#I have not seen any spoilers I’ve had the tags muted lol

[alpinelogy]

Well time to catch up with what happened with the acoustic motorsport over the weekend I guess

[overanalysingfandoms]

Jonathan Stroud's newest book, The Outlaws Scarlett & Browne arrived today.

Needless to say I have already finished it lol,

So if you haven't had a chance to read TOSAB yet please don't read the rest of this post, there are spoilers

I have zero idea how to do read more, soooo sorry for clogging up your tags?

I'll probably do a more in-depth review later but here are some of my thoughts after literally just finishing the book 5 minutes ago:

I want to adopt Albert

I really loved the book

Stroud's worldbuilding, as always, was absolutely on point, I felt as though it was a completely different world but also the same, it was *chefs kiss* beautiful

I immediately loved Scarlett, she kind of has aspect of both Lucy and Lockwood with Lucy's harshness, attitude, boldness and people skills and Lockwoods calculations, timings, finesse and charm

It took me a while to warm up to Albert but by the middle of the book I absolutely adored him, he kind of reminded me of a mix of Bobby Vernon and Danny Skinner with his way of addressing people, lack of good timing and wit etc.

The villian was amazing, during the final scene I kept putting the book down to just process all of her lines and squeal at how cool she is, she really gave me Marissa Fittes vibes and Big M (as the skull would say) is one of my favourite characters, so needless to say, although I've already said it and I'm sure I'll say it again, I loved her. And I'm really intrigued about what's going to happen next with the plot

I know I keep making references to Lockwood & Co but it's only because I really can't help comparing them and I really liked the characters personalities and how familiar I felt with them because of reading Lockwood &Co

I also absolutely adored Scarlett and Albert's relationship with Joe and just Joe and Ettie as characters, they were really well done and I got a strong feel for how loyal Joe is and how much he loves Ettie, as well as how Ettie might struggle in the future being mute, it really gave us an insight to how the laws around deficiencies affect normal people on a personal level without shoving it in our faces and to do that at the same time as giving a more to the side character good motivation and depth was pure genius

Scarlett saying 'Thomas' in the final fight gives me the same vibes as Lockwood saying he thought Lucy was 'someone else' (meaning Jessica) so maybe we could have another dead sibling on out hands? I don't know, but I'm very curious and excited about it

I love how the people in the 'free lands' were portrayed through the book, at the start being spoken of as perfect and saviours while at the end being seen as cowardly and not much better than the others, while I started to see it coming by the middle, it was definitely a great pay off when it happened and fit in really well narratively

I think the Tainted were really creepy, during the descriptions of them, I couldn't help but grimace a bit, I found them to almost be as scary as the Fetch from The Hollow Boy was and the way that Albert described one of them as being just a normal girl his age when he saw into it's mind really freaked me out, I can not wait to see what's going to happen with them, there's definitely tonnes of potential there, especially with how they came to be

Talking about how things came to be, I must admit that I'm very intrigued by the 'Great Cataclysm', what it was and how it came to be

I literally couldn't not think about Chat Noir whenever this was mentioned lol, so I have come up with a very crack, doesn't explain anything, non-canon, completely for my own self indulgence, theory that this all took place during Chat Blanc when he cataclysmed like the entirety of France and destroyed the moon and stuff. The theory makes no sense, but that's what my, very twisted, way too fandom centric, mind came up with

Getting back on track, I also absolutely adored how the dynamic between Scarlett and Albert evolved, at the start feeling really rocky and less fun to read, with neither of them really trusting the other and both, especially Scarlett, feeling like they could snap at any second to a really comfortable dynamic that (yes, another Lockwood & Co reference, I can't help myself) that really reminded me of Lockwood and Lucy's dynamic during the final books at some points

Overall I loved it and am really sad that it will probably take what will feel like forever for another one to come out, probably shouldn't have read it all in 4 hours, but Oh well, I can just keep rereading it over and over again until another one comes out, just like all my other favourite books

If you made it this far then WOW, thank you for reading my nonsense rambling, I appreciate that, I literally just typed out my, probably very incoherent, thoughts out as I thought them

I have not proof read this so if there are mistakes then, whoops?

TLDR; TOSAB is an amazing book by a wonderful author and you should all go read it

Also if someone could explain to me how to do the whole 'read more' thing that would be super helpful because I have no idea how to do it and don't want to keep clogging up tags with these super long posts XD