Chs 5 and 6: Samantha reaches her dad

Chapter 5: On the Soothing Comfort of a Strawberry Soda

The scene switches to Samantha in a hospital. She ignores a call over the intercom asking her to visit the nurse's station, and instead goes to buy soda, then watch a passing storm out the window.

Our Lemony Narrator does his Lemony thing.

You wouldn't have liked to see her that day. She was as gray as that storm, but still, quiet, sad.

I've come to notice something. Samantha doesn't talk a whole lot. She's said barely any words of dialog so far. Although to be fair, she hasn't had many people to talk to yet. She tends to be a quiet thinker type, not a talker type.

The narrator starts to make bizarre comparisons and teases the readership for not getting them:

The room was depressing, desolate. Like Bourbon Street on a Sunday morning. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? What would make more sense to you? How about... depressing and desolate like an empty bag of cheese puffs?

I dunno, I hardly consider an empty bag of food, even one I like (which wouldn't be cheese puffs in this case), to be "depressing" or "desolate".

Malachi the parrot shows up again, looks at Sam, cocks his head, then flies off. Sam looks out after him.

Down at the nurse's station, we're introduced to a nurse who resembles "a freshly sharpened pencil", and a "nerdy bureaucrat from Child Protective Services" who looks like "a basket of dirty laundry".

Yup, a "nerdy bureaucrat".

The nurse whispers to the CPS guy that Samantha is "strange" and "not like a normal child."

"For one thing, her mother felt cold, so I went for a blanket. When I got back, Sam was pulling one over her, smoothing it out."

Oh damn. Did she just teleport the blanket?!

The CPS guy brushes off this tiny bit of weirdness, and asks if Sam's mom is going to come out of her coma anytime soon. Nope.

Samantha shows up just that moment, and the nurse lets her know that the CPS guy will help her find her father. He extends his hand for her shake, but she rejects it, and tells him that she hasn't seen her father since she was five. Then she walks away.

Sam cries over her mom in the coma, and the chapter ends.

Chapter 6: As Rough as an Oyster Shell

The narrator describes the men at Ye Olde Angler Tavern as "rough as an oyster shell", and tells the reader that the tavern is "no place for a wholesome young citizen such as yourself."

The men are ostensibly fishermen, but...

But fishing was only a cover for these hooligans who always had some more underhanded activity in the works. We won't be discussing any of that, however. It doesn't have much to do with our story, and you're far, far too young to hear about such nasty things anyway.

Who does he think the readers are? The narrator makes many assumptions about them.

The tavern is described with more strange analogies, and we're told where it's located: on the north shore of North Bimini. Where Professor Stone, Samantha's dad is.

Professor Stone is in this unpleasant place, surrounded by men who are shouting, playing pool, and standing on tables, and he's showing his jewel to Ansel, his assistant.

He brags that this jewel will prove his theory and win him 5 years of grant money. And he even curses: "You're one hell of a graduate assistant."

Hell? Who is this book for, again? I've read "hell" used in a few kids' books, like My Teacher Fried My Brains ("getting the hell out of there" was used in narration), and it always struck me as strange when I did see it. I just figured bad language wasn't allowed. And yet Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles uses "lard ass" in dialog. Again, why?

Ansel is then needlessly insulted by the narrator:

"Aww, thanks professor" was all he managed to squeeze out of his wimpy little mouth. He was such a meek and mealy thing, repulsive really. Like a little worm crawled out from the earth after a good June rain.

What'd he ever do to deserve that kind of description? He's not a bad guy at any point in the story!

Malachi the parrot shows up yet again, this time perched on the shoulder of Captain Tithers. A patron then drinks "alien surprise". And we see that even Malachi the parrot likes to drink alcohol (or whatever this green liquid is).

Someone then calls, and the captain immediately assumes correctly the person is calling for Professor Stone. Malachi grabs Prof. Stone by the ear, which works at getting his attention, and I'm realizing this parrot is rather, um, intelligent and mission-driven.

Then we get this bit of comedy:

"Yes, I really do believe Atlantis exists," the professor sighed into the receiver.

"Excuse me? Professor Stone?" the voice said.

"Aren't you a journalist?" the professor asked.

"No, no," the voice said. "My name is Peter Sinclair from Child Protective Services. And I need to speak to you about your daughter."

Okay, that was Actually Pretty Funny.