I spent one month reading the Keeper of the Lost Cities series, beginning on March 13 and ending on April 13. As soon as I finished, I started over with book #1. I am now reading through the set a second time.
This all began during spring break after I finished reading John Benton's books. I've been wanting to investigate Simon & Schuster's other children's book offerings, to see if their average children's book is of higher quality than the Nancy Drew Diaries series. I browsed through S&S's children's book category, making sure that I was browsing within the subcategory where the Nancy Drew Diaries series is listed.
Keeper of the Lost Cities jumped out at me due to its attractive cover art. I wasn't in the mood for reading a children's fantasy book; after all, I had just finished reading vintage teen books about prostitutes and drug addicts. However, I wanted to see what S&S has been up to while they've been neglecting Nancy Drew. This was as good of a place to start as anywhere else.
I read the sample of the first book on Amazon, and it seemed really good. Why not? I purchased the first book, leading to this obsession that I now have.
Are these books better than the Nancy Drew Diaries series? I'd say so... by a lot.
The author has left clues all over the place, including anagrams. Some of the anagrams are decoys to throw readers off, but other anagrams are deeply significant. At least, I think they are.
The series is still in progress, but I have found an anagram pointing to what I believe is the big secret. When I ran a Google search the other day, there were no results. How strange. The book that has this clue was published in 2014. I cannot possibly be the only person who has figured out the anagram.
I posted about it on Reddit a few days ago to see what would happen. I got some downvotes at first. I have upvotes as well, and it appears that I've shocked some people. It's weird to be the person who has found the anagram. Usually I'm reading other people's theories and getting my mind blown. I am now one of the people with a theory.
Even though I can't find evidence online of anybody else cracking the anagram, I'm sure that others have decoded it. I cannot be the only person who's figured it out. Other people just haven't posted about it online.
Admittedly, I haven't looked hard online. I've been put off by some of the discussions that I've read, so I don't feel like reading anything else. I'll just enjoy the books by myself. I'm not interested in hashing out whether the books have enough diverse characters. I just want to discuss theories, not worry about whether a children's book has enough political correctness.
The clue is in an anagram of one character's full name, and I won't say anything else. I decided that I wanted to use Post-it page markers to flag where four different characters appear. I'm confident that a pattern will emerge.
The visual with the page markers is something that I wanted, but I needed physical copies. While I had marked dozens of passages in my Kindle books, I wanted to be able to see where certain characters appear. On Friday, I made the decision to acquire physical copies ASAP, like no later than Saturday.
I had to feed this obsession.
The problem is that the Oklahoma City bookstores are in other parts of the city. Where I live is less densely populated, so most chains avoid my area. Large companies fail to understand how spread out the eastern Oklahoma City metro is. People drive in from the rural areas east of the city to shop in Midwest City. Since companies don't know that, they don't realize that Midwest City could support some of these stores. The closest Barnes & Noble is 20 miles away, which is a 40 mile round trip. I checked the prices on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The books were cheaper on Amazon, but I was going to have to pay expedited shipping in order to acquire them in one day.
I had to decide whether I was going to drive 20 miles to obtain them or whether I was going to pay $14.68 shipping to get the books delivered from Amazon. I compared the cost and found that I was only going to save about $2.00 if I drove to Barnes & Noble. However, the gasoline cost probably would have been around $7.00. Therefore, it was more expensive to drive to the store, besides the time involved. I very quickly decided to pay the $14.68 shipping.
Here are the books. They are lovely.
I did not purchase a physical copy of book #9. It is only available in hardcover, and I thought that $16.99 was a bit expensive since I already have the Kindle edition. I'm mainly interested in marking the locations of certain character appearances up to around book #7, so I really didn't need book #9 in a physical copy.
I have already started marking pages.
I have done most of book #1, and I have also marked the location of the important name in book #3. I hope to have most of my markers in place by next weekend so that I can decide if my theory is right.
I will be posting a series overview which will be spoiler free. I plan to post about my theory in future posts, which will be marked as spoilers.
I implore you to try this series if you have ever enjoyed reading series like Harry Potter, Fablehaven, Beyonders, or Percy Jackson. Really. Please give these books a try. I can't promise that you'll like them, but you don't want to risk missing out on something that you might really love.
If you do try these books and end up liking them, please let me know. It would make me happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment