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Sep 14, 2023Liked by C.J. Stone

Okay.....I get that this chapter was supposed to be a tense buildup to whatever the heck Lockheed is planning on doing, but just imagining Beth (and later Sapphire) stumbling about and trying to recover from the gun shop injuries painted a somewhat-tragic and somewhat-amusing picture at the same time. The feeling of migraines and vertigo isn’t something that hits a lot of people too often, but when it does, it’s utterly unbearable. And here Beth/Sapphire is, needing to handle her superheroics on top of that. Just goes to show how much she’ll go through to ensure others’ future safety. But, like......I can’t help but go back to all the warnings and lectures from several of Beth’s friends regarding her activities as Sapphire Angel. At the end of the day, is it selflessness, heroism, and bravery? Or is it just short-sighted recklessness and obliviousness towards knowing when to quit?

I don’t know if it was meant to be slightly more dramatic, but the part where Beth struggles to hit the elevator button and the whole sequence with the cylinder wire reminded me of old-time slapstick cartoons where the characters take nasty falls---or just generally get injured or inconvenienced---in the most comical of ways just to get laughs out of the viewers. Also lightening the whole scene was the fact that she was already in the Sapphire Angel costume, so any “injuries” she’d receive would gradually get healed, anyways. So everything she suffered while actually getting to Olivia Lockheed’s area wouldn’t compound with her headache......at least not for too long, anyways.

Looks like things aren’t going to be so smooth from here on out, though. If we get a long, drawn-out, multiple-chapter sequence of Lockheed subjecting Sapphire to all the same torture devices as all the other past women.....goodness. I don’t think I’m going to be ready for that. I still have PTSD from Raven Tristan and Roy Valik. I still think some of our past adventures would’ve been so much easier with Raven and her skillset by our side; WarTech would’ve crumbled in less than half a day like a house of soggy cards, the Savage Gang would’ve had a much harder time communicating with their agents, allies, and associates with her running the lines, and Olivia Lockheed would’ve been completely isolated---and possibly condemned as a pariah---from the rest of the FBI if her sick leather-based obsessions were to get leaked to the public. Heck.....with Raven as the intellect and Sapphire as the fighter (not that Sapphire isn’t smart, too; she definitely is, by all means), they might’ve even dismantled Majid Azari, the silver-eyed man, and the ILA itself from the inside out. Communication is a big part of any army or entity’s strength; take that out, and they’ll be ripe for the picking.

(gasp) Or maybe Raven could’ve hacked into WarTech, recovered Roy Valik’s research notes on Sapphire Angel, and get them to someone who could continue his work, if not herself! ......Oh, well. This series still has at least two more novels left to go, so there’s plenty of time to see these characters again.

Are we about to get some “leather whip”, “glass shards”, “cat ‘o nine tails”-type stuff going on here? Like, BDSM? I don’t know about the long-term effects of this, but it looks like short-term, it’s going to HURT. And that’s not even getting into the “mental” aspect of all this.....just the “physical” aspect.

Time to find out on Monday!

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I’ve thought of Beth probably viewing this as not too dangerous a situation, since Lockheed, despite her bossiness, etc., not having exhibited elements of “evil,” so to speak. So while she doesn’t like Lockheed, and Lockheed has shown some interesting proclivities, she hasn’t been a villain, at least not yet. I don’t think she’s like Raven Tristan, so I don’t know that we have to worry about a torture scene, although that doesn’t mean there aren’t other dangerous parts to her. And yes, I think Raven would have made a great ally. As far as BDSM, we will have to see.

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