Greetings to my readers and other Strike/Potter fans. I am back from the longest blogging break I've taken in a while. I am happy to announce that I return with the new title of Granny to CJ, the, in my unashamedly biased opinion, the most perfect and beautiful granddaughter ever born. Since I have chosen to keep her full name private, and respect her parents' wishes not to display her face on social media, you'll simply have to take my word for it that she is absolutely and completely adorable.
During my break, I've been mulling over what to blog about as we continue to wait for Sleep Tight, Evangeline. I finally drew inspiration from:
- first, the new series of Three Broomsticks podcasts I've been doing: looking at connections between the Strike books and the corresponding Potter books, so starting with Philosopher's Stone and Cuckoo's Calling and
- second, the Double Wedding Band model for the Strike series, which hypothesizes that tha last seven books of the series will form a ring structure, much as the first seven did, and as the seven Harry Potter books did. See here, here and here for more information.
As I have noted before, one of the strongest arguments in favor of DWB is the fact that it predicted connections between THM and Order of the Phoenix, of which there were many. This gives me hope that the final three books of the Strike series will connect to the final three Potter books both alchemically and thematically.
But, what of the earlier books of the putative second ring. That's what I have decided to explore for the next few months.