Woooah this chapter was insanely short! Not at all what I'd expected. Like I said yesterday, I thought there'd at least be some kind of de-briefing from MI6, but there was nothing of the sort. Not that we witness anyway.
The whole thing is from Jack's point of view and is of when she goes to visit Alex in hospital back in England. She meets Mrs Jones outside his room and for the umpteenth time tells her that Alex cannot be treated like this any more. This involvement has GOT to stop. She must feel so useless: she knows she has no power over MI6, that they have few qualms about using Alex again and again, and Jones outright says that she can't guarantee that Alex won't be used. She does give the assurance that she hopes he never is used again, but we know from past books that her reservations have never stopped Blunt. In the past he has used Alex against Mrs Jones's will, but now I'm wondering if he will do this again. That one admission earlier in the book that he wanted Alex safe is, I feel, very significant. This man hardly ever shows concern for anything and for him to say that he's worried about Alex seems to be his way of saying that he is perhaps fond of him. So now I wonder if he will be prepared to leave Alex alone.
Jack gets Alex's room number and is told that it's the same room as the one he was in at the beginning of Ark Angel. She is about to enter the room when she recognises the nurse leaving it as the same one from Ark Angel. I'm still trying to work out the significance of these details. Is it a kind of foreshadowing for the plot of the final book? Is one of the charcter from a previous mission (namely the one in AA) going to return? Or is it some way of suggesting that working in MI6 is like running in a circle: you always end up in the same place. In this case it's hospital, and maybe it's saying that if Alex doesn't get out soon, he could end up in a much worse condition. I don't know, but I'm sure this is more than coincidence - Blunt said in one of the books that, "I don't believe in coincidence", so now I'm suspicious...
When Jack sees Alex she can tell he's in a terrible state. Although he's awake and sitting up, his burns are bad and he's been taken off painkillers so that he doesn't get addicted. They talk and I was pleased to see that Jack wasn't cross with him: she knows that none of this is Alex's fault but sometimes she gets cross because she's so worried. Alex really needs her full support now, and we can tell how badly damaged he is on the inside. I don't think he's ever going to recover.
Jack then reminds Alex of something that made me slightly worried. She reminds him that it's his birthday next week - something he'd completely forgotten - and he's going to be fifteen. Now, I once read an interview with Horowitz saying that to finish the series Alex would either die or turn fifteen. So obviously he's fifteen in a few days, so if Horowitz stuck to his guns Alex's final mission will take place in the next few days... which could be seriously damaging for him because of his fragile state; but I am now worried that he may actually have a very real chance of dying here. This really is the last book and what's to stop Horowitz doing the 'easy' thing and killing him? JK Rowling once said that by bringing Harry back to life in Deathly Hallows she was making him to the harder, more heroic thing: he;d faced death, then had the chance to go on to exist peacefully but instead went back to the pain and uncertainty of living. He had to rebuild his and others' lives and live with the horrors of what he had seen and the guilt of all those people dying for him. That has to be the harder, more heroic option.
Crocodile Tears ends here, and with only one book to go I really don't know what is going to happen. The next book is called Scorpia Rising and this is evidently the worst thing that could happen because Scorpia are terrifyingly ruthless and awful and have Alex as Undesirable Number 1.
What I do know however is that I LOVE THESE BOOKS and I really need to savour this last one, because it's not this often that I get to read a series as thrilling and captivating as this for the first time.
(Extra note: I may not have time to do a poston wednesday because I have to go to Uni to sort out the house I'm living in next year and it takes ages to get there and back and I won't have internet, but I'll do my best!!)
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