I think this time around I’m not going to do a full review
first, if you’re following along up and until now I think you’ve probably
decided to read it and you’ll know. I will step directly into the review and relay
what I think are the vital points and leave the details to be discovered!
It’s been a bit since the last section, so let us recall the
characters we’ve met Bray, Hind, Coo, the Baron and the Baron’s son. In saving
coo from execution blame was laid upon Hind and Bray only escaped by dying and
being reborn again.
Now to get into the act. It’s wonderful, for the week
previous I’ve been listening a lot of “Zaba” by Glass Animals and it reminds me
greatly of the world presented here. Not
that the stories are terribly similar, nor the mythology really, but the
supernatural world presented is just lush. Zaba’s literal jungle and Wild
Children’s medieval jungle are both so filled with life beyond the mundane you
just want to get lost in it.
Our protagonist Jinx is definitely lost in it, starting
during his human life he read arcane texts and he supposes, like most, that forbidden
knowledge was the path into becoming a Cat Child. Beyond that a Black Cat
Child, and black cats are obviously the worst, right? And here so much of
legends behind cats turn out to be true: ability to steal children’s breath, to
disappear into the shadows, to see all those things that normal humans cannot,
and to exist on the cusp between realms. Yet, he shares with us the fact that
those abilities aren’t so unique, that all Wild Children can do some of these.
The themes of sin and salvation are strong in this chapter
too. Jinx is trying to ‘earn’ his salvation by trading things of worth to the
Others of the city, we see examples of both pain and a soul to be traded to ‘burn’
away his sin and be that much closer to a judgment to get to Heaven. This at
first seems to indicate the doubts raised in previous chapters were unfounded
but we’re helped along by Coo saying that even she begins to doubt because Hind
is still what and where she is.
The Weaver of Pain is Jinx’s trading partner, and at the end
his judge, thusly we meet a third judge, again different from the mechanical
angel and the intoxicating brew. Its judgment is keep Jinx upon earth in the
form of a plush which is left with Hind.
The Weaver though is not alone, we also run into Ammut, St
Peter, and Atropos, all players in the game of judging souls but outrun and
bargained with by out fine feline. The last trade is a life for a life, though
it appears that once he began the journey to judgment there was no way back,
which is true for all the referenced mythologies as well.
Perhaps it’s unfair, but I think that we need to assume that
Jinx didn’t really understand the deals he was making with the Weaver, that
while it would speak to him in prices to be paid for the sins he committed,
that this was merely was he and we were able to understand. It’s abundantly
clear that the idea of sins leading to transformation and ideally ultimately to
salvation is, at least, no guarantee, and most likely a complete fabrication. Humans,
the Wild Children and the Other, are all coexisted in a system that is vastly
more than bad children are punished, and our protagonists are learning this by
trial and error, and the costs of errors are not a pittance.
Worth mentioning, though I think its more of hint to how
different the real system is from what we’ve been told so far is Purgatory; a
realm close to the mortal one where pain and pleasure become one, where
terrible ordeals are endured but every moment is enjoyed. Which more than
anything reminds me of Hell Raiser and the Cenobytes. And the comparison is
worth pondering. The Cenobites come when summoned and act on the summoners will
to show them the ‘pleasure’ through their ‘torture’, acting out the will of Leviathan
whose goal is force order upon the world through the pleasure the Cenobites
have experienced. In Wild Children is addicting as well, its dangerous, its
cost to Jinx is a mixed of others pain and his own salvation. His salvation
from this ever deepening hole is the complex pain and love of Hind, to both her
owners and to lost Bray.
