Take the word Blog. Simply remove the B and you magically have the word log. Now you try!

Oh man. I'm really blown away and just mesmerized by this stuff. This is the most graphic and haunting book I've ever read. Dead babies hanging in trees, shriveling dead people eyes in a hardened burgundy ceramic of blood. This is just, wow.

The kid is back and he finds a fugitive pal. These chapter-long pals are like those really hopeful TV shows that last about two episodes. It shows that in the time and place, you have nobody. And it won't help to get attached to anyone, because they could succumb to anything anytime.

The most disturbing part for me was: "Bush that was hung with dead babies." Apart from the obvious "Oh my god, oh my god, the babies are dead, it's so sad," I'm not really sure if this means anything deeper. Even if it doesn't, the description is just nightmarish.

The church scene was almost equally bad. "A dead christ in a glass bier." There is no God in Mexico, for he is dead. In the church, along with the forty-so others. Sad, sad stuff.

I figured Terra damnata just meant damned earth, since terra is latin for earth. I learned that on an episode of the obvious. (This wasn't all that important, but I figured I should toss it in here.)

Um, the vampire. Anybody? Sproule starts yelling at the kid if I read correctly. I guess he's just insane, or terrified beyond cogency. But hey, if I was attacked by a blood-draining bat in the night, I would do the same. (I would go into a Twilight allusion, but I won't, in fear of getting a point off this again.)

Is it ironic that the very men the army set out to kill, the mexicans, were the ones who saved the kid from otherwise inevitable death? Interesting, yesh.

And so we'll see what next chapter has in store. Hopefully no more dead babies. I've had enough of those.