Mark Reads ‘Thief of Time’: Part 9

In the ninth part of Thief of Time, Igor is suspicious, Lady LaJean reveals herself, and Lu-Tze and Lobsang bond. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Discworld.

Lots to address, so let’s get into this!

Igor’s Instinct

The sense I got from this is that the survival instinct in Igor’s is passed down through the family. It has to be, especially since there’s a high risk involved with being an Igor. As he puts it, it’s the only thing more certain for an Igor than anything else: once they know a situation’s gone south, they’re ready to leave.

So when an Igor has a bad feeling about something, it becomes the most obvious canary in the coal mine imaginable. Something is wrong with Lady LaJean, he knows it, and Jeremy just won’t have it. You know, I understand why I thought Jeremy was the son of time because he’s just so eerie about his obsession and talent. Even reading this again and seeing how casually he dismisses Igor’s concerns makes me feel like I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. It was a good theory! It’s just that Lobsang fits the theory better, you know?

At the same time, it’s clear that some other force appears to be driving Jeremy. Or maybe he’s just so full of himself that he doesn’t care to stop and analyze what he’s doing. The guy is assembling a perfect clock with an unlimited supply of money, and he’s contracting people through Igor to do RIDICULOUS things, and he isn’t at all critical of a single portion of it. In that context, I wonder if it’s just the sheer act of doing something billed to be impossible that fuels Jeremy. He wants to be the second person in history to build a Glass Clock, and he’s gonna do it even better than the person before him. It’s like… narcissistic spite???

So, clearly I don’t have the best grasp on Jeremy as a character, but I’m working on it. I’ve comparatively had less time with him than pretty much all of the other major characters, but this is what I’ve got so far. Plus, his interactions with Lady LaJean are about the only time we see any emotion from him. He’s detached otherwise, but once he talks about that damn Clock? He comes alive, and I don’t want to ignore that. It couldn’t just be a love for time, could it? See, I thought that pretty much explained Jeremy, but then this happened:

“Um… I was wondering, um, your ladyship, um… perhaps, um, you would like to take dinner with me, um, tonight, um…”

SO I DID NOT EXPECT THIS AT ALL, FRIENDS. Clearly, neither did Lady LaJean, though that’s explained shortly after this. It’s such a bold move, isn’t it? Is he interested in her because she gave him this job? Or is it something else?

Lady LaJean

Well, I guessed who she was just before it was revealed, so… yay me? The Auditors are having the Glass Clock built, but that’s not like a massive surprise. But having an Auditor inhabit a human body??? Now that is interesting, especially since the Auditors completely refuse to understand humans. They’re disgusting by human behavior. By human disorganization. By human orifices. Everything about humans disgusts them!

Yet look how interested the Auditors are in all the mundane, benign parts of human life. THEY ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS FOR BEINGS WHO DON’T CARE ABOUT HUMANS. Quite suspicious, don’t you think?

Also, this was too real:

“Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.”

Well… yes. That is exactly what it’s like.

“I do not wish to continue in this way any longer than necessary,” she added. And realized that she had lied.

OH. OH, SHIT. THIS IS THE BEST DEVELOPMENT IN THIS SECTION. She is enjoying the overwhelming, frightening, and joyous experience of being human, y’all. YES. MORE OF THIS. M O R E.

Lu-Tze

OH MAN, BACKSTORY ON THE GLASS CLOCK! This was a welcome part of this section, and having it personalized through Lu-Tze was even better. You get a real taste for his frustration because he was so close to stopping it! Yet the Glass Clock, constructed in Uberwald by Jeremy’s grandfather, wasn’t stopped, and so time got stuck. The way Lu-Tze spoke of it, it sounded catastrophic. Except right when he’s about to explain what happened upon it’s completion, he stops talking and changes the subject. NO, I NEED TO KNOW. Don’t do that to me! Thankfully, Lobsang stops him the second time he does this exact thing, and that’s how I learn that Wen’s great secret was… love poems?

I DON’T GET IT. I’M SO LOST.

http://youtu.be/K_a4Hnd6RxE?a

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