In The House of Root and Rot (The Altered Planes Book 2) by Sam Weiss; Between Life and Death Lies Confusion and Surreality

 

In The House of Root and Rot (The Altered Planes Book 2) by Sam Weiss; Between Life and Death Lies Confusion and Surreality

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Normally I get very uncomfortable when I read the second book in a series without reading the first. I often compare it to butting into the middle of a conversation and missing the opening or hearing the punchline of a joke and missing the set up.

Some authors consciously know that not everyone reads series in order so they compensate for that. Mystery authors often make their books stand alone while having occasional subplots carry over from volume to volume. Other genre authors summarize the events prior in the introduction or have the characters provide exposition for what happened before. 

Even when authors provide that assistance, it can be a confusing surreal situation to read the second book first. It can be frustrating but sometimes, as in the case of In The House of Root and Rot, the second book in Sam Weiss’ The Altered Planes series, that confusion and surrealism actually works. 

Will Deadmarsh (a name that is on the nose for a Horror novel but has a delightful ghoulish ring to it) is the only survivor in a family that is cursed by death according to his grandfather, Houl. Will’s mother died in childbirth. His father and twin sister got into a car collision which resulted in his immediate death and her coma and eventual death. Houl, had a stroke but is not responsive leaving Will to take care of the once cantankerous verbally abusive senior.

Atra Hart (another meaningful surname) has escaped from a psychiatric hospital with her scientist father, Tom. She was subjected to scientific experiments that Tom rescued her from while shooting her primary doctor, Dr. Glasser. As the two hide, Tom’s erratic behavior becomes negligent and borderline abusive so when Atra is put into a dangerous situation, she escapes. By chance, Atra encounters Will as he is questioning the aftermath of a sleep study in which his sister, Lex, returned from the dead and Houl disappeared. Finding their lives in danger possibly by the same people, Atra and Will go on with Lex in tow.

As I mentioned before, reading the series out of sequence adds and actually increases the confusion and surrealism that surrounds the characters and the Reader. Somehow it makes the events that much scarier when we don't know what's going on any more than the characters do.

We are given some exposition in the opening chapters. We are told that Atra was a guinea pig in a scientific experiment to explore life after death, particularly the spirit world called The Otherside. She can travel through a portal called The Altered Planes which is between life and death. She also has a piece of death inside her called Dread which appears as a sentient shadow. 

We also learn over the course of the book that Will's family was also involved in the experiments hence the frequent deaths and Lex's post mortem reappearance. But the exposition is few and far between and still leaves a lot of gaps and unanswered questions.

Under normal circumstances, alternating point of view chapters, flashbacks, and back stories put Readers ten steps ahead of the protagonists. This book however puts us two steps ahead of the characters at most. Because of this, Readers are unprepared for the weirdness without any information. We are just as startled when these things happen such as when Lex returns in an emaciated corpse form and taunts and threatens her twin brother. 

Her insults might have been gentle sibling ribaldry and teasing when she was alive. But now there is something savage and menacing about her words. She mentally creates confusion and suspicion within Will which leaves him emotionally isolated. It's possible that the price of Lex’s return was her soul. 

Lex isn't the only sinister paranormal presence. There are creatures that appear in and out of shadows and feed off of fear and negative emotions. They pass down through family generations. Will eventually learns such a spirit is attached to the Deadmarsh Family. Dread is similar to these creatures as it too has chaotic motivations and commits violent actions. It's hard for Will and Atra to hide from spirits that are within their brain, blood, and DNA.

Will and Atra are face to face with these spirits that can't be studied or understood. Indeed, part of the reason for their appearance is out of defiance of human scientists arrogantly researching them and expecting them to be contained. If they can't be studied and can't be contained, then they can't be defeated or killed. In fact, since they are associated with death, they are more than likely death itself or representatives of the end of life. So the only options are to try to run from them or learn to live with them.

The confusion lies not only within the characters but the setting. Some of the eeriest moments occur during Will and Atra’s road trip. They stop at small towns that are unnervingly silent with no one at gas stations, convenience stores, driving on the highway. There are buildings and vehicles, but they stand empty of people inside them. It's like a movie set that is supposed to imitate familiarity but fails at it. It only adds to the tension and puts the two in even more potential danger as their worst fears multiply in the silence.

What is even more sinister and disconcerting is that Will and Atra can't find respite in the human world any more than they can in the Otherside. I have often said that sometimes humans can be more frightening and more sinister than any supernatural creature and this book shows that.

Both Will and Atra have histories of abuse, loss, neglect, abandonment and so does the whole book.This book has parents experimenting on their own children, abusive family heads keeping a tight psychological grip on the rest of the family, people falling into poverty, despair, and desperation, victims becoming physically and mentally battered to the point of death, narcissistic guardians controlling their children for their own means, people betraying others out of avarice and ignorance, children being neglected and physically or psychologically abandoned by once trusted authority figures and family members, multiple incidents of gaslighting, physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse.

If nothing else, In The House of Root and Rot shows us that The Otherside might be filled with terrifying spirits and visions but the Human World is filled with the anxieties of everyday living. You don't need to read Book 1 to understand that. 

The Last Ritual by Dragos Gaszpar; A Fantasy That Is Sometimes Too Dark and Somber For Its Own Good

 

The Last Ritual by Dragos Gaszpar; A Fantasy That Is Sometimes Too Dark and Somber For Its Own Good 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: When a book starts with the line “we killed God,” you know that you are in for a dark somber time. That's what you get with The Last Ritual by Dragos Gaszpar, a dark Epic Fantasy which is mostly set during extensive battles between mortal enemies.

A group of traveling companions have spent centuries fighting against the beastly Leath. After some of their companions are killed in their latest battle, they think that they have an advantage when one of their own, Tarra returns from captivity with a Leath named Skar in tow. Having one of their enemies in their camp gives them an opportunity to study and understand the Leath and fight them smarter rather than harder. 

The somber tone is the book’s biggest strength but oddly enough is also its biggest weakness. It answers a fundamental question of whether a book can be too dark for its own good. The Last Ritual says, “yes.”

The tone is what makes this Fantasy novel realistic which sounds like a contradiction in terms but in this case it works. It serves as a deconstruction of tropes which are often found in Fantasies.

While battles are the norm for many novels and death is expected, that's often a side feature of the conflict. In this case, victory in war gives way to endless slaughter and the heroism faced by the characters is switched instead for brutal inescapable violence. There are no wins when enemy armies have been fighting against each other for a long time. Instead, it is a resigned weariness that forces them to move forward because to end it would lead them to wondering what the point was in all of the fighting in the first place.

The constant battles can be weary not only to the characters but to the Reader as well. The book starts out suspenseful as some characters are met with death pretty early giving an intentional ill ease. But the fights and violence are so frequent and repetitive, that battle fatigue sets in. It becomes harder to remember strategies, motives, and actions. After a while, the battles are interchangeable. The Reader squirms with impatience and even boredom mirroring the emotions of the characters who live for the fight but are sick of it as well.

The dour nature can be found not only in tone and plot but in character as well. The companions face not only the Leath but disagreements from within. For example, Tarra who has spent time with the Leath suggests a more communicative and understanding approach that encourages dialogue and negotiation with them. Her colleague Silanna is more fiery tempered and is in favor of slaughtering every Leath and letting the god that they just killed rise from the dead to sort it out later. Melaan, who serves as the primary protagonist, hovers between the two ideologies, violent fury at the Leath and empathetic humanity, especially the more that he talks to Skar and sees a multifaceted complex individual and not a mindless monster. 

The characters face their own views about mortality, prejudice, xenophobia, and what happens when the enemy is more within than outside. They argue and bicker a great deal amongst themselves. Just like the battles they often go back and forth on a regular basis. However, just like the fights against the Leath, the characters' personal struggles become tedious and cringy. At one point they stop an emergency situation just to have another argument that gets more shrill, irritating, and makes the Reader root for the Leath to end it. The protagonists' feelings towards each other also plays into realism that the constant struggle against the Leath is what holds them together as a unit. Without it, they wouldn't be close or even friends. 

The Last Ritual is a book that thrives on being as troubling and morbid as possible. It works but it also goes a long way and leaves the Reader feeling hollow and empty.

 

Tipani Walker and The Nightmare Knot by Jessica Crichton; A Dream Come True for Fantasy YA Lovers

 

Tipani Walker and The Nightmare Knot by Jessica Crichton; A Dream Come True for Fantasy YA Lovers  

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Now, we come to the second Jessica Crichton novel, Tipani Walker and the Nightmare Knot. If possible, it is actually better than Dr. Fixit’s Malicious Machine, particularly in terms of setting. character, most notably with its protagonist, Tipani Walker, and themes about the difference between living in fantasy or accepting reality. 

12 year old Tipani Walker has a difficult home life. Her father is in a coma. Her mother falls into a drug addiction which is provided by a man that Tipani calls The Spoon Man. She is frequently bullied and made the victim of a cruel prank at her school Science Fair. She stops inside an antique store and meets its eccentric owner, Piper, who gets her interest by appealing to her talents of making complex knots. After experiencing vivid dreams and some strange encounters with mysterious creatures, Piper reveals that Tipani is a Weaver able to travel through Time and Space into what Piper calls the Day Knot (memories) and the Night Knot (dreams). As a Weaver, her job is to protect people’s dreams. During her dream travels, Tipani encounters various characters both friendly and unfriendly, most notably Cassie, a girl who may or may not be part of a dream or a real person, may be in a lot of trouble, and might need Tipani’s help. 

This book is a veritable feast for the imagination. While Dr. Fixit’s Malicious Machine subverts Children’s Book expectations by giving us a very grim dark parallel universe, Crichton puts us right into those expectations of a magical fantasy world and weaves an excellent challenging story around it. I am someone who is fascinated by dreams, dream psychology, dream interpretation, and astral travel so this book definitely appeals to those interests. 

The Dream Worlds that Tipani visits alternates between whimsical and terrifying, beautiful and horrible, fantasy and horror. They’re mutable and constantly change landscapes, characters, and situations depending on what either she or the Dreamer is going through. The longer Tipani stays in a dream, the scarier and weirder it becomes. This is symptomatic of when a Dreamer enters different levels of REM sleep, they have less control over their dreams and their subconscious thoughts and fears manifest themselves. 

There are many chapters that show this. In one trip, Tipani and her guide, a doll named Chicken, encounter the Spoon Man who is transformed into a monster. He is terrifying by playing into Tipani’s fears and insecurities about abandonment and loneliness. Then upon escaping, Tipani and Chicken meet Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, the characters from the eponymous poem by Eugene Field. The poetic trio are charming, kind, and helpful. Their wooden shoe boat sailing among the stars is the stuff of childhood nostalgia while the Spoon Man is the stuff of childhood fears. Exploring the dreams is a trip into Tipani’s mind and discovering what comforts and frightens her, what she hopes for and what she wants to run away from. This book is a fascinating psychological study wrapped inside an engaging YA novel. 

Crichton’s characters are as rich as the setting. There is the kind and helpful Piper who is a wise teacher and a potential father figure. Chicken gives plenty of assistance with a touch of sardonic humor. Cassie is in a quandary of her own, forced into playing a role in which she is unhappy to play and only able to truly be herself within her own mind and through her friendship with Tipani. The Spoon Man is a monster who knows what those around him fear and worry about and doesn’t mind using it against them. 

Tipani by far is the most intriguing character and is a brilliant protagonist. Since she is 12 years old, she is certainly an angst filled adolescent who at times cops a bad attitude but with her difficult home life, it’s easy to understand why. After all, if you are facing some of the most difficult years of your life, your father is ill, mother stopped caring, and you are surrounded by classmates who want to fight you if they so much as look at your direction, you would probably not be in the best of moods either. 

Tipani is also a very intelligent and persistent girl. Once she is introduced to the concept of being a Weaver, she is curious and willing to participate. She recognizes the responsibilities that she has in helping people through their dreams and fighting their inner fears. In fact, when she befriends Cassie through her dreams, she wants to find her in the real world to see if she needs help in her waking life as she does in her dreams. 

Tipani's intelligence is already realized even before she becomes a Weaver. Her interests lie in creating complex knots like the Not Knot (unable to be untied except by the one who tied it) and learning to undo other knots like the Rapunzel Knot (long and wrapped in braids). This gives her the ability to analyze and recognize patterns, a talent that is helpful when she recognizes patterns within the dreams. This knowledge comes in handy when she has to stand up to the monsters that torture Cassie and herself. 

For all of its monsters, fears, magic, and whimsy, Tipani Walker and the Nightmare Knot is a very powerful story with some very strong things to say about the nature of dreams and reality. Sometimes our lives are terrible and we want to live inside our dreams. There we live the way we want and if things don’t work out, we can always wake up. But it’s not enough to live inside of dreams and memories. Tipani realizes that she has to take action to find and rescue Cassie, to encourage her to live her truth, and for herself to fight her own battles. Once dreaming is over, it’s time to start doing. 

With a memorable setting, commendable characters, and brilliant themes, Tipani Walker and the Nightmare Knot is a definite dream of a YA novel. 

Weekly Reader: Tales From The Hinterland (The Hazel Wood) by Melissa Albert; Delightful Blend of Horror and Fairy Tale Is The Best Anthology of 2021 So Far

 

Weekly Reader: Tales From The Hinterland (The Hazel Wood) by Melissa Albert; Delightful Blend of Horror and Fairy Tale Is The Best Anthology of 2021 So Far

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Somewhere on the corner of Horror Ave. and Fairy Tale St. lies Melissa Albert's Tales From The Hinterland. This is an anthology that is filled with many modern and very fractured fairy tales. However, and I cannot stress this enough, these are not Disney style stories for the kids. These fairy tales are creepy and sinister with plenty of blood and scares. These are more like fairy tales in the way that they were originally told and subsequently written by The Brothers Grimm. Yes, they are scary but also enchanting and mesmerizing. It is hard to put this anthology down once it is started.

 The best stories are:

"The Door That Wasn't There"

This story begins the creepy factor already. It starts with the common trope of the deceased mother/loving sisters/wicked stepmother combined with the concept of the forbidden doorways that you are not supposed to go through. 

Once Anya, the elder of two sisters, opens the forbidden door it involves a great and terrifying sacrifice. This sacrifice makes you wonder whether the flat good lead in most fairy tales may not be as good as she appears. Anya's trip through the doorway is enchanting but like most magic deals contains a price. It's just the cost of the price that is rather chilling particularly the lengths that Anya goes to achieve it.

"The Clockwork Bride"

You ever seen one of those old fashioned toy stores in movies with porcelain dolls and clockwork toys and thought it would be neat to go through the store or buy one? Well this story suggests that watch out. You may not get out of that store ever again, at least not without someone buying you.

A mysterious toymaker comes to town with an impressive array of clockwork toys. Brother and sister, Eleanor and Thomas see the toys up close. When they return, Eleanor wishes that she could escape from her boring impoverished humdrum life and enter the toy's world. Forgetting what type of anthology that she lives in, Eleanor follows a hare that looks like one she saw at the display. Thomas follows her and they see toy soldiers and ballerinas grown to life size. Unfortunately, the clockwork world is too mesmerizing and they realize too late that they can't get out. Even long after Eleanor grows and has a child, the Toymaker calls to her.

There is an almost uncanny valley feel about this story featuring toys that look real but aren't and children that were real but now are not. It's the type of setting that even Chucky would stay away from.

"The Skinned Maiden"

One of Albert's best traits is to take a familiar story and give a creepy original spin towards it. This one is a variation of the Animal Bride story. The usual version sees a beautiful woman out at night next to feathers or an animal skin. A man watched her and falls in love. He confiscates the skin or feathers until she agrees to marry him. She does and he hides the original form from her. Years later, one of their children tells the woman that they found out where the skin or feathers were. The woman goes to find it and leaves the house never to return, sometimes taking the children with her.

The variation found in "The Skinned Maiden" is not so melancholy or pleasant. Instead of going quietly into that good night and returning to her animal form, The Maiden instead starts sounding more like the Ghost Woman in "The Golden Arm" Story ("Who has my golden arm??"). She threatens her husband becoming more monstrous. Then in the end, she takes on a very fearsome nightmarish appearance forcing her husband to admit his theft of her skin and forcing of their marriage before she completely destroys him.

"Alice Three Times"

This story is similar to the changeling tales in which a child is born with some unusual powers or traits. Usually, those traits either allow the magical child save a kingdom and fall in love or become destructive for the child, parents, or future spouse. In this version, it's the latter.

A princess is born as a result of an affair between the queen and one of her courtiers. She is a very strange child with very hollow black eyes and the ability to speak at two months old. The queen decides to give her the very "unroyal" name of Alice. (I guess no one told her that one of Queen Victoria's daughters was named Alice. Oh well, as past experience has told us, any fantasy with a protagonist named Alice is going to lead to a bizarre otherworldly time.)

As Alice grows rather quickly, she frightens people with her eerie stare, precocious intelligence, and physical abuse towards her siblings. The queen wants to send her daughter into exile, but the king is starting to have extremely improper Woody Allen-esque thoughts towards his stepdaughter.

This story appeals to Albert's strengths of writing interesting female characters in this fantasy anthology. The story becomes a one on one battle between mother and daughter. Alice has her strange uncanny powers and the Queen has her cunning and influence. The two are memorable as they vie against each other pitting their family and potential suitors as arsenal against the other. 

"The House Under The Stairwell"

If there was a story that carried the adage "Be Careful What You Wish For" this would be it. Isobel, the eldest of three sisters has a broken engagement so she does what any heartbroken young woman would do: she and her sisters prick their fingers and let the blood spill on the briar overgrowing the grave of a woman called The Wicked Wife.They will then dream of the man that they will marry.

The younger sisters dream of conventional husbands while Isobel's is less than conventional. She dreams of a masquerade ball in which a man approaches her in a fox costume. Each night she dreams of the strange dance under the stairwell and her Fox Suitor. She is also haunted by a ghost woman whom Isobel believes to be the Wicked Wife. She at first thinks that it's just a reoccurring dream but she becomes nervous when her sisters become courted by men who look just like the ones in their dreams. 

This is one of the best stories in the anthology. The Fairy World underneath the stairwell is the right combination of enchanting and terrifying. Instead of being the beautiful other world found in modern fantasy films like Lord of the Rings, it hearkens back to the old Celtic and Teutonic folk tales where the Fair Folk can be seductive and deadly.

There is also a strong theme of collaboration between women that runs contrary to many of the other stories like "Alice Three Times" and in some respects "The Door That Wasn't There." The strongest characterization is between Isobel and The Wicked Wife. The Wicked Wife reveals that she has been maligned with a bad reputation over the years and she wants to save the younger Isobel from making the same mistake that she did and has had to live with for eternity.

 

"The Mother and The Dagger"

This story reveals how a monster is made. It begins in an almost poetic opening delivered in second person which invites the Reader to listen through an open window and follow a bewitching voice calling them to a cabin decorated with bones. Of course in true dark fantasy horror tradition, that voice is the last thing that they will ever hear.

Albert then backtracks to tell us the story of a queen who longed for a child and made a deal with a sinister witch. The queen gets her child but all ends up not going well and the queen slowly morphs into the Mother, the creature spoken of in the opening of the story.

There is almost a melancholy towards The Mother as she is driven by sadness and longing. Her murderous impulses seem to spiral out of control as she wants to hold onto what she can never really have: a child to remain with her.

"Death and The Wood Wife"

Many of the stories in this anthology like "Ilsa Waits" and "Twice Killed Katherine" deal with encounters between the protagonist and Death. Usually, the encounter requires action, fighting Death. This story requires the protagonist to outsmart Death.

A princess is the youngest of eight children. All of her siblings died before she was born and her mother died in childbirth. The princess is very wealthy but very peculiar looking with skin the color of green leaves. When she grows, she has many suitors. One of her suitors speaks in riddles and is implied to be the Son of Death. Death's Son is ready to claim his bride. The princess turns him down and marries a woodcutter. When the woodcutter dies as well, The Princess is ready to take on Death and Son.

The Princess's confrontation with the Death family is not one of strength but one of cleverness. She denies that she was the woman that the Son attempted to court saying that she is simply a "wood wife" and nothing more. She uses verbal clues and riddles to ascertain the Son's motives against his father. She is able to use her wits to save herself, her husband, and escape Death's kingdom.

There are many great and terrifying stories in Tales From The Hinterland that mix horror and dark fantasy with the classic fairy tale genre. This odd combination of cross genres make this the best anthology, if not the best fantasy novels this year so far.

New Book Alert: A Bounty With Strings (Book One in The Bounty Series) by Markus Matthews; Fun Engaging Superhero Novel Delivers A Brilliant Postmodern Team

New Book Alert: A Bounty With Strings (The Bounty Series) by Markus Matthews; Fun Engaging Superhero Novel Delivers A Brilliant Postmodern Team

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Forget Avengers, X Men, and the Justice League. This year the ultimate superhero team is that of Zack Stevens: the former Hamilton Hurricane and his Bounty Hunters.
Markus Matthews's novel, A Bounty With Strings, is a fun and engaging novel that gives us a great plot as well as a brilliant postmodern team of super powerful characters.


Zack is a former superhero once called the Hamilton Hurricane. His ability to control air (including flying) and seeing auras made him a very powerful adversary against villains. Unfortunately, his superhero days are behind him. He is now a bounty hunter going after "Enhanced Individuals" or E.I. (it's no longer PC to call them Monsters) for pay.


While on assignment to catch his latest quarry, Zack gets in the way of a team of four female bounty hunters after the same catch. The team consists of: Stella, an over 100 year old Englishwoman in the body of a child that turns into a Mr. Hyde-like monster, Blue, a blue-skinned alien who can travel long distances through shadows, Bree, a bad tempered werepanther, and Olivia, a dizzy vampire. Initially mistrustful of each other, Zack and the quartet team up to catch the quarry. They then have to pool their resources when they learn that there is a price on Olivia's head from a court of very powerful vampires.


The novel brims with clever touches that play on conventions of super hero fiction. For starters, it's rather refreshing to have a super hero that hails from Hamilton, Ontario Canada. Aside from Wolverine, Canada is not often selected as the setting for such stories. There are some brilliant jokes such as Zack's displeasure at being mistaken for an American ("the gun toting neighbors to the South.") and his adamence that the Reader not mistake Hamilton for Toronto.


There's also some cute incidents where the characters use their superpowers for mundane tasks as well as to defeat enemies. Stella's secret lab has a Food-a-Tron which creates and prepares meals as long as the meals and recipes are described in its system, leaving Blue to use her shadow ability to transport her friends to the grocery store for food and to a blood supplier for Olivia's plasma (which she calls "juice boxes.").

Of course, while chasing super villains, it is always important to fly over Tim Horton's and make a pit stop to get donuts as our heroes do. The quintet act in many ways the way regular people would who suddenly have awesome powers that they can use to go to the store and avoid traffic jams.


Zack and the other bounty hunters are a likeable well-characterized bunch that bounce off each other brilliantly. Zack, the newcomer to the gang, is confused by his new friend's behaviors but he is able to do some strategic thinking to help them out and make plans to face enemies with minimal injuries.

It is also particularly refreshing that romance does not play into the novel. Even though the team consists of one straight man and four women, none of the women become love interests for him. There is also no triangle between friends to gain Zack's affections. Mostly their sexual tension is reduced mostly to jokes and innuendo amongst friends. It's a nice change and reflective of reality that men and women can work together and just be close friends.


The four women also stand out. While young in appearance, Stella is a wise old soul. She has a sometimes cold analytical nature that served as her defense mechanism from a traumatic past from which she still suffers. However, she is a surrogate mother to the others, treating Bree and Olivia like daughters.

Blue gets the least amount of focus since she spends much of the book in a healing coma. But she is an enigmatic figure and loyal friend to the others. There are also hints that she and Stella may be more than friends.


Bree and Olivia make for a brilliant odd couple like team. Bree is a temperamental tomboy while Olivia is a sunny fashionista. Bree is more dour and sardonic while Olivia is cheerful and at times flighty. (One of the best running commentaries in the story is that Olivia contrasts with the typical Goth dark dour vampire by being the most optimistic one in the group.) The two tease and bicker like sisters but their love and protectiveness is never in doubt. This is especially shown when Bree, in her werepanther state, protects Olivia with all of the rage and fury of her were form. It is also shown when Olivia considers taking one for the team and turning herself in to the vampire court. Only Zack can talk her out of sacrificing herself for her close friends and surrogate family.

A Bounty with Strings is the first of a new series. If Zack, Stella, Blue, Bree, and Olivia's next adventure is as well written, fun, and engaging as this one, then it will be a great adventure indeed.