their own. The critically injured are just liabilities.

Except they are.

Obviously we want to make it clear that everyone involved is just an evil goblin, but if someone can’t even crawl to a door, there’s nothing that can be done for them. The kids are going to have to run for it from here. They’re not even in hospitable territory – salt lakes tend not to be places where you can find water easily. Trying to drag out the dying will save them from a death by drowning for a death by getting hacked up for parts. There’s no way they can carry everybody with them.

And maybe a death of getting hacked up for parts is seen as better, and Connor2 is a monster for not taking the time to give it to them. The series really seems to believe that unwinding is somehow meaningfully different than death, after all. But it’s not consistent enough for me to care what bullshit the characters personally feel, and there’s also the politics level of it. I far more respect the clappers saying that in death they will deny those who participate in this system their parts than kids who say they oppose it but will give themselves to strengthen their enemies.

Before Connor2 makes it out, he hears Trace calling for help. He’s fine, but pinned.

“Yes, that’s a problem,” Starkey says. But is it his problem? They needed Trace to get them this far, but they don’t need a pilot anymore—and didn’t Trace already threaten to kill him? If Trace survives, from this moment on he’ll be nothing but a threat—and a dangerous one, at that.

…and again, this is reasonable. Trace was willing to stay behind and let them kill Connor2. He was convinced to fly to save the other kids, but he’s made it clear he thinks Connor2 should die and they both know he’s trained to kill people.

That Connor2 is flippant about this certainly reflects badly on him, but this gets back to the central problem of the storks vs everybody thing – we keep seeing Connor2 in situations where it actually is us against them.

Speaking of, we go back to the kids at the door.

There are about a dozen kids left—the slow ones, the injured ones, the ones afraid to jump because they can’t swim

So even assuming only two of each other group, that means a maximum of eight kids who can’t swim out of the whole group. I actually find whether or not people know how to swim interesting – more people here know how to swim than in the past, but it’s a leisure activity, as best illustrated by the fact a white guy is way more likely to know how to swim than a black one. (According to a study, 80% of Americans say they know how to swim, but only roughly half the population can do things like tread water for a minute and swim twenty-five yards) That almost all of the kids can swim is therefore weird – it suggests the kids are still getting a reasonably high level of investment from their parents and society. My guess here is that now that kids are your personal future, certain areas, like fitness, are still heavily subsidized because everyone wants well-muscled healthy kids. Given the muscle memory thing, it’s even possible than getting an arm that doesn’t know how to swim might be dangerous. But this should result in pretty good services for the kids, which we really haven’t seen, particularly in our greatest organ stockpiles, the Ward homes.

Anyway, we then jump to Trace drowning. That’s the whole chapter, and yes, it’s uncomfortably detailed and unnecessary.

We end with: Trace holds on to the hope that his choice to fight on the side of the AWOLs instead of the Juvenile Authority will be enough to pay his passage to a truly better place. and realize this is why he’s dying – he did something wrong, and everyone has to be either pure good or pure evil.

Trace surviving would’ve led to questions, like, how does the government treat people too old to unwind who aid them? Or if he sticks with the kids, does he follow through on his threats and try to murder Connor2? Does he simply leave them?

But whatever. He was nothing before the glory of Connorsue. Back to the doppelganger.

He points out what I said a bit above, that they have to run for it. A hundred twenty-eight kids made it, forty-one didn’t. That’s about in line for a water landing.

Around him the survivors try to tally exactly who is missing, which just makes Starkey angry. Sitting here will do nothing but get them captured. He knows he’s cunning enough to make it on his own; somehow he’s got to extend his survival smarts to all of them.

And this is just weird. The idea he’s trying to keep them alive for personal gain makes complete sense, but he’s thinking that he can do fine on his own, so we’re back to the idea he’s honestly trying to do right by them as best he can, and it’s just his best is fucked up because of the abuse he’s grown up with.

Anyway, it’s time for the final nail in Connor2’s coffin:

Now that they’re free from the holding pen of the Graveyard, their priorities need to change. Connor might have been happy to just keep kids alive, but Starkey has to make this about more than just survival. Under his leadership, his storks can be a force to be reckoned with.

That’s right, the Goblin King is planning to do such evil things as “fight back against mass murderers”.

I really hope we get to see them fucking shit up next book.

Even before they leave the shore, Starkey’s grand plan begins to take shape. He will step up the campaign of vengeance he began in Tucson—only this time it won’t just be a handful of avenging storks, it will be all of them: a guerrilla army 128 strong, heaping punishment on anyone who would unwind a stork. Their numbers will grow with every stork they rescue. He doesn’t doubt that in time they could take down entire harvest camps. And then the Akron AWOL will be nothing but a sorry footnote beneath his own legacy.

Godspeed, Goblin King.